S2E26: Elizabeth Barnett on painting, writing and finding home in creative work

yeah um i i want the the listeners to also know that you have this beautiful relationship with stacy mccall um and that you have a is something called the um the bridge letters the

bridge letters yeah yeah

do you want to just talk to that because I think you know there is this beautiful connection

with

having an older

yeah yeah um so Stacey was someone I was thinking of when you mentioned you know when I was talking about um you know, thinking of people who have kids that are older.

Stacey's kids have finished school and mine are sort of starting and in the middle of school.

And so it's been a really...

So anyway, back to the bridge letters.

We started this blog where we write a letter to each other once a month.

And it's really just talking about our lives and studio practice.

And we have lots of photos of our work and what's happening and talk about things we're reading or... you know, challenges we're coming up with or shows we're preparing for.

And really it was just an idea to try and kind of like almost open the doors of the studio to our audience to show them kind of the process of making work.

And like, I don't know, I wanted to, I thought, I mean, I used to blog way back When it was blogging was the thing to do.

And I really miss doing that.

But I didn't have the drive to do it on my own again.

I sort of felt like it was almost a bit, I don't know, it feels nicer to have a conversation with someone about art.

and I've always been a letter writer.

I love reading letters and I still write lots of letters to friends and Stacey and I have sort of had a long history of chatting about our work and we're like, why don't we just sort of formalise this in a kind of blog sort of way? And yeah, almost as a reaction to that sort of short form media that we are so used to now.

I wanted something that people could sit down with a cup of tea and read and you know, really get their teeth into and come back to.

And yeah, I think as an artist, it's really like when you read about someone else's experience and it's kind of validating of your own, like, you know, it's really tough to be a mother and a painter and you're always juggling the different things, especially routines.

And

yeah, yeah.

Thank you for sharing that.

And I do love the bridge letters.