November 2024: Art in times of uncertainty
Dear art friends,
Last night I slept about two hours, which has become some dizzying "normal" for me since my insomnia returned the last week of October. It is a first domino (or, maybe a middle one, and I'm still finding the first?) that sends me into waves of feeling miserable. During the day I am in a fog, and everything takes me a long time. Writing you this post has taken me forever. I forget what I'm saying in the middle of my sentences, forget my phone, forget my meds. So I wasn't actually surprised when I started writing this piece by explaining that I haven't painted anything in the last month, and then started thumbing through my notebooks to see that I'd forgotten that I have in fact been sketching all month. It's different than usual, and it's not beautiful, but immediately I can see how it's been there with me all along, a friend. And I can see how making art and making marks functions in my life during hard times, even when I do not set out to try to create anything.
I hope it's not too personal to just show you what I found: