Lofty Aspirations
Updated: Jan 29, 2021
Every creative needs a room of their own.
Just ask Ms. Woolf. Mine just so happens to be in a barn. Not quite on-par with the Biltmore of of the 1920’s,
but for me a luxury none the less.
Most days my studio is a cluttered, wayward explosion of projects,
colliding amidst inspiring gimcracks and brick-a-brack.
Other days it’s still a cluster, just of slightly more orderly chaos.
Rows of leaning paintings and backdrops ( in a moment of fleeting clarity) rolled as neatly as hedgerows.
Glamour is absent in a working space.
When spatial problems arise and grand notions beg for attention what's a girl to do?
I head the call and I expand ... and I expand upwards. Up to the barn loft above my workspace.
A place I can scheme and set scenes for my "lofty aspirations".
It's a place where large-scale backdrops and larger-than-life,
antique-fueled, painted portraits can hang about.
Personalities and landscapes come to life.
Most days I’m dwam-struck. Creating worlds of grandeur and escapes.
A place to be among the beau monde.
Or at least content to be the wallflower.
While just outside patiently waits the reality of work and chores to do,
A barrage of non-creative projects to tackle.
Sounds of the occasional lowing of the cloven hoofed
and tittering of feathered egg-layers are there to remind me this is just play.
But inside these four walls I can hold as much story and verbiage as a hard bound book. Setting scenes, creating stories, tiny little escapes.
An adventure filled existence. Unconventional daydreams.
A strange assortment of ideas, from old time and from new.
In that sense I’m probably a bit more Eustacia than Thomasin.
I'm drawn to the classics and the romance of it all.
Gilded objects against a dark canvas .
Glitter among the grit.
So I keep scheming and setting scenes in my old barn.
Classic motif’s and a "new class" of Neoclassical Victorian.
Grander stories with Dickensian plots...from the past, made anew.
- Jennifer
