The first eleven days of the year have been defined by snow and ice! So far, 2025 is snow and iced in.
This large painting is about editing. Why I edit myself. Why we edit ourselves. Why we are edited.
It’s about child-like expression and following a line of thought. About the lines we walk. The repetition of actions we take.
I have worked on it just a little every day. Slowly drawing the one continuous line of horses, then editing them out with white acrylic, redrawing the line, editing it out again, redrawing, never fully able to obliterate the lines! Life leaves marks. Then scribbling with coloured ink pencils, child-like messy lines that I love to make, more white paint, scribbling again…
All the while retracing slow steps to take hay to the ponies or refill a bucket of water from the tap in the house. And keep feeding the birds, the robin is getting almost tame. Check mum is ok. She’s not going outside. Too risky.
Footprints in the snow.
I have fallen twice in the ice carrying buckets. My back is jarred today. I’m ok. I’ll lie on my hot mat, hug a water bottle in-between activity.
And I have been thinking about vulnerability. How we are all vulnerable, more so at times, some more so than others at any one time, but for all of us being alive is a fragile precious thing on a fragile precious planet. Life can ‘turn on a sixpence’ for any one of us at any time.
Yesterday, the title came. ‘You Don’t Need to Stay Between the Lines Anymore’. A call from my soul. When a title comes I know the painting is nearly done – a painting asking some questions about why we edit like a blanket of snow and ice on the landscape. It’s time to stop. I’ve had some insights.
As kids we are taught or rather told to ‘stay between the lines’ – curbing children’s natural spontaneity, natural messy freedom, questioning nature and ability to problem solve, replaced with an imposition of ‘this is what it should look like!’
As adults we are constantly being told to stay inside lines of behaviour, speech, acceptability… and we generally do! The lines seem to be being drawn tighter and tighter. We are being boxed in!
I look at this painting and it has become a portrait of my year so far, about fragility, vulnerability, frustration and the need for expressiveness to stay alive. It is about the lines we walk over and over again. The subtle lines that define us.
Love Kirsten x
Please save the date for this upcoming exhibition in Edinburgh in May. It would be lovely to see you if you can come. Warmer days ahead…
