Newness

In a few weeks I move into a new studio. There is, not surprisingly, a house attached to the move and that will have joys and quirks of its own, but it is in the studio that I can most readily picture myself. The building is an old stone dairy that has been renovated. The space is about six times that of my current set-up, it has white walls, north-facing windows and a concrete floor that won’t complain about paint or ink or water.

The prospect of a new studio inspires great excitement: about settling in and making it ‘just so’, and about what might result artistically from a new space and new view. I am keen to have it organised, not too cluttered and a space where other things like music or sewing or sitting in an armchair in the sun might take place.

New things so often result in us taking a new attitude. Whether it is the hopeful resolutions of the New Year, the determination that a new garden will stay under control, the care we take with a new possession, the new in life is a special thing.

As is the old, of course: old friends, precious family, our elderly dogs, antique treasures, valuable traditions. It is that nondescript middle ground that is my undoing—a bit of complacency, lack of excitement, routine, just chugging along and letting things slide.

And its funny that we so often need something new to trigger a move out of that mire—a new challenge, new situation. What stops us making a wholesale shift in the midst of the messy middle? Is it too hard to change tack when we are a little becalmed?

I am lucky to have something new that I can vow to take care of better than I’ve managed in the past. Now I wonder, though, what I can do better before then—flip the usual ‘waiting for the change’ on its head and turn over a new leaf in some small way now. Today, perhaps.

Until later,

Kirsten