Studio Notes. 1/10/2016

To loose myself in the work. That is the ultimate goal. It's selfish. It's just for me. It's a high. It's meditation. I'm lost in the rhythm of the loud music in my studio and the dance back and forth from my painting. Pearl Jam usually does it for me, music from my youth. At least that's what it was today. I haven't reached this place in a while, where I'm just lost, in the flow, somewhat undistracted. I realize I've been listening to too many podcasts. Too much chatter. Back to the music. Thank god for that. I move quickly in a dance with the music and the painting. Up close putting paint down, back away, make choices, dance back to the work, put more paint down. Scream along to the music. I look over at the youtube video of Pearl Jam performing live in 1992 and swoon over young Eddie Vedder and feel a little sad, but grateful. I look at the clock and resist the urge to document my second mug of tea on instagram. The dance, back and forth, back and forth. The flow is so fragile and so seemingly impossible to obtain. When it is caught, it's like magic, like you are holding the secrets of the universe, something ancient and impossible to comprehend, and at any second it will disappear. I look at the clock and think about how much time I have left in the studio and that I need to clean the kitchen and do laundry.

I don't (yet) have the privilege of being in my studio every day, so it's challenging for me to create a flow when I feel like I'm constantly being interrupted. Every time I get back in the studio, it takes time for me to get back into a piece. It feels IMPOSSIBLE at first. I think to myself, this piece is never going to work...I'm done...I don't know why I'm doing this. But I know that's just chatter. Pointless. It has no meaning. The magic will only come if I pick up the brush. Embrace my solitude. Turn the music up and loose myself in the work.

Embracing the slowness of Winter and PHOTOS for sale at The Firefly!

Winter is finally here!!!! I'm one of those odd people that looks forward to winter. When the holiday madness is over and the quiet calm settles in. I feel like I've been going going going since July. Now I can slow down, hear my thoughts, layer up my flannels and drink endless amounts of tea and coffee....and *maybe* get some new work done!

On Christmas day this year, Jim and I visited The Wright Brothers and my grandparents. I've always meant to go have a sit, drink a beer, just hang out. The day was warm and the sun was absolutely amazing. I miss all of them so much. I've been so lucky, my entire life, to be encouraged by my family. I recognize that not everyone has that. Not every family encourages their children to do what they love, especially if that means struggling to make ends meet. But I think they have always known that it's not exactly a choice. To be an artist. At least that's not my experience. I don't remember deciding I would be one, but that's just who I am. How I see the world. How I operate inside it. And I might be a little bit stubborn, which helps.





Hopefully starting as early as next week, I am going to have some of my landscape photographs available for purchase at The Firefly Coffeehouse (where I am a barista 3 days a week!). I've been taking photos all these years and was recently encouraged to print them for sale. (by my mom...I should add...you know...still my biggest fan) The photographs are 5"x5" and come wrapped in a little cellophane bag. I will also have a few in frames.

The photographs have been taken over the past few years between Edgerton, Stoughton and Madison. When my son was a baby, I used to drive around in the country while he napped. Then, for a few years, my commute to work involved a route through the country. Now I just make it a point to take the long way, whenever possible. I love being in the country and I love to capture it with photos. One day, while our friend Taylor was with us on one of our country drives, I pulled over to take a photo and Oscar says to her "She does this...". I laughed, thinking about what Oscar's memories will be of all our drives in the country, going slow, pulling over to take pictures. He received a Fisher Price film camera (dead stock from 1984!) for Christmas this year...so I *may* be encouraging him to do the same ;)

Hug each other. Take care of each other.

Yesterday I received news that an old friend who had been fighting cancer for over 20 years took his own life. He was the first person I ever fell in love with. Teenage love. The kind you feel when you are immortal. The days were long and belonged only to us and all the trouble we could find, which was usually plenty. 

I met Corby at my first job. He was the baler and I helped run the conveyor belt at the recycling end of the garbage dump. I was 15 and obsessed with anything 1960's. Corby was tall and had long beautiful brown hair that he would nervously tuck behind his ears when he talked. I was head over heels. 

Teenage love must make a very specific mark on your psyche. I think my brain was permanently tattooed. Occasionally it would uncover itself, coming up in conversation with new friends or triggered by senses. One time, walking through a department store with an old girlfriend, we were approaching a display of the fragrance Sunflowers (remember that?!) and she said "Oh....watch out.......", because she knew I would be flooded with memories. Like Bunny says in Tom Robbins's Jitterbug Perfume, "Fragrance is a conduit for our earliest memories, on the one hand; on the other, it may accompany us as we enter the next life. In between, it creates mood, stimulates fantasy, shapes thought, and modifies behavior. It is our strongest link to the past, our closest fellow traveler to the future … Fragrance may well be the signature of eternity."

