I&rsquo;ve decided to keep a blog on my site as a place to offload thoughts, research, and think out projects. The first few relate mainly to my diagnosis of ADHD which I received on 16/12/2020, and the implications of this for my practice both following the diagnosis, and historically.Why StreamsI say in one of the blogs about ADHD and my practice that: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve felt a struggle about whether &lsquo;controlling&rsquo; my output was the same thing as a lack of authenticity, while at the same time feeling my authentic self was doing things incorrectly. There&rsquo;s something fundamentally anti-artistic about this sort of top-down control.&rdquo;(&ldquo;Controlling my output&rdquo; would mean only allowing myself to create one stream of work, for example.)I decided not long after my diagnosis to embrace the way my brain works, and just go with it&rsquo;s flow instead of fighting against it. In the past I&rsquo;ve been embarrassed or frustrated with my inability to &lsquo;find a style&rsquo; or stick with a project without getting distracted by a new one. Displaying my work in &lsquo;streams&rsquo; is the way I&rsquo;m currently choosing to organise the different projects that I&rsquo;m allowing myself to work on in tandem.The streams are more important to me than the dates you see below the works. Because a lot of projects are happening at once it makes &lsquo;progress&rsquo; on each project slow. So a painting might be planned in 2016 and actually painted in 2021. Because of this the time that&rsquo;s passed between each painting in a stream is quite irrelevant to me in most cases.The blogOn one other big historical battle in my practice, I said: &ldquo;struggling with a lot of boundaries in terms of how much to discuss thoughts in relation to work&rdquo;. I talked about going deep down rabbit holes and not really having a good understanding of social or art world rules surrounding how much to divulge and when to keep quiet.For example, for an ADHD mind there&rsquo;s literally no end to the associations you could make from the combination of two images: a worm and a gemstone. There&rsquo;s no bottom to the multitude of rabbit holes of thoughts and research you can get into. Worms are: soft, nature, soil, decay, rejuvenation, gardens, death. These things can lead to research on: form and texture, climate change, allotments and local green spaces, death and decay in art history, death in contemporary society. And each of those thoughts can branch into new zones and take me ever-deeper, reading on forever for the rest of my life. There is no heirarchy; I'm interested in any of those things. And this is just one &lsquo;stream&rsquo; of my work.So when someone asks me, &ldquo;what is this work about?&rdquo;, or &ldquo;what are your interests in your practice?&rdquo;, I find this challenging to answer. There is rarely a single interest at play, nor a limit of associations.The blog is a way to consolidate thoughts and research as a means of exploring questions such as these.

