Burnout and Text in Art
A first foray into Substack
Hello there,
I wonder, do you also rush into burnout headlong? Like if you hit it with enough gathered momentum, ticked off list items, brute force or impossible hopes, then you will win.
Spring is a season of burnout for me. (It’s possible all seasons are, and I have forgotten because now is now is now.) It feels as if in March every “able” body rapidly warms with the first sun like it’s a microwave – ping!
Everyone starts moving faster, making projects happen and being terribly social. I spent a good deal of March thinking, and occasionally being exasperated enough to state out loud, that it might be Spring but it was still Winter in my body. In my stiff and cold bodymind, who I promise rest to; rest which is perpetually planned and then delayed.
I require something more like a slow cooker, and even then would still remain rather tough and impliable. But we are all in this microwave together, so I spin and spin the months away trying to keep up.
Know that if you are burnt out, I am too. As are many others, hiding at home out of the strongest currents, feeling ashamed of a natural sort of exhaustion. Coming up on the end of May, I think we might be ready to slope into a gentler Summer period, as Eileen Myles puts it, “summer as a time to do nothing and make no money”.
I have seasonally circled back round to the burnout print above, made about a year ago. It is a drypoint etching with chine colle, though only etched by (at my tutor’s excellent suggestions) rubbing it on the floor with my fingertips then animatedly scraping away at the surface with a chunk of broken brick – cathartic indeed. Oh, the violent joys of breaking out of perfectionism (a continual battle). It was a semi-accidental image, emerging of its own accord. I added the words as they’d been stuck in my mind and seemed to fit. I then adhered coloured paper during printing (chine colle) to lend it more depth, and maybe even a hint of hope.
Lately, I am thinking a lot about marrying poetry with visual art, print with print as it were. Usually, I’m only brave enough to do this on a small scale with scraps, this print might be my biggest attempt thus far. I’d love to know your ideas and practices for bringing together the textual and visual. How do you do it, or think of doing it?
All my burnt-out love,
Reanna
Like most artists, my work is for sale and I’m thrilled when anyone buys it. I’d rather give my art away for a few good meals, or a short stay with someone, but here we are in this post-barter token economy of fixed and measurable value. So, if you would like a Burnout print (there’s a few left from a limited edition of 5, each with different chine colle), feel free to cross my palm with silver, or offer some idiosyncratic trade. I will love you for loving the piece, and we’ll never talk again of that dirty little illusion called money…