I identify with The Drawer while also being aware of the idealisation of the act of drawing within it. The figure appears to have only one arm, as if the left non-drawing arm is so superfluous to the act that it’s been forgotten. She forgot to use it and I forgot to draw it; there’s something there about being single-minded in the studio.
Contrary to the idyll of The Drawer, the studio is a painful space to occupy. At the worst times, it is an extraction room for the unconscious, in which what’s needed for the next image is wrestled and set into cement while the reluctant patient thinks only of their next meal. Thankfully, there is also; colour, joy, form, negative space, humour, menial tasks, and other voices entering the dialogue.

I love that you picked this work to frame your question, because in this instance, it was a direct case of imitation. I was growing anemones at the time and their red was blinding. Often the paintings that stay with me, the ones I can bear to look at years later, are made almost by accident or in an overflow of small actions. Being surprised by a red flower or a similarly uncanny observation can be the necessary jolt needed to finish or start an image.

What I read finds its way into my works alongside everything else I take in. But I find writing and drawing to be useful comparatives. I dwell in half-narratives. The form of the short story, where one expects more pages after turning the last, could be a literary approximation of what I am trying to achieve through painting. Lately I have been transfixed by Bruno Schulz’s short stories.

Collaborating with my mother is so obvious that it should have happened sooner. It’s interesting to step away from the single-authorial voice. My work often references where I grew up and how the landscape shaped my experience of the world. There could be a parallel drawn with primary relationships, with those who raised me and taught me to see. How relationships and landscapes hold me has a big influence on my work. So, I find it appropriate, and significant, that the hand of the mother be directly visible in my work.
There is also an affinity between media, as embroidery, and pastel hold historical connotations of the feminine and the domestic, of the small and private and portable. Combining them and exhibiting them feels like holding these histories upside down.

The work is done when it’s done, but I do my best to predict my patterns, and it’s worked out so far.

It is a year of firsts. My exhibition, Bundle, opened last month at VSF in Seoul; the first time I’ve shown in Asia. I have another solo show planned for this year at Kasmin Gallery, and this will be my first solo exhibition in New York.