Why do I write?

Why reflect on painting?

I find it curious how in the early works I did, I can see the seeds of what I would later do. And I think this archaeology is fundamental to making sense of my own work time and time again.

How curious is it that themes or interests, or choices, can intuitively emerge that reveal so much about us? And how can we bring these aspects to conscious awareness?

That's why I use writing. Because I believe that much of what we do isn't available in our conscious brain. And if I told this to the Sara of 2019, she would have thought I'd gone completely mad. But through experience, I've seen how much knowledge and value there is in the subconscious and in intuition. However, we can only take advantage of that value if we manage to bring it to consciousness and think about it.

So yes, writing helps.

I don't write to remember, nor to record… If that were the case, this surely wouldn't be the best format. I write to observe. What things does my brain hide from myself that I need to dig for?

And it would certainly be valuable to do it in a notebook; the connection to handwriting is said to be relevant. But thoughts wander so quickly that sometimes it's difficult to keep track and write down everything I want. Digital is faster and also searchable, editable, and easy to restructure…

As I write this passage, I imagine the potential reader saying, "But what value can you get from writing about writing, if the value itself would be to review your artistic practice?" Well, this thing about thinking about thinking, metacognition, is super interesting to me as a topic in itself. The very idea of intuition having value is something I'd like to explore.

Writing allows me to return to the images after they have been made and to understand which choices, insistences and relationships were already present before I was able to name them. And, in doing so, to try to give them meaning afterwards.