Wishes & Other Lovely Studio Stuff

[January 2025]

A detail from a new series of drawings.

Dear friends, family and collectors,

If you are a foreigner like me, January is a strange in-between month here in the East. Back home the new year has rolled out in all of it’s glory, resolutions have been made (and abandoned) and the end of the first month of 2025 is fast approaching. Here where I am, on the other hand, preparations for the Lunar New Year are advancing in a dazzling display of colour and flowers. So if January was not the great start to the new year you hoped it would be, then well, there is another new year approaching in just a few days. Clean yourself up, get your shit together and try again. Next week Wednesday is, literally, the start of a new year. Again.

Houses are being thoroughly cleaned, everything that is no longer needed is being discarded and extravagant flowering chrysanthemums, cockscomb, yellow apricot and so on are being purchased en masse to decorate the newly cleaned homes. Each plant and perfectly flowering bonsai is chosen for it’s ability to usher in luck, happiness and prosperity. Red ribbons have been tied to the branches of trees, specifically banyan trees, with each ribbon encasing a wish for the new lunar year, which for 2025 is the year of the Snake. This year we also joined in, decorating our star-fruit bonsai tree with red lanterns and wish-filled red ribbons. I utterly enjoyed the ribbon tying tradition and the opportunity to see my wishes float in the wind for the past few weeks. I like to imagine that on the eve of the Lunar New Year the essence of all the wishes will flutter off into the night sky, going where they need to, so that they can eventually return in the form that they are most needed.

Our very own Wishing Tree.

In a few days, on the 29th of January, my year will start anew, again. My husband and I will be in Bangkok then, exploring and emerging ourselves in the capital city of the old Siam. Fingers-crossed that the current blanket of smog that is engulfing it at the moment would have cleared up a bit by then. God I hate smog. 🤬😡🤯. And no, I am NOT going to get into this now. This newsletter is about the lunar new year, wishes and lovely studio stuff. NOT man-made toxic bullshit, which 2025 has enough of already anyway. And so, having to live with the reality of air-pollution on a daily basis, today I choose alternative reality. Air-pollution is air-pollution is air-pollut is airpoll is airp is air. See, it's just AIR. Nailed it.✋💁‍♀️

Sometimes it's the only way to stay sane.

Coming back to my unusual in-between January, I spent my time slowly getting back into the rhythm of my studio. I’ve begun a new painting and I've also found a way to transform the accidental “mess” of the painting process into a new series of collage and pen drawings. I've always loved doodling, or as it is known in fancy art-world speak "automatic" drawing. I turn on Netflix, make sure my furry cuddle buddy is curled up next to me and then I doodle away. It's like meditation.

Messy sheets of newsprint converted into a collaged, doodle drawings.

I'm quite enjoying the direction in which these drawings are heading. They provide me with another way in which to work and play with the organic shapes which arise from my painting process. I'm hoping that these shapes will eventually find their way into three dimensional space. I know that this is where they want to go, I'm just not sure yet how.

Some more messy sheets of newsprint converted into a collaged, doodle drawings.

So, just to bring it all together, may your year have kicked off in the way you were hoping it would. And if it didn't, feel free to try a bit of my Alternative Thinking.

All my love,

Nicola

A new painting still in progress. Acrylic paint and white charcoal on linen. 90cm x 90cm.

Studio Nicola Fouché. 2024.