And music, of course. Mark Joseph Stern describes its effects in a Slate Magazine article: "The period between 12 and 22...is the time when you become you. It makes sense, then, that the memories that contribute to this process become uncommonly important throughout the rest of your life. They didn’t just contribute to the development of your self-image; they became part of your self-image—an integral part of your sense of self.

At the end of our relationship, Corby rejected me. First love, first rejection. I insisted we remain friends and I would heartbreakingly hang out with him and his new girlfriend. All smiles. Life goes on. Then I moved away. Corby was diagnosed with Leukemia. I went to college, traveled, got married, had a child, got a divorce, became the artist I had imagined I would become. When I was in college I would have reoccurring dreams with Corby in them. I thought of him often, and always on his birthday. I found him on Myspace, but didn't connect. His hair had turned white from the cancer treatments his body was thin and frail. We finally reunited on Facebook last year and I cherish the conversation we had on messenger. He said to me "Thank you for the pep talk and making me feel better, I could always count on that from you, always a glass half-full woman." 

I had always imagined we would eventually hang out again one day. He could meet my son and we could have a few laughs about when we were young. 

This morning I sit alone in my studio. It's been snowing all night and it continues to snow. I hear my neighbor outside shoveling. Scrape...scrape...scrape... The heat kicks on. I'm surrounded by bills that need paid, paintings that need completed. Yesterday, before the news of Corby's death, I painted and listened to NPR. Politics. War. Love and Hate.

My friend Jake, after losing another of his close friends way too soon, wrote something on Facebook less than 2 weeks ago that is exactly what I want to say. 

" Hug each other. Take care of each other." 

My deepest condolences go out to Corby's friends and family.

November :: 2015

Last weekend Jim and I drove by a property that really spoke to us. Although we are not currently in a position to make an immediate purchase, the estate made such an impression, we wanted to know more. Perhaps just seeing the place would help us to visualize our needs as makers and start the process of building our lives together. I toured the home yesterday and I'm so glad I did. Now it feels like we are moving toward a very real and possible dream. We are now in the depths of "How do we make something like this happen?" It can feel overwhelming when you have such a solid and strong vision and you *know* you can make something great, but the funding just isn't there. It's a tumultuous path of doing what we love and feeling confident that our hard work will pay off. Sleeves rolled up, hands getting dirty. It's a good life we have.




A few weeks back I updated the Johnson Public House walls with a few new woodland creatures that I'm really happy about! If you are in the Madison area, please stop in for some good eats and drinks. I'm not feeling very ready for the holiday season, but I *did* manage to restock the small prints up at the shop. 

I also started an instagram account @nataliewrighthome // Please follow me if you haven't already! Pics of my work and my world and a few tbt for good measure.

Also, check out Jim's updated website/ www.lumberingbehemoth.com and follow his instagram under the same name! He might be just the maker you are looking for!! 

September 2015

The locusts are buzzing, the tobacco fields are harvested and the queen anne's lace is curling up. My son started Kindergarten on the 1st. We moved to a new home at the end of July, and I am looking forward to the earth slowing down a bit. It's a bittersweet time of year as we all brace ourselves for the long Wisconsin winter. But I need some quiet and winter is good for that.

I'm as nostalgic as they come and lately I've really been missing life without all the electronics. I'm happy to have lived during a time when we didn't have Netflix and "smart" phones. I hear myself saying to my son "when I was a kid, we didn't have cell phones that could play movies, music and games." My child, much to my dismay, has seen SO MANY MOVIES in his FIVE years on this planet. Five years. I can hardly pick up a chapter book without him saying he has seen the movie.

I am overwhelmed at how much there is to *know* about our earth, and how very little time we sit and listen to it and learn from it. Our world, a meadow at sunset...if we stop and pay attention, is very entertaining. But that's a hard sell to a five year old who is mesmerized by the screen.

15 years ago, in another life, my ex and I spent time on an organic farm/ apple orchard in Vermont, as apprentices. We lived in their barn for 6 months. No running water. An outhouse. (They are dear friends and our son is named after them) I look back to that time and compare it to now. No cell phones. No internet. I had a stack of books I read that summer and I filled up a few journals. I used the landline to call my family. I took photos with film. I think about how different my experience would be now. With my cell phone camera and my instagram. I just think about how it has all changed me. I think it's more difficult now to truly be alone.

Anyway. I'm thinking out loud. Just sitting in my studio, listening to the locusts, the whirring of the ceiling fan, the sound of my fingers on the keyboard. I just finished a new painting and I'm thinking about where I want to be in the next 5 years and how I can be the best influence possible on my son's life.

That's a good place to be.

"The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there." - Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

The Ass in the Lion's Skin

This new work, inspired from Aesop's Fables, will be on display at Wendigo in Stoughton, Wisconsin. For more information please contact me at nataliewrighthome at gmail. 38"x50" acrylic on paper.

Sometimes, things are not what they seem. 38x50, acrylic and gouache on paper.