Blog Intro

3/12/2020 I&rsquo;ve had suspicions for some time that I might have adhd. I&rsquo;m talking to a doctor about testing next Friday. How I think it&rsquo;s affected my practice:- Consistency. It&rsquo;s common (and usually expected) to be able to be recognised for your style of work in a painting career. While other artists in uni stuck to one style and discipline their whole degree, I would fit between extremely divergent subjects, mediums and concepts. I&rsquo;ve felt like I have to control my consistency (never so far done this successfully). I&rsquo;ve felt a struggle about whether &lsquo;controlling&rsquo; my output was the same thing as a lack of authenticity, while at the same time feeling my authentic self was doing things incorrectly. There&rsquo;s something fundamentally anti-artistic about this sort of top-down control.- Overthinking, over-conceptualising, going down deep paths and ending up somewhere too esoteric , not understanding when something is too esoteric or not. Struggling with a lot of boundaries in terms of how much to discuss thoughts in relation to work.- Hypersensitivity to criticism can apparently be a symptom. Instagram used to feel like a &lsquo;safe space&rsquo; for me to share work and thoughts without much consideration. The more followers I get, the more exposed I feel, and the more I feel prone to self-censor.&nbsp;5/12/2020 I&rsquo;m feeling very confident about getting an ADHD diagnosis after filling in the self assessment forms. Every hour I feel I&rsquo;m having a new epiphany about a symptom or trait and how it relates to a present or historical incident. This is why I shared an IG story last month about having trouble calming down and focusing on a painting. I couldn&rsquo;t paint as well as I wanted to.I&rsquo;ve decided to &ldquo;go back&rdquo; to the worm/gem watercolours and force myself to complete 26 of them based on the alphabet photos I took. This is an experiment in assigning myself a number of works to finish, to prevent me from straying off task.It raises a lot of questions for me but I think it&rsquo;s a necessary experiment. Can you place restrictions on your practice like this? Is it wrong to not allow for deviation? I used to think it would be wrong for me to do that. Now I think that my propensity for deviation is so extreme I only have 2 choices: set myself rules like the above, or plan all projects expecting that I will only produce 3 works even if I truly believe I&rsquo;ll produce 100.What happens to the work I don&rsquo;t make? Very tempted to make an &lsquo;ideas graveyard&rsquo; section of the website for all the plans that don&rsquo;t get realised. I&rsquo;m always allowed to resurrect stuff I suppose. The ideas graveyard could be a way for me to ritualise the abandonment of plans I really wanted to follow through on. It will give me a way to exercise the more-thoughts-than-I-have-time-to-fulfil problem. (I hope I can get actual tombstones for each one). In this way I can imagine each idea lives a happy life in ideas heaven, without feeling the constant nagging obligation to do it when I just don&rsquo;t have time. I am allowed to dig up an old idea if I find I have time though (hopefully this can also be visualised with a dug-up grave).11/12/20 My suspicions about ADHD came from reading at article (I can't find) about how it presents in adult women. When I first read this article I thought &lsquo;ok, so I&rsquo;m messy and forgetful. Big deal, that&rsquo;s loads of people&rsquo;. But it wasn&rsquo;t until digging deeper into adhd traits that it dawned on me how deeply affected I am, every second of every day. I began to notice how frequently I lose my phone in a day, even when I have pockets. I noticed how much my mind wanders in a conversation and how I can sometimes struggle to stop it drifting. My partner&rsquo;s told me how difficult it has been to manage certain traits, such as my being lost in thought when he&rsquo;s talking right to me, and how he took this as me intentionally ignoring him, meanwhile I&rsquo;m completely oblivious. THIS is why it would take me 5 hours to complete a 2 hour work day. THIS is why I have new nagging &lsquo;inspiration&rsquo; for my practice every single time I read an article, watch a tv show, or look at a picture. Can I create an artists statement that gives me freedom without mentioning adhd? I want to be &lsquo;an artist&rsquo;, not &lsquo;an adhd artist&rsquo;. I don&rsquo;t want to fall into a trap of framing myself that way.I thought I was neurotypical and I thought my quirks and struggles were the same as everyone else&rsquo;s. It explains a few strange looks I&rsquo;ve remembered when talking about my experiences presuming they&rsquo;re universal. I never wanted to imply that I was different, even when I suspected it, because that seemed presumptive or egotistical in some way. But having this label: ADHD, means everything makes sense for me now. I am different, but not; I fall nearly into a framework that does already exist. I am normal in this framework, and not a broken human being.THIS is why I struggled in some subjects to the point of debilitation. THIS is why I would fail exams in a subject I loved. THIS is why I couldn&rsquo;t make it to the end of an exam paper. It wasn&rsquo;t because I &ldquo;couldn&rsquo;t read well enough&rdquo;, as I&rsquo;ve always guessed. In fact, my reading was fine, I just couldn&rsquo;t read the words in order. I couldn&rsquo;t contain myself from jumping lines ahead, then returning, and reading over and over again until nothing made sense. Blanking out under pressure. A persistent noise in the room might make everything fall apart. In a normal maths class my inability to focus became chronic; escalating every session until it became an obsessive tic where I knew as soon as I looked at the page my mind would go as blank as a piece of white paper. I&rsquo;d read at 14 in the school library how Buddhists meditate to make their minds clear, and I thought I must have some kind of superpower. Watch how I do it so easily, here, I can think of nothing at the drop of a hat. I can make my mind empty of all thoughts. Especially in maths class when I open that book. Only there it&rsquo;s out of my control.6/1/2021 I'm back to painting for the first time after being diagnosed with predominantly Inattentive ADHD.I'm realising how much &ldquo;the adhd&rdquo; actually impacts my painting. I frequently lay paint down with a mind that I&rsquo;ll &lsquo;correct the issues later&rsquo;. This is probably in part a strategy to just lay something down while I&rsquo;m in the zone, but possibly sometimes it&rsquo;s beyond my control: a moment when my brain won&rsquo;t fine-synch with my body and let me enact control, finesse&hellip; it&rsquo;s quite hard to describe. It&rsquo;s as if my brain and my hand are two different creatures. Let me re-caption this cartoon by Nick Seluk to illustrate the two creatures:<img src="https://www.datocms-assets.com/35623/1613400485-screenshot-2021-02-15-at-14-53-26.png" width="340" height="338" />This battle is like being in a really long arm wrestle with someone who almost matches your strength. You have to creep toward your goal in millimetres, often being pulled back before trying to re-ground and re-focus yourself to push back again.Living through this experience for the first time since the diagnosis is also the first time I&rsquo;m feeling really beaten down by the situation. The feelings:- Maybe painting isn&rsquo;t for me. - Maybe I should give up on this entirely - Maybe I need an alternate form of expression that isn&rsquo;t such a struggleThese thoughts are depressing because I can&rsquo;t imagine a life without painting. Then there are more hopeful thoughts that follow:- Maybe meds will help me make this work - Maybe I can double down on this method and it will work fine with restructured rules - Maybe there are other methods if that doesn&rsquo;t work (this is actually a stressful thought, I don&rsquo;t have other methods as it stands)Note: persistence and time have made me able to paint fine today after all. The problem is managing (working out kind strategies for) that time it takes to settle in.9/1/21 Wow this is why I&rsquo;ve always frozen when giving artists talks, and needed a script, even during Pecha Kucha events. And radio or local magazine interviews. This is why I&rsquo;ve wanted to say &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t ever do that again&rdquo;.

