In January 2023 I started a conversations project during my residency at Applecart Arts. I sit down and have a conversation of approximately one hour with someone I am interested to have a conversation with. Whilst there might be particular things I am interested in, I don’t have questions planned in advance and what happens is organic. Whilst we talk, I paint. What I share here is the painted/drawn outcome of the conversation. Afterwards, I write up my reflections which come from the conversation. Then, they go into my gallery of conversations, which you have found yourself in here…
I first became aware of Niki in a queer creatives instagram group I’m in, where she shared her photography project, ‘what’s your pleasure?’ and invited people to let her know if they were interested in being involved. I liked the sound of it – even more when she sent me details. I liked her suggestion to meet beforehand and that it was a great opportunity for a painting conversation. She liked the idea and we met recently in Whitechapel, London.
On the afternoon, I’d already been in meetings since 10 am and I was aware that my human conversation capacity and being in public limit were nearly reached. I felt a low level of anxiety about my energy levels and the unknown of meeting someone for the first time. I realised I had been ignoring my full bladder and hunger pangs so I did a wee and I ate a very fennel-y pastry and felt a bit more stable.
I had a vague idea of what she looked like, from her instagram and I found her in the Whitechapel Gallery Bookshop (a gentle quiet corner if you need one). We decided to go and sit in Allen Gardens – a park near Brick Lane. I’d been there once before with my mum, on an Alternative London graffiti tour and workshop. As we sat in the sun and chatted, I became aware of bleating seeping into my consciousness and it turned out we were right by Spitalfields City Farm.
I really enjoyed the conversation we had, which roamed from social etiquette and politics in Greece and the UK, to looking for new flatmates, capitalism, masculinity, what/how we share ourselves online, physical work, menstrual cycles, health and ageing. Niki would not rush to fill silences, or speak over me, and I talked a LOT compared to usual. Maybe a little bit from nervousness. I wished I had left more gaps or been more succinct. This is a classic post-event-criticism of myself about talking too much, too little or saying the ‘wrong’ thing. I think of this part of myself as a wolf or fox with very sharp teeth. Sometimes, she sleeps.
Niki is a psychotherapist, and in conversations with therapists where I am socialising rather than paying them, I worry about them feeling like I am doing that thing that people do with doctors. You know, you meet a doctor at a social event and immediately tell them about some ailment you have. I’ve done it before. I mentioned this concern to her and she said that after some years of experience, she can tell when she is being used. I hadn’t thought of it as being used, but it did get to the core of my fear. However, off-duty therapist or not, I often worry I have overshared and so my checking was self-protective, too.
We talked about a lot of things I have been exploring with the art and movement therapist I am working with. It was helpful to talk about these topics in a non-therapy setting. Niki said a few things which really stuck with me in a different way, even though I’ve heard/read/talked about them before. One was the idea of reparenting our inner child, as adults, and this being an ongoing process. I sometimes inwardly roll my eyes at the phrase inner child, but maybe that comes from a fear of the vulnerability that I associate with it. Which in itself is quite a child or teenager-like fear. I see the art I make, as being an expression of something usually hidden away and a form of re-parenting, so it’s not like I really disagree with the idea of it, I think it just feels exposing to talk about it. Niki also said something which stuck with me, about how we can’t love in ways we didn’t receive love. I liked this as a way to understand more our own childhoods and the childhoods of our parents (and so on). I get excited about finding ways to better understand and empathise with the motivations and behaviours of humans.
This was the first painting conversation in two years. It was so interesting to be reminded of stuff that I’d noticed previously, as well as spotting differences in my experience. One similarity was how hard I find it to talk and paint. I will be painting and listening and it all feels connected and flowy and I can access my thoughts but when I come to express them, it comes out jumbled and my head feels foggy. This is something I can experience in conversation anyway, but the fogginess feels more extreme as it contrasts to my ease when painting and listening.
In the previous conversations, I wrote down the words and phrases which stuck out to me, but I only did that once this time. Was I trusting more, that I would remember what I needed to remember? Or was it just because I took along really old paint and it was so watery or thick and dry that it was hard to write? I’m not sure. In previous conversations, I would make sure I could write up notes from the conversations on my way home, worrying I’d miss something if I didn’t. This time, my phone was out of battery, so I decided to trust that I would remember what was important for me to remember (and here we are – with a lot of words which I’ve worked hard to cut down!)
We ended up spending about four hours together, including some walking time and finding a toilet time. If this conversation had stopped after one or two hours, as with previous painting conversations, the spider creature, the circle and the words wouldn’t be in the painting. There would be less layers of paint. This makes me think about future conversations and wanting to make sure we have a few spacious hours together. However, I will also be having painting conversations at two mini residencies and if I want more than a couple of conversations, I’ll need to do them for shorter periods of time. I also like playing with different constraints so I will just keep doing them in different ways rather than having fixed ideas about timing.
After we said goodbye, I felt more open to connecting with the world around me as I walked through busy Friday evening Whitechapel. I was stopped by two women on the street who asked me a bunch of questions. Normally, I would have just hurried on but I chatted to them. I had my guard up and I was also honest in answering their questions about empowerment as a woman. I also said no thanks when they asked if I wanted to arrange a time to speak the following week. (I have no idea what their end game was – I wish I’d asked).
I felt so pleased I’d returned to this project with this conversation with Niki. It reminded me of the energising simplicity of doing something I am interested in and sharing it with people. Is that really an easy way of describing what it is to be an artist? Recently I’ve received so many disheartening rejections from applications to exhibitions and residencies, but really all I want to do is follow the things which fascinate me and then connect to others and my environment through them. This relates to something else I talked about with Niki – she said that when we do the things our bodies want, we are building our self-worth, because we think we are worth doing what we want. This feels confusingly simple when I write it, but I realise how much time I spend doing things I think other people want. I didn’t connect it to how that could impact my self-worth. I am looking forward to exploring this more in her ‘what’s your pleasure’ project.
If you’d like to find out more about Niki’s work, you can visit her instagram.
