By Harrie Dearing. First published on harriedearingart.com.
I didn’t expect this part to be the hard part.
Since my art career began, I’ve painted at home. Every piece I’ve made has lived in the same walls I live in, stacked in corners, leaning against furniture, hung wherever there was space. So when the time came to move into Studio Brut, it wasn’t just a studio move. It was moving 300 paintings out of my home, all at once.
I knew it would be logistically a lot. I didn’t expect it to be emotionally a lot too.
The first night
The first night after the move, I felt lost. Properly, quietly lost, in a way I wasn’t prepared for.
It’s hard to explain unless you’ve made things and lived with them the way I have, but it’s like there are strings running directly from my heart to each one of those paintings. Every piece carries a piece of whatever I was feeling when I made it. And that first night, with so many of them suddenly somewhere else, those strings felt stretched further than they have in a long time.
My house felt different. Quieter in a way that had nothing to do with sound.
Knowing it’s right doesn’t make it easy
I know this move is going to be good for my process as an artist. A dedicated studio, a community around me, space that isn’t also my living room, all of that is going to change how I work, probably for the better, probably in ways I can’t even predict yet.
But nobody really warns you about the emotional toll that kind of change takes. People talk about the practical side of moving a studio, the logistics, the lifting, the planning, but not about what it feels like to suddenly not be surrounded by your own work in the place you sleep.
Change is terrifying. Even good change. Maybe especially good change, because there’s no obvious thing to point at and say “that’s why this is hard.”
I think this is what growth feels like
I don’t have a neat conclusion for this one. I’m still in it. But I think this unsettled, stretched-string feeling is just what growth feels like when you’re standing inside it, rather than looking back on it afterwards.
The paintings are settling into their new home at Studio Brut now. I imagine I will too.
More soon, as the space comes together properly. Follow studiobrut.art on Instagram to follow the process, the good days and the hard ones.