The ADHD Diagnosis and thoughts on practice

Medication is different for everyone, this has been my experience so far on week 2.Normally I&rsquo;m walking around with 10 TV screens in my head, trying to watch them all at once. I didn&rsquo;t know this until I started medication. They are multiple internal monologues, competing, running alongside each other and cutting each other off, occasionally silenced by a loud burst of whatever song is stuck in my head that day. The voices are all my tasks for the day and my fears of forgetting them or dropping a ball by not managing time in the most efficient way. They&rsquo;re also my tasks for the week, future possibilities, and past events.10-20 minutes into taking my pills (Concerta) the voices are gone. I had no idea how many I was carrying, and I had no idea how much stress they were causing me. I felt an anxiety that I didn&rsquo;t even know I had, just gone.I also felt like I&rsquo;d had a lobotomy; my head was so quiet it was unnerving. I thought all the stuff I was carrying around was necessary to get me through the day, and now it&rsquo;s gone. Not just the voices but the obsessive (now I see) coping mechanisms I&rsquo;d built around them; how not to make mistakes when I&rsquo;m reading or writing an email, or how not to be late. Making few mistakes has become a part of my identity. and I had worked so hard at it, had to work hard at it. And now I was going to make spelling errors like everyone else. Now I might be late.My head felt vacant. But what had really happened is that everything I'd been carrying around had been put into boxes I could access at will. I was no longer watching 10 TVs, I have just one now, and a remote.This remote is the key thing I&rsquo;ve been lacking. Now I can work at any time at the drop of a hat. Now I can make a decision quickly without the other voices casting doubt, giving other options, and causing paralysis. Now, time itself has slowed to a manageable pace. I&rsquo;m not getting nasty surprises when I look back at the clock; instead of skipping unpredictably from 15.05 to 15.45, it&rsquo;s 15.15 just as I&rsquo;d expected it to be.Because of this, I can keep working at 15.05 because I&rsquo;m not on edge that I have to start getting ready to collect my daughter from nursery at 17.30. I don&rsquo;t feel time&rsquo;s going to slip away from me. I don&rsquo;t feel the incessant panic while I try to push through and keep working, setting timer after timer. Now I can stop for a minute and talk to my partner without the anxiety that I&rsquo;m wasting time. I can make lunch and enjoy it.I&rsquo;m able to paint now at almost any time I choose because I can switch my channel to painting mode. When I take a little break I can get back on task quickly, and I&rsquo;m saving so much time without my obsessive behaviour for re-checking emails and social media text before I send them. I don&rsquo;t require a stimulating soundtrack or podcast in order to sit and paint, and struggle hard when I can&rsquo;t find one. My hand is steadier, and it goes where I want it to go, it&rsquo;s less impulsive.This medication isn&rsquo;t freely available on the NHS. Neither is an adult ADHD diagnosis. I&rsquo;m now quite scared about the possibility of not being able to stay on medication.Side note on earworms: I talked to my partner about this and I had no idea my earworm experience wasn&rsquo;t normal. He said it&rsquo;s like a background track that plays when you&rsquo;re not thinking about much else. My pills hadn&rsquo;t kicked in yet this morning and while I was thinking about writing this blog post my thoughts were cut off by the loudest rendition of a verse from Five Little Monkeys, the Mother Goose Club rendition. You basically have to wait for it to finish before your other thoughts can start again.

