Why do I write?

Why reflect on painting?

I find it curious how, in the first works I made, I can see the seeds of what I went on to do later. I think this kind of archaeology is essential to making sense of my own work, time and again.

How curious is it that themes or interests emerge intuitively, or that we make choices that say so much about us? And how can we bring those aspects into consciousness?

That is what I use writing for. Because I believe that much of what we do is not available to our conscious mind. If I had said this to the Sara of 2019, she would have thought I had completely lost it. But through experience, I have come to see how much knowledge and value there is in the subconscious and in intuition. However, we can only make use of that value if we are able to bring it into consciousness and think about it.

So, yes, writing helps.

I do not write to remember, or to keep a record. If that were the case, this would certainly not be the best format. I write to observe. What does my brain hide from me that I need to dig for in order to find?

There would surely be value in doing this in a notebook, as the connection to handwriting is said to matter. But thoughts move so quickly that it can sometimes be difficult to keep up and write down everything I want to. Digital writing is faster, as well as searchable, editable and easy to restructure.

As I write this passage, I imagine a potential reader saying, “But what value can she possibly gain from writing about writing, if the real value would lie in revisiting her artistic practice?” Well, this idea of thinking about thinking, metacognition, is deeply interesting to me as a subject in its own right. The very idea that intuition has value is also something I would like to explore.

Writing allows me to return to the images after they have been made and recognise which choices, recurring concerns and relationships were already present before I was able to name them. And, in this way, to try to give them meaning after the fact.