2026 Working Notes

These short essays record thoughts and observations that arise alongside my studio practice. They are not explanations of finished work, but reflections on looking, learning, and making over time.

Feb 2026 - I’m not avoiding what sells. I’m choosing what still teaches me.

February 2026 - A Practical Exercise that I Need at this Moment

(do this Linda, don’t just read it)

First mix a neutral (N) using Alizarin Crimson and Phthalo Green.

Practice session

Mix five piles of paint only.
- Light warm – White with Yellow Ochre and/or Alizarin Crimson, moderated with N
- Light cool – White with Yellow Ochre and/or Phthalo Green, moderated with N
- Mid warm – Less White, more Ochre and/or Alizarin Crimson, moderated with N
- Mid cool – Less White, more Phthalo Green and/or Ochre, moderated with N
- Dark neutral – N only (adjust slightly with White if needed)
Paint the entire figure using only these five mixes.
Do not add new mixes until the figure reads well.

I’ll probably hate it.
Then I’ll understand it.
Then, hopefully, I’ll never fully unlearn it — which is the point.

Only then can I add small patches of over-paint with new mixes, staying within the established tonal range.

Detail from a current working painting, showing tonal and temperature variation within a limited palette. Control is still being developed.

January 2026 - On Discernment as a Moving Edge

Discernment doesn’t feel fixed to me. It feels more like a moving edge — something that shifts as learning continues. Work that once felt satisfying can later feel closed or inert, not because it has deteriorated, but because my way of looking has changed. This change is often experienced first as dissatisfaction, which is easy to mistake for negativity or intolerance. I’ve come to see it instead as a signal that something in my thinking has moved on.

That dissatisfaction tends to arise when I encounter work that is polished and resolved, but offers no resistance. The surface is competent, the references are legible, the decisions appear confident — and yet there is a hollow feeling that nothing further is required of me. The work has already decided everything. There is nothing left for me to do as a viewer. When this happens, my disengagement is not a failure of attention; it is a recognition that the work and I are no longer operating in the same learning space.

I find it useful to think about this in terms of a zone of proximity. For artists, learning often happens when a problem sits just beyond what they already know how to solve. Something similar seems to apply to viewing. Work that teaches is often work that sits just ahead of my current understanding, not far beyond it and not comfortably behind it. If the work is too resolved, it closes too quickly. If it is too distant or opaque, it becomes unreachable. In both cases, learning stalls.

This helps explain why I can learn from children’s drawings long after I’ve stopped learning from certain kinds of professional work. Before children enter a stylized or cartoon phase, their drawings are exploratory. Decisions are visible. Errors are instructive. Nothing is protected. Once a shorthand develops — a symbol that “works” — investigation often stops. Something similar can happen later in artistic development, when a recognizable style begins to substitute for inquiry. Competence replaces curiosity.

The same dynamics apply to viewers and critics, not just artists. As discernment develops, so does the risk of stalled learning. It becomes possible to recognize references, place work within a framework, and describe it convincingly without actually encountering it. At that point, language can become a shield rather than a tool. Work is praised for aligning with an existing discourse rather than for testing it. This is not a moral failure; it is a structural one. Comfort quietly replaces attention.

These differences in learning position help explain why disagreements about art — especially in competitions or judged contexts — can be so persistent and so sharp. Two people may agree that a winning work is unsatisfying, yet disagree completely about which alternative should have been chosen. Each is responding from a different proximity to the work. What feels unresolved and alive to one viewer may feel weak or unfinished to another. What feels accomplished and convincing to one may feel prematurely closed to someone else. These disagreements are often mistaken for differences in taste, when they are really differences in where learning is still active.

I’ve become increasingly aware that the work that holds my attention longest is work that risks something real. Not dramatic failure, but the possibility of emptiness — the chance that the work might not resolve, might not reassure, might not explain itself. This kind of risk creates a depth that is not theatrical. It doesn’t announce itself. It simply withholds ladders. In that space, the viewer is required to stay present rather than consume.

This is not an argument for difficulty or obscurity, nor a rejection of pleasure. It is an argument for openness. Learning — whether in making, looking, or thinking — depends on work that leaves something at stake. When everything is resolved, learning stops. When something remains unresolved, attention sharpens.

Discernment, then, is not a fixed position or a set of preferences. It is an ongoing negotiation with what still teaches. Dissatisfaction is part of that process, not an obstacle to it. The challenge is not to eliminate it, but to recognise what it is pointing toward — and to stay willing to follow it, even when it unsettles familiar ground.