I’m looking at three trays of silk/metal dupion forms, prepared and ready for the fire. What began as a very beautiful fabric has, through a series of interventions, been taken somewhere quite different. Beauty – destruction – re-emergence.
This process has become embedded in my practice. Through repetition – the same acts, over and over – it has also become reassuring. Over many years, and now into my seventies, I’ve found something steady in this iteration. It has anchored me on darker days, offering a kind of quiet validation. I’ve trusted its rules – its sameness – as part of what I understood to be an intuitive way of working.
But I’m no longer certain.
One aspect of intuition is that it can seem to happen without thought. I don’t mean ‘flow’ (as described by Csíkszentmihalyi), but something else. A kind of deep noticing. This feels very different from the comfort of repetition. I’ve been aware of this distinction before, but I didn’t pause long enough to follow it. Instead, I continued with my established rituals: making the silk/metal forms, amassing them, boxing them, documenting them in black sketchbooks and journals. Some of this has found its way onto my blog.
This has been my routine – grounding, containing.
Recently, though, something shifted.
While working, I noticed a tiny droplet of pigment resting on the waxed areas of the silk/metal fabric. In its unassuming stillness, it reflected the studio back at me. A small moment, easily overlooked. But it stayed with me. It felt both unsettling and quietly compelling.
Over the next few days, I found myself wondering: what would happen if I followed this? If I tried to recreate – or perhaps respond to – this droplet?
Instead, I carried on.
I moved back into my iterative process, following its rules, completing what I had set out to do. In doing so, I realised that I had passed over something – something fragile, unexpected, and, to me, quite beautiful. That realisation has stayed with me as a feeling of regret.
My process has long been driven by a kind of transformation – creating something out of destruction. I recognise now how deeply I’ve relied on this. But I’m beginning to wonder whether that need is shifting, or whether I’ve simply been working within too narrow a set of conditions.
All of my silk/metal forms follow strict rules, yet each one is different. I value this tension. But now another tension is becoming more present – between repetition and deviation, between following and noticing. I know that ignoring these moments of noticing is becoming harder to sustain.
I still find solace in the forms, and in what they represent. But alongside that, there is a growing sense of disquiet – something asking, quietly but persistently, to be acknowledged.
For now, I am trying to remain with that.