ADHD Meds & Painting (plus earworms)

I hadn&rsquo;t wanted to take on &ldquo;ADHD&rdquo; as part of my personal or artistic identity. I hadn&rsquo;t wanted to talk about it much and I certainly didn't want it in my bio or statement. I hoped (and still hope) that when the excitement of the newness of it dies down it&rsquo;ll fade into the background, and become a side note rather than a front-stage piece of info for me.My initial reluctance was in part a result of a strong awareness of the stigma, and a feeling that it could put me in a special box. As if there&rsquo;s &ldquo;Art&rdquo; then there&rsquo;s &ldquo;Disabled Art&rdquo;, and they don&rsquo;t play on the same field. I think a lot of people do think this way, though ironically, I never have.I knew it was absurd that I was thinking this of myself since so many of the artists I love have disabilities or impairments. From <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qu0RAMwH20k">Daniel Johnston</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Scott_(artist)" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Judith Scott</a>, to the artists like Jackie The Ripper and other creators at <a href="http://thegateartscentre.blogspot.com/p/about.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Gate</a>, an Arts Center in London.Now I see it as being unavoidably integral to explaining my practice, and in fact it lifts a lot of the tensions I was feeling when comparing my practice and methodology to neurotypical artists.So since, in reality, it sits unshiftingly at the root of myself and my practice, I&rsquo;m allowing that to be reflected in the way I talk about my work publically by sticking it in my bio after all.

On adding ADHD to my bio after I said I didn’t want to

In January I took part in <a href="https://forcedcollaboration.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Forced Collaboration</a>, a project by Falmouth based artist Georgia Gendall."Forced Collaboration is an online platform that matches artist's practices anonymously and creates a space for cross-disciplinary collaborations through the process of making/following instructions to create artworks."The instructions I gave went to <a href="https://bryonyhussey.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bryony Hussey</a>:<img src="https://www.datocms-assets.com/35623/1613729486-img6108.jpg" width="231" height="411" />The instructions I recieved were from <a href="https://www.bxwarnock.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Becky Warnock</a>&nbsp;<img src="https://www.datocms-assets.com/35623/1613729569-radical-hospitality.jpg" width="244" height="244" />I think I was only mildly ill with Covid when I sent in my instructions. When I received my instructions I was extremely ill and bedridden. The only act of "hospitality" I could offer was to share my sickbed, and so I offered some space to one of the plants in my room; a cactus. For a couple of hours over a few days it got better light from the bed than it would have on it's usual shelf. It shared some coffee and water with me which it wouldn't have done ordinarily, and I drew it while we just hung out.<img src="https://www.datocms-assets.com/35623/1613729791-tl-30-01.jpeg" />The rest of my drawings can be seen <a href="https://forcedcollaboration.org/Becky-Warnock-and-Thais-Lenkiewicz" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>

