I feel there is an analogy to be explored: imagine the peri-menopausal woman who, fed up of all the crap, decides to cut off all the long, coloured hair and embrace a short grey crop…A selection of fingers waved at those who criticise. Now imagine me… a post-menopausal artist, also fed up of all the crap of trying to get a decent amount of funding, decides to not bother any more, embraces subsequent near-poverty to do whatever she damn well pleases.

(I do not feel poverty-stricken, I’m ok, but if I look at a list of numbers in The Guardian, I am indeed hovering perilously close, and occasionally dipping under that invisible line)

I have spent the last few months, possibly a year, sorting old work, saving the good stuff, labelling and storing it; throwing other stuff out; chopping it up; reusing the paper; clearing the decks… and then to top it all off, this week I have painted my studio walls. I’ve filled in cracks and holes, repaired and cleaned damage from a roof leak. I’ve cleared the floor and cleaned. I’ve removed furniture and rearranged the rest. I have more floor space for dancing now should the need arise. And it might.

Before the paint was barely dry I had hung up some pieces of new work so I could look at them against the lovely new clean green wall (I’ve called this home-mixed colour “Lichen”, made from a selection of left overs from the shed.)

We (my fellow General Office studio tenants and I) are having an Open Studio weekend in September and this has been the outside focus for this activity, giving it a deadline. But, like the dramatic haircut, it was happening anyway. 

A “new” studio brings a new outlook. A fresh view of the work and the context from which it has grown… more on that next post perhaps.

Next question, having spent the last year growing my hair much longer than it has been in decades… shall I have it all cut off?