January 2024 Retrospective

Loss, celebration and renewal.

I have been doing a retrospective since October 2023 as a way to reflect on the month, and for you to get insight into my life in a calmer, gentler way than looking at reels of me walking the dog, or of every meal I’ve eaten posted on Facebook. It’s a self-contained retrospective so you don’t get distracted on social media. It’s also somewhat of a diary for me so I can look back and laugh in the future. Bigheadedly, I thought it might be interesting to a reader to hear about an artist’s life, as I would have loved to hear more about what Jean Dubuffet got up to day to day and the meals he ate.

January has been a funny old month. Despite having my brother’s funeral and being ill for 95% of the month, I have been feeling in relatively good spirits. We’ve had my daughter’s first birthday which makes up for anything else that’s happened!

There’s been a whole load of decluttering this month, the biggest studio sort-out that I have ever undertaken, plus 4 trips to the tip.

Let’s go…

January 1

Happy New Year! We were asleep before midnight last night, the first time, ever!

January 2

My friend sent me a photo of him wearing my Tupac Design T-shirt. I got a very limited number of these printed.

January 3

My baby’s highchair arrived, woohoo!

A Substack podcast about a past with social anxiety.

#14 My Internal Goliath

January 4

A huge decluttering of art books occurred today.

January 5

My dear brother’s funeral today. RIP Gary. I got him the Army Bugler that he wanted, it was so moving. It was a great and very moving send-off.

Military friends of my brother travelled from all over the country to say goodbye.

January 6

I went to a huge all-you-can-eat buffet place, this one is of American proportions. If you can imagine a warehouse full of food stalls, but you only pay £19.99, and you can eat all you want! Sadly, I wasn’t feeling great so the excitement of chowing down wasn’t so exciting. We also chatted about how mad this culture is when others don’t have enough to eat!

My Subtack post on distractions.

Biscuit-addled Mind

January 8

Gratefully I have a GP app whereby I can book a video appointment. As I wasn’t feeling well, I managed to get some antibiotics to help with this dreaded virus!

January 9

My dog son, Bruno, loves the heater. As you can see, he chooses heat over the comfort of his bed!

January 10

I had an idea about my new art practice. Read more below:

A simpler art practice

January 11

My daughter turned 1 today!

January 12

Afternoon nap time zzz…

January 13

I decided to start sharing my weekly art practice on Substack every Saturday, see below:

Sharing my Art Practice

We had my daughter’s 1st birthday party, she had loads of fun and was super sociable.

1st birthday party.

January 14

Here’s a snap of the cake. My cousin made it for us, she’s very talented.

January 16

I’ll write a post about this at a later date, but an amazing local poet wrote this for me at one of my art exhibitions. I scanned it in today as I stumbled across it while clearing things up.

January 17

A post about comparison:

January 18

I have a weird quirk about the same number repeated. This was is a beauty, 66666. I dabbled in numerology but take it with a pinch of salt.

January 19

Part-way through the studio cleanse.

January 20

The second edition of my weekly art practice today:

Weekly Art Practice #2

It’s not quite spring yet, but I have visited the local recycling centre 4 times this month, a huge studio clearout and a home clearout. It’s very cathartic.

January 23

My post on overeating. (Don’t forget to read

Mikala Jamison

for great body image posts)s.

The never ending promise of food 🍔

January 24

My sister told me to chop an onion and soak it in honey. I’m a bit sceptical about old wives’ tales but this helped with my cough and I got a good night’s sleep!

I also created an experimental sketch. The way I see it now is, that you could think about sketching or just sketching. If you just sketch, you’ll have a lot of sketches to look back on.

January 25

My colleague reached out as I’d been off work sick. I thought it was sweet. But also, a part of me felt like he was checking up on me. I’ll never know lol.

January 26

Found my baby weight card, I was 3lbs at birth! But as you can see, I quadrupled my weight in several months!

My baby weight book.

January 27

The third edition of my weekly art practice came out today.

Weekly Art Practice #3

January 28

After sorting out the attic and was delighted to find these old press clippings and an old art report. (I’ll write more about this next week). You’ll get an idea from the pictures below.

Blast from the past, some articles and an old art report.

January 30

Someone shared this with me, it’s so true.

January 31

My post about wasting time:

Cause and effect: Useful habits that aren't that really useful at all

Thanks for checking out my January!

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