Forced Collaboration

Worms as an incantation. Repetition is a spell (?) Worm as foundation stone of ecosystemIncantation to the worm, the foundation stone of the ecosystem. To bring about connection to magic.Magic only exists in nature. Magic isn&rsquo;t in nature, but rather in living things (?). We are magic things, but we can&rsquo;t connect in the city which is outside of our natural habitat. Just like animals in the zoo can&rsquo;t connect to the wild enough to survive. Magic can be carried into the cities but it really comes from trees.Incantation to the worms, the foundation stone of the ecosystem, to bring magic into the cities. Into the dead bricks. Let the dead bricks remember that they were clay or stone once covered in algae or moss. Let the bricks of the houses remember they were once covered and absorbed by life and magic. Long before even people existed, and tamed them.Can a brick become full of its nature-born magic again? If I put a thermalite block in the garden and let moss grow over it, does it remember? (In its sand from fossil beaches, and the ancient plant matter that formed the coal ash)Is there, in fact, magic potential in the houses here? Which are covered in something from the sea air? When the houses, particularly the newer builds, get covered in the green stuff from the sea air, do they start to remember their true nature? Does their render prevent them?Does the render, made of stuff from the earth, remember it&rsquo;s natural habitat when it gets covered in the green stuff, and after a long time, do they get haunted by magic memories like people say old buildings are?Incantation to the worm, the foundation stone of the ecosystem, to open me up to the magic contained in the memories of the bricks and the render of the new build houses of the city. Let me see the magic seeping into the high rise flats as the green stuff from the sea air begins to coat it and remind the render that it has magic still.<img alt="Worms" title="Worms" src="https://www.datocms-assets.com/35623/1613993287-23aa512c-3bac-4763-a434-3d4e55d1fd3b.jpeg" width="446" height="594" /><img alt="Green stuff" title="Green stuff" src="https://www.datocms-assets.com/35623/1613993342-d344ca90-6c0c-4548-9a9e-888592558216.jpeg" width="448" height="598" /><img alt="Seeping" title="Seeping" src="https://www.datocms-assets.com/35623/1613993332-5b104ab8-143f-475c-a0f9-eefaf65f4609.jpeg" width="447" height="596" /><img alt="Astro" title="Astro" src="https://www.datocms-assets.com/35623/1613993295-87f1398a-b76b-4e77-b7df-dc09a0b3da61.jpeg" width="448" height="598" /><img alt="Growing" title="Growing" src="https://www.datocms-assets.com/35623/1613993303-ecf617ba-9971-4263-8f0e-a188a0f9db2b.jpeg" width="447" height="335" /><img alt="Growing" title="Growing" src="https://www.datocms-assets.com/35623/1613993317-d2c1829c-4fa8-4cb0-9e3d-36e75f98aa10.jpeg" width="446" height="594" />

Worm thoughts (incantation)

