There are creative days and there are craft days. The latter are like cleaning up your mind—without them, creative days cannot follow. They get blocked, creating a backlog of unused energy. Three days of such a blockage can lead to a permanent stall, so I guard them as best as I can.
Whenever I have a weaker creative day, I try to make it at least partially a craft day.
Craft days are filled with physical labor: tidying up, stretching canvas, priming, building frames. I go through vast amounts of material. Through frugality, I’ve found solutions that would normally be out of my reach: painting on burlap, on cardboard, or making my own stretcher bars. This allows me to experiment with dimensions that are virtually unavailable in stores.
Linen canvas is the easiest to work with, but you have to prime it yourself, which is energy-intensive. That’s why, at a time when most of my work still ends up in the trash, I use pre-primed linen-cotton rolls. However, I prepare the burlap myself.
Working with burlap requires more care than linen, but the raw edges exposing the wildness of the material act as a stimulant. I always try to have at least one such canvas nearby. Although it’s harder to paint on and the texture of the fabric cannot be hidden, their presence in the house does me good.
I have just prepared three such canvases in a 60×60 cm format.