post-top surgery thoughts

Two weeks into my recovery from top surgery - being away from my studio is hard but it has given me some space to think about my practice and what I’m doing (and what i want to do) without the pressure of feeling unproductive in the studio - feeling unproductive away from it is not as bad lol

(of course i know i’m not actually being unproductive and being unproductive doesn’t even truly mean anything etc etc BUT i do feel like that from time to time)

So, I got into a bit of research and thinking about themes that were popping up in my practice but I couldn’t quite identify/pinpoint/explain previously, and I still can’t, fully; but it was interesting to revisit old interests and realise that 40% of what I do can be traced to how I experienced the rise of the internet and virtual spaces by age 13. I guess this also reflects on how I’ve decided to implement a personal blog onto my professional website - I’ve never been a big fan of social media, although I always felt comfortable in spaces like forums and blogs. Now, I feel like screaming every time I open Instagram and wish I didn’t need it for work (at least for the time being).

But there is definitely something about these early experiences that I want to somehow investigate through my art. I keep thinking about wandering through pages and pages, and the feeling of joy and wonder in finding something interesting that would keep me occupied for a while; the same way I would find new music, or new media to read or watch, before youtube or recommendation algorithms were even around. When websites were rightfully called “portals” (and, at time, “shrines”), as I did feel, almost physically, like stepping into unknown and exciting lands every time I found a fan website made for an anime I hadn’t watched yet.

This is getting a bit too long so I guess I’ll write more some other time, in the meantime here’s an old-ish photo of my nails kind of matching a piece i’m currently working on