I had to come off the ADHD meds (Concerta) and while I wait for a prescription of Elvanse (a different one) I&rsquo;m experiencing the most manic-feeling day I&rsquo;ve had for at least a month.I felt like diarising a bit about what that&rsquo;s been like.If I were medicated I probably would have got on with the watercolours I&rsquo;d planned. I would have knocked a bunch of them out and done the other stuff on my to do list.I wasted a fair bit of time this morning with distractions while I got through some things I had to do (oops I missed &lsquo;add upcoming events to calendar' - and by upcoming I mean this week so I hope I don&rsquo;t miss anything).I made a few of these for a bit of a play<img src="https://www.datocms-assets.com/35623/1614617224-laughtor-man-pd1.png" width="226" height="301" />Then I went to watercolour but I had the thought to use a green pencil instead of regular graphite. I made a few.<img src="https://www.datocms-assets.com/35623/1614617285-img8263.jpg" width="234" height="312" />Then I wanted to try another oil on aluminium painting but then I felt concerned about my ability to paint that finely in oil without medication. Obviously I&rsquo;ve done that my whole life, but since I felt a bit shaky (physically) today I made a snap decision about the next meds to try and emailed the nurse.I didn&rsquo;t like the look of the worm painting I&rsquo;d planned before either so I opened photoshop to make a new one based on the whorls of my thumb. But when I opened photoshop I noticed an old image I&rsquo;d made for a drawing and thought it would work well as a painting. So I printed it, but then on finding I had no small square aluminium panels I messaged the artist <a href="https://www.lukerobertsart.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Luke Roberts</a> who I noticed uses them. He gave me some good leads right away and I bought something to try. (Jacksons - who I normally buy from have a nightmare system for the small panels.)I thought about many ways in which I could run with pebbledashing standing stones.- I could buy pebbeldash for dolls houses (I've seen it for sale once before) and use it on vintage photos of stones which I could set onto panels of cement. - I could paint lifesize stones in landscape with pebbledash for the stones (landscape is painted) - I went to the garden to see if there was anything I could pebbledash - I looked at the front garden and imagined it with a pebbledashed stone circle - I tried to think about how I could make a lifesize pebbledashed stone. What would I build it from? Chicken wire and modrock? Is that all too heavy for my studio? Would I regret making this? Would my partner be annoyed at my having made this? What is the burden of this object, on the balance, for the sake of a play.I&rsquo;ve thought about 2 zines that I&rsquo;ve been wanting to make. I wondered if I should have some kind of crit for one. Partner suggested the zine about psychosis would be better not as a zine, but as a podcast or as a guest thing on someone elses podcast. He doesn&rsquo;t like zines and thinks they&rsquo;re a waste of time. Almost certainly true, but it&rsquo;s that or nothing for me since that&rsquo;s my means.I liked the idea of making a blog post for an episode of a podcast that sounded just like a podcast, but probably only has the one episode. Or perhaps, who&rsquo;s episodes are not tied together necessarily. Maybe there&rsquo;ll be another episode one day, maybe not. It probably won&rsquo;t be about the same subject. Will it have the same theme music?I was wondering if these manic days are useful for shaking things up, now that I (hopefully) have the meds for proper functioning, is it ok to take holidays and see what happens? Or are these manic days completely useless. Are they full of dud ideas and wasted time. This blog may provide a reference for me to consider these questions when I&rsquo;m medicated again or having a slower day.

In a whorl

List of things I knew about women when I was growing up:

<ul>
 <li>
 They&rsquo;re not funny (none of them are good comedians)
 </li>
 <li>
 Not intelligent
 </li>
 <li>
 Can&rsquo;t paint
 </li>
 <li>
 There are none in the history of painting (or in any history) because they&rsquo;re not capable of doing things well
 </li>
 <li>
 They like shopping and so their main goal is money (a man&rsquo;s money)
 </li>
 <li>
 They don&rsquo;t want to have sex (they only pretend)
 </li>
 <li>
 They don&rsquo;t orgasm (they only pretend)
 </li>
 <li>
 They don&rsquo;t wank
 </li>
 <li>
 They're silly and naive
 </li>
 <li>
 They scream all the time (very fearful)
 </li>
 <li>
 They&rsquo;re not strong so they can&rsquo;t do a lot of things like lifting and most sports
 </li>
 <li>
 They don&rsquo;t have stable friendships because they&rsquo;re bitchy and they always lie
 </li>
 <li>
 They eventually want children and they will use tricks to get them
 </li>
 <li>
 They&rsquo;re supposed to always let men get their way, or believe they have
 </li>
 <li>
 They only have lines on stage when pretending to be men (because men are interesting)
 </li>
 <li>
 Interesting female characters are written by men and aren&rsquo;t real people
 </li>
 <li>
 Interesting women are freaks/anomalies
 </li>
 <li>
 Men make better women on stage and TV in drag
 </li>
</ul>

 

 I looked at women like they were a different species. I was ashamed of them and didn&rsquo;t want to be one. I thought there was something wrong with me, like I had some condition called &lsquo;too much testosterone&lsquo; and I wasn&rsquo;t really fully female. I didn&rsquo;t want to do the things they wanted to do. When I found out a new teacher was female I was disappointed because it meant they&rsquo;re not as good. I felt short-changed by female leads in pantos because I didn&rsquo;t have a real, interesting person (ie. a man) to root for, so I&rsquo;d root for the baddie. When I wore fancy dress I was Robin Hood, and when I put on a crown I was a king, not a princess.


