I visited an exhibition in London on Monday. I’d just had a five day shutdown, got up Monday morning, boarded the train with all my painting gear and made my way there. It was a long day! And took another two to recover. I wrote this a few days later with my remaining impressions, after heavy squats over coffee in a grim little seaside cafe, listening to Cradle of Filth on full volume. https://ethanfoxpaints.substack.com/p/robert-dukes-at-bernard-jacobsen?r=2lv6s&utm_medium=ios

For me, teaching a three day live workshop is like having all the lights on in the house, and the neighbors' houses too. That energy bill is high. It's a big responsibility to be present and feeling and connected...plus solving in my mind every problem in all of the paintings at once and verbalizing the solutions at different levels of skill and understanding for each student. Seeing/feeling the tension in their emotions when they reach the gap between their current knowledge and what I'm offering. And then there's the - being so seen, especially in my personal studio space. But I love it. I love the opportunity to create solutions on the spot for whatever comes up. To see breakthroughs and know that I'm helping. To see them surprise me with their own brilliant solutions. To add nuance to my ever growing definition of what "art" and "artist" can be. When I was younger I'm not sure how 'in my body' I ever was. When you aren't in your body, feeling your experiences you don't get tired or sick. Learning to be present in all the complexity, feeling things in real time has meant I've had to slow down, rest, adjust my methods of teaching and taking care of myself. It sometimes looks like diminished capacity but it's not. It's like caring for a rich, expansive, complex property. It's seeing what's going on in the now. It's being present in that richness and then processing it. Not reaction, but instead creation. How did I teach before this capacity? I created strict systems that we followed, I didn't allow for dealing with inner complexity or allow myself to be seen in my humanness. More protective armor built out of the difference between teacher and student. My perception of students was more one dimensional. I had something they wanted, I gave it in a structured way that filled the whole time, leaving less room for the individual. I pushed myself hard to impress and used that personal accomplishment as a safety buffer. I'm not saying I wasn't a good teacher, or that I didn't care... I'm sure the essential parts of me were there in some form. But self protection was limiting my education as a person and a teacher. To evolve I had to get more vulnerable.

Subject: Commissions. Let's talk about them. What to do, what not to do. If they're a good fit. Our experiences.

Glad I listened to my excitement about this idea and didn't talk myself out of it when i worried if they'd find it too silly. They ended up playing with me!

Gail Kelly @gail-kelly-1069 27 y/o plein air painter in the northeast