Audit Letter
On what I did in 2024 & what I plan to do in 2025, plus my end of year favourites.
I
Art Adjacent: On what I did in 2024 and what I plan to work on in 2025
2024 was a year of trying new things out and changing things up as much as possible which counts as a success (mostly).
I developed and focused in on painting and focused in even more particularly on watercolour and gouache work.
And I moved away from my sketchbook (mostly) and have been focused on working on paper. All of which involved experimentation and trialing and testing materials I wasn’t familiar with.
And I am ending the year mid-transition (or so it feels) as I am still adjusting and finding myself in relation to acrylic and canvas. But really there has been plenty enough development and change over 2024, so much so that I am not worried if my latest foray into acrylic proceeds quite slowly.
What I hope happens next (into 2025) is that I continue in this direction, whilst maintaining my work on paper, and produce a growing collection of works on canvas. I envision working at a small scale (no larger than A3) for the moment and then eventually on a larger scale.
I should say this however - I don’t feel larger work is or should be the ultimate goal or the inevitable culmination of any art career. I would certainly be content to keep my work on a smaller scale. The only reason I will try it is in the spirit of testing out materials/possibilities.
What I really want from this process is to discover what size suits me and my style and the sort of work I am interested in producing.
But more on this (probably in the format of a slim list of resolutions) in 2025! In the meantime I wish you a calm and meditative December, a Merry Christmas later this month, and a Happy New Year!
IV
Art Adjacent: On my end of year favourites
Favourite Art work: “Still Life with Three Sailors, 1980-1987, John Craxton.
John Craxton is a relatively new discovery for me and I am amazed I haven’t encountered him before. This wonderful painting is one I might want to analyse in a future newsletter.
Favourite Artist: See above: John Craxton. I shall write more on him in the future but I must say I love his style and am intrigued by his recent biography.
Favourite Medium:
This has undoubtedly been the year I’ve fallen in love with watercolour.
It’s curious though that that doesn’t translate into an endless curiosity about multiple watercolour brands and colours (some of my pigment research put paid to any hankering I had towards “convenience colours”).
Instead, I simply enjoy the medium regardless of the colour or brand or whatever - just the effects and textures that can be produced and the ease of using it more generally.
Favourite Colours:
It’s between two. I’ve discovered a new appreciation of Ultramarine as I used to always favour cooler blues. I am still learning how to use it and discovering its virtues and possibilities.
And being a long-time lover of Prussian Blue (which is notoriously lacking in lightfastness) I have found a serviceable substitute that pleases me as much: Indanthrone Blue.
Now that it is established in my palette I realise how much I gravitate towards this sort of deep, dark blue in almost everything I do.
Favourite Sketchbooks:
There are, again, two answers to this one.
So, firstly I have discovered the Pith Supply sketchbooks (like everyone else apparently).
I used the larger ones for the first time in 2022 and despite the paper not being cotton or similar it was excellent at taking watercolour paint and any other medium you might throw at it. I loved their layflatness (is that a word) too, and they are also beautiful, perhaps the most beautiful sketchbooks out there (that I’ve encountered) as they look like proper, respectable books once finished and stored away. But they were never the right size or shape for me. The Tangelo was interesting - the landscape orientation isn’t my thing however. The Orobanco was too large.
Until this year (I think it was this year) they introduced their new formats. I’ve only bought one Cara Cara sketchbook but it is, to me, the perfect size, somewhere between A5 and A4.
So that would be my new favourite sketchbook under normal circumstances. I will certainly use this Pith sketchbook and may even re-purchase it but my real favourite is actually no sketchbook at all. The tragedy is I discovered the perfect sketchbook just at the point when I had decided to leave sketchbooks behind (more or less).
My real favourite sketchbook is working on unbound paper. This has proven to be the most liberating medium or vehicle for my work throughout 2024.
I did use them
Favourite Subject:
Again this should be no surprise to anyone who has glanced at my instagram feed - a style has been explored this year for sure and it’s all about figures in botanic settings!
Favourite Book/s:
There have been a few.
My favourite work of fiction is possibly Denton Welch’s Maiden Voyage. Welch seems to be forgotten or at best extremely niche but deserves a re-appraisal. I have read other novels of the 1940s but Welch’s debut feels strikingly modern in most respects (not least his startling style).
The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis: set in LA in the early 1980s the story is elevated by the seductive milieu Easton Ellis’s presents and dissects. And then of course there is the mindfuck of the last fifty pages.
But the big book release of 2024, for me at least, is Katharine Bucknell’s biography of Christopher Isherwood, Inside Out. This was a much-anticipated book in my house as I have become something of devotee of Isherwood over the last few years, reading all of his novels, and his diaries and letters (both edited by Bucknell too), and as a consequence I have become fascinated with this endlessly complex artist.
I am still in the midst of reading this book as I want to relish it and not rush through, but it is already as compelling as Isherwood’s diaries.
Bucknell is very good at connecting aspects of Isherwood’s early experiences to patterns and leitmotifs in both his later life and work. And this strikes me as being the best approach a biographer with an encyclopedic knowledge of their subject might take. And so this book is enlivened throughout with bold theoretical and material connections traced across decades, where odd recurrences and the wayward spread of near-undetectable influences and cross-pollination are recorded and examined.
Plus she illuminates his early life with a vigour I haven’t encountered elsewhere - his early years have always been the least explored and understood.
Favourite Film/s:
It would have to be a toss up between two films I saw at the beginning of the year: Miziyaki’s The Boy and the Heron and Andrew Haigh’s All of us Strangers.
Both, quite dissimilar in most respects, were visually striking and demanded some indulgence, some grace, as they guided you through absurd, topsy-turvy and grief-laden realms.
I want to re-watch the first one soon.
The second film is possibly too painful to re-watch for now!
V
Originals
I will be periodically showcasing small amounts of originals (five maximum) on Big Cartel, accessible via my bio in instagram (as part of my linktree) & here: Shop.
And if you are interested in pictures not currently listed I can add them to the store.
VII
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