What little I can do: Studio Notes #58

“Morning routines and productivity hacks are just products of capitalistic showmanship,” as this piece has it, and Wired says basically nobody can be switched on for 8 solid hours. Which is why I take at least a day to write something I can only bill 3-4 hours for. I really need to adjust my freelance rates. But then I have to tell all my clients I’m demanding a raise, and ooh er… I really do miss having a proper job.

On the ickiness that happens when your “social” media is all about hustle. There’s an extra layer of complexity (and all kinds of questions around “authenticity” and “transparency”) when you’re a maker who uses the same platform, the same posts, for social support, networking and marketing. Creative people often hate feeling like we’re selling things, and Instagram holds out the tantalising promise that marketing can be as simple as just talking to friends and showing our work… but it’s never quite that simple, is it? My feed has gone quite remarkably quiet lately. It’s always been at least as much personal stuff as design (really a lot more personal, since my output is so slow), and yet when I’m not designing, I don’t seem to know how to show up at all. Weird.

I enjoyed this piece on two artists I’ve never heard of, and clearly should have. (Note the line about Celia Paul being framed as “influenced by” her lover Lucian Freud, rather than an “influence on”.) Particularly pointed on the question of motherhood’s compromises, although I resist the gender essentialist notion that “motherhood is an inextricable aspect of female being”. I keep thinking about the different forms of creativity and leisure typically pursued by men or by women; women’s habit of choosing pursuits that are useful or nurturing (sewing, knitting, baking). In that context, especially, I was delighted by Cecily Brown’s comment that “sex was the closest thing to painting in the real world.” Art itself as the highest desire: how magnificently un-feminine!