It’s ok to stall…

On a project that requires a lot of thought and emotional energy, it’s ok to stall. Recently, I had a big slump in motivation for sorting the next stage of storing my dad’s work.

The next stage was meant to give me more access to the paintings so I could really start to go through them properly. Currently, the canvas I laid over the storage units doesn’t have any easy access points and requires removal of the piece of canvas if I want to take a look at a certain area.

But I couldn’t summon the energy to do this for a while, despite the job being a task I would really enjoy. I love sawing wood and making things. But the canvas became some heavy burden that I couldn’t quite get around to managing. In part, this was because in order to do the work in this space, I would have to make quite a lot of mess. The flat is small, and I don’t live alone, so it weighs on my mind the thought of making this place so inhabitable for someone else, even for a couple of days. So I’ve been putting it off. That was until I had a little meltdown about it, and speaking with my mum, we decided to speed up the phase of putting the paintings in a more permanent place, rather than the temporary, hilarious panto curtain area they are currently in.

So, we are currently moving my mum’s flat around, and then I’ll build some furniture for the paintings to go in, so that they can mostly be moved over to her flat, which is bigger. My aim is to make a flat work surface above the storage of the paintings, so that they have more than one practical use.

Whilst moving around the flat that my dad lived in is difficult, particularly when we are drastically changing how he had his work area, it has also given us a good boost in momentum.

Other than moving forward due to necessity, other people have been influential in me bucking up a little and getting on. We really shouldn’t underestimate the power and inspiration we get from other people, and that is precisely the premise of starting this project in the first place, so it’s important for me to remember that. I know a wonderful person called Tom, whom I have recently been in touch with quite a bit about working on this and other things, and the little check-ins he does really help a lot. He often reminds me to take care of myself during this project, and is a good advocate for the concept of “it’s ok if it takes a long time.”

Tonight was a lovely example of the power of seeing other people’s art, and how inspiring it can be, whether from the artworks themselves, or from the people we speak to whilst there. This evening I went to a photography festival, and spoke with the lovely and talented photographer Valerie Prot. We’d very briefly spoken about this project before, so I wanted to show her that I had made the website. After a little description of some of her own work that was related, she pointed me in the direction of another gallery showing the work of an Emilia Martin. Emilia is a Polish photographer. The exhibit told two anecdotes, one of the photographer’s grandmother and the second of some sisters from Sweden. It described how, despite these women’s hard work while alive, the textiles they produced were discarded as worthless once they passed away. Looking at something dealing with similar themes really helps me to reconnect with this project. This echoing of the theme of where the work goes when we die really hit home for me. So here I am, feeling motivated again, to keep going through all my dad’s things, and make the next steps to showcasing them a bit more.