Clearing out the Clutter

For the last few weeks, I have been working through the early stages of my ‘Wanderings’ project. I have been doing lots of reading and research and collating relevant images and quotes into a sketchbook for reference.

Another task that I have been working on is sorting out and tidying my workspace to give me an organized start to this new project. My ‘studio’ sits in a corner of my bedroom, and consists of a table, two small three-shelf trolleys, a couple of three-drawer plastic units and a few plastic art portfolios along with some bookshelves and a small space at the side of the wardrobe for stacking canvasses and boards. As such, I don’t have enough space for all the art materials and artwork that I have inevitably accumulated over the twenty or so years that I have been working through all the art courses that I have taken. The clutter has been steadily growing as all the ‘stuff’ ended up crammed into any available space or drawer. I have been overdue a clear out for a couple of years and the beginning of this new project felt like a good time to tackle it.

I have systematically worked through everything from the books through to the art materials and artwork. I started out with my bookshelves, I could have opened my own library with the number of books I owned but I have now sorted through them all. I have a three narrow bookcases and have dedicated a shelf to each subject. So I have a shelf of books about painting and drawing and another shelf for books about embroidery techniques etc. The books I no longer wished to keep have either been sold online, gifted to friends or donated to charity. I also have a few shelves dedicated to housing my sketchbooks and notebooks for my own future reference.

Next, I tackled all my art materials, some of which I had dabbled with during courses and not got on with so they were donated to a local charity. The remaining materials have now been sorted and organized so that I have drawers and shelves dedicated to particular media. A drawer for paint and ink and another drawer for fabric and so on. My threads have also been organized into small drawer units which sit on one of my bookshelves.

The final task was to look at all the artworks that I had made and sort through them to decide which ones to keep and which I no longer wanted. In most cases with the rejected artworks I can re-use the substrates and others simply went in the bin or paper recycling box!

The process of sorting through all my materials and artworks has led me into a period of journalling that has found me asking myself about the direction I would like to take my next series of work in and which processes I would like to explore. In many ways it has been a process of clearing out the clutter in my head as well as the physical clutter around me. It feels like I am moving into the next season of my work and my life after a somewhat desolate period.

I am currently reading ‘Wintering’ by Katherine May, which has brought me so much comfort and sparked a few revelations. I think I have been going through my own wintering for the past eighteen months or so and now I am coming into the spring. It has sometimes felt lonely but, at the same time, I know that I needed to walk though it on my own in order to dig deeply enough inside myself to learn the lessons that I needed to. I have emerged stronger and wiser from my hibernation and I can take those lessons forward with me into the next season.

Finding Joy in the Process

October 2022 review