Existential-crisis-summer-core

& a reluctant return to form

Dusk at the cabin

Summer has never been my favourite time of year. Heat doesn’t energise and inspire me, it renders me lethargic and irritable. Summer is the most extroverted time of year and I am absolutely not an extrovert. I feel like, in art and in life, summer is romanticised in the same way that youth is, and I have never felt particularly comfortable in either. I might be preaching to a choir of fellow introverted artists who love being inside, but perhaps you’ll understand, then, why I’ve been feeling kind of melancholic and drained these last weeks. Ironically, it hasn’t even been particularly hot or sunny here in Copenhagen, and somehow it’s still not the right kind of summer.

I’ve been kind of all over the place recently, trying to decide which projects I should focus on, keep pursuing, let go of, put to the side for now. How to make money. How to feel calm in my body and mind. How to find a way to exist in uncertainty. How to not spend all my free time rotting my brain on the internet. Where I want to go in my art, in my career. You know, just some light-hearted, fun summer questions.

Holmens Kanal in Copenhagen

What I’ve realised is that what I mainly want to do is get really good at telling stories. Like I’ve mentioned before, I’m working on several book projects on the side of my paid gigs (which are mainly editorial illustration, currently) and I want to find a way to make more time for those. So I’m plotting and scheming behind the scenes. Learning to write things (it is hard and extremely exciting). Learning to breathe life into characters. It all feels quite new but also like it makes a lot of sense to me. I’d love to share more about the specifics of these projects on here, but, for multiple reasons, I may do that behind a small paywall (is that something you’d possibly be interested in?) I’ve been feeling quite introverted about my different projects and processes these last few months, but I think it could be nice to share more here on Substack, with people who are (or have been) in the same boat. I pretty much work alone, at home, most of the time and I would love to build some more community somehow. Creating art can be such a solitary pursuit.

One of the cafés I frequent in order to get work done and not lose my mind at home

Swimming trunks drying

For a few days in July, my boyfriend and I went to a cabin with his family and I decided to leave my phone at home. Truly a luxurious experience, keeping everything to myself. My attention not being a commodity for anyone not physically present, other than John Steinbeck (I haven’t been able to finish a book in months but take my phone away and I’m suddenly halfway through Grapes of Wrath).

It was lovely to really rediscover the urge to draw, not for the sake of improving or sharing, but to see something properly. To understand it. A couple of years ago, when starting a new sketchbook, I filled the first page with one of my favourite lines from the incredible book that is The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke: “Ich lerne sehen. / I am learning to see.” And that’s what drawing feels like on the good days. It is not a documentation or necessarily an interpretation of something, but a curious exploration of the world that surrounds me.

If you’ll indulge me for a second, I think it also has something to do with the state of the world. This summer has felt especially fragile to me, tension hanging in the air, politically, meteorologically, emotionally. I think that fragility has heightened my urge to really be in the world and explore it, because we don’t know what will happen to it (obviously, that has always been the case, maybe I just grew up this year. Or is the world just crazier now?) And because I really love this world and this life. So I am cultivating that curiosity now and taking it very seriously.

(I have a tendency to overly exaggerate people’s noses. Probably because I’ve always felt like my own nose was too big and I am trying to draw away in insecurity. It’s not even on purpose. I also come from quite a big-nosed family, so big noses are very endearing and familiar to me. Justice for big noses.)

This post may have been a bit heavy, and if you’ve made it this far, thank you for being here. It feels lovely to have a space to share these thoughts and observations, knowing that they reach people who are kind, intelligent and thoughtful. I’m sure there are more lighthearted things to come again soon!

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This may be a good time to mention that I’ve completely overhauled my portfolio website, and added a new feature: I now offer commissions! I’m planning a whole post about this, but the TLDR is this: inspired by an older post about homes, a lovely subscriber reached out to me and asked if I was open to commissions for drawing rooms. It had never occurred to me that that was something people may be interested in, but I loved doing it and I think she was also pleased with the illustration of her living room I made for her. That’s what prompted the idea. You can find out more about it here, on my website, if you’d like.

That’s all for now.

As always, thank you so much for reading! How has your summer been so far? Do you like this time of year? What books have you been reading? What have you been drawing? I’d love know.

Lots of love,

Signe

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