 I didn&rsquo;t feel comfortable saying that I was a woman until I was approaching my late 20&rsquo;s and finally understood what feminism was. I'd made the concerted effort to read that history and really understand why, for example, there are few visible women artists. It was a slow journey, going from &lsquo;he&rsquo;, through &lsquo;they&rsquo;, to &lsquo;she&rsquo; took me decades. It was never the case that I wasn&rsquo;t born to be a woman; instead I had to learn what a woman actually was, because society had completely hidden her.


 Taking my &lsquo;narrative stream&rsquo; paintings (currently Stream 3 in Current Work) in a more autobiographical direction has had me thinking about the representations of women in media through childhood; newspapers, Blind date, Eurovision, and the late night films I was too young for. Women who were themselves (though not like me), women who were playing women who they thought they should be (like some of my friends were). The visible women who were examples of how I was expected to live.


 Happy International Women&rsquo;s day. Here's a little piece of text from an essay that answered every question I'd ever had about the missing women in the history of the arts and beyond:


 
 "...I was actually at the door which leads into the library itself. I must have opened it, for instantly there issued, like a guardian angel barring the way with a flutter of black gown instead of white wings, a deprecating, silvery, kindly gentleman, who regretted in a low voice as he waved me back that 
 
 
 
 ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied by a Fellow of 
 
 
 
 the College or furnished with a letter of introduction. 
 


 
 That a famous library has been cursed by a woman is a matter of complete 
 
 
 
 indifference to a famous library. Venerable and calm, with all its 
 
 
 
 treasures safe locked within its breast, it sleeps complacently and 
 
 
 
 will, so far as I am concerned, so sleep for ever. Never will I wake 
 
 
 
 those echoes, never will I ask for that hospitality again, I vowed as I 
 
 
 
 descended the steps in anger. Still an hour remained before luncheon, 
 
 
 and what was one to do? Stroll on the meadows? sit by the river? 
 
 
 
 Certainly it was a lovely autumn morning; the leaves were fluttering red 
 
 
 
 to the ground; there was no great hardship in doing either. But the 
 
 
 sound of music reached my ear. Some service or celebration was going 
 
 
 
 forward. The organ complained magnificently as I passed the chapel door. 
 
 
 
 Even the sorrow of Christianity sounded in that serene air more like the 
 
 
 
 recollection of sorrow than sorrow itself; even the groanings of the 
 
 
 
 ancient organ seemed lapped in peace. I had no wish to enter had I the 
 
 
 
 right, and this time the verger might have stopped me, demanding perhaps 
 
 
 
 my baptismal certificate, or a letter of introduction from the Dean."
 
 

 

 - Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own (1929)

International Women's Day and painting

In October 2020 I was awarded an opportunity through <a href="https://www.camp-plymouth.org/" title="CAMP" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CAMP</a> to work with coach <a href="https://www.hollydavey.com/coaching" title="Holly Davey" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Holly Davey</a>. Even though I was diagnosed with ADHD in December, it wasn&rsquo;t on my radar until November, and my first session with Holly involved my explaining that everything in my application had probably been explained by the sudden discovery.
Here are some extracts from my application:
I feel that I&rsquo;m constantly trying to reevaluate my practice and make sense of my focus and direction. I have the feeling of getting lost in a whirlwind of possibilities, and unsure where my attention should be focused (or whether it even should be).
This cycle of producing, questioning, over-thinking, can become a major mental barrier to moving forward with my work, and it often leaves me abandoning projects before they&rsquo;re complete. Coaching sessions could help ground me more steadily in my practice and direction.
It&rsquo;s so painfully clear now that I was writing about ADHD. I&rsquo;ve just finished my final of 4 sessions with Holly and wanted to take the time to reflect on this journey, which couldn&rsquo;t have come at a more apt time, right through the storms of diagnosis and treatment.&nbsp;
During this final session I was searching for notes I&rsquo;d made in previous meetings and I came across one:
Host practices active listening&hellip; brings out your own meaning... uses imagination. Client comes up with an open-ended question eg: &ldquo;where am I going?&rdquo;, &lsquo;how do I manage my professional time better?&rsquo; Client looks for 3-5 images in the tea leaves Host writes them down then asks each image means to client Go through them one by one Relate them back to main question
I laughed to realise these weren't my coaching notes at all; they were notes from my tea leaf reading session with Simon Bayliss and MC Teabag. It was quite a circular moment for this mistake, since I noticed on the first session with Holly that I'd felt a big similarity between my experience of reading tea leaves and the coaching methodology.
This process of divining sense out of my situation through coaching has led me through all sorts of discoveries. Some of which are ongoing, and some of which I&rsquo;m writing about here as a form of closure.
<ul>
 <li>The &lsquo;problems&rsquo; of focus, direction, and whirlwinds of possibilities can be friends; not enemies.</li>
 <li>I was looking for &lsquo;where the value is&rsquo; in my ideas/practice, but now this question is smaller than it used to be</li>
 <li>It&rsquo;s ok for me to waste time</li>
 <li>I can trust myself, trust my process, and trust time</li>
</ul>
Through these sessions I reflected on changes I might make:
<ul>
 <li>To my physical environment</li>
 <li>How do I &lsquo;lean into&rsquo; adhd instead of fighting against it with the neurotypical advice that had never worked for me</li>
 <li>How do I discover new ways of working</li>
 <li>I must identify things that are working for me, and what needs to change</li>
</ul>
Here's some of the stuff I did
I made a clock.
<img src="https://www.datocms-assets.com/35623/1615816094-ac51cc18-c7f8-4cb7-98b1-adc144e70707.jpg" width="365" height="365" />
This clock is a visual time aid. When the hour hand&rsquo;s in the clay bole zone I can keep working (as my daughter&rsquo;s at nursery). When it reaches the black zone I have to go get the toddler. Removing traditional time signifiers (the numbers) and reducing time to a binary &lsquo;keep going!&rsquo; vs &lsquo;stop!&rsquo; frees me from a lot of perceived pressure.
I made a daybed
<img src="https://www.datocms-assets.com/35623/1615816665-img-6006.jpg" width="364" height="273" />
In the before times (i.e. before I knew about adhd) I could reach a state of overwhelm which would send me back to bed in the middle of the day. It&rsquo;s long and complex, to explain why, but the point is that the daybed ensures that if that happens I&rsquo;m still in the studio. It&rsquo;s not a big journey to get up and get on with stuff. It&rsquo;s a space I can go to for a change of scenery, for a change of posture, for a change of pace. It resets.
I also paid &ldquo;the adhd tax&rdquo; and bought multiples of things like phone chargers and headphones so that I always had these things handy. I won&rsquo;t be slowed down now by missing them.
So now
I&rsquo;m calling closure on the problems I&rsquo;ve discovered the shape of.
I feel that I&rsquo;m constantly trying to reevaluate my practice and make sense of my focus and direction.
I don&rsquo;t need to do this. I don&rsquo;t need to force control.
I have the feeling of getting lost in a whirlwind of possibilities, and unsure where my attention should be focused.
There is no true hierarchy of ideas in the way I thought there was. There is no objective truth; no objective &lsquo;best idea&rsquo;; no objective &lsquo;best practice&rsquo;. Take that whirlwind and make it a friend. I don&rsquo;t have to be swept up in it and end up crushed like the wicked witch, self flagellating in bed at 11am while I doom-scroll social media or resubscribe to Mubi to watch a film. And if that happens, it&rsquo;s happening in the studio day bed (set reminder to watch The Wiz).
This cycle of producing, questioning, over-thinking, can become a major mental barrier to moving forward with my work, and it often leaves me abandoning projects before they&rsquo;re complete.
I trust myself to cycle back round to projects that are worth my time. I will accept that I don&rsquo;t need to order my work in relation to linear time.&nbsp;
Coaching sessions could help ground me more steadily in my practice and direction.
This they have absolutely done.
I will be checking back in with the tea leaves too.

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Worm study 004

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Thaïs Lenkiewicz