Thank you for joining me here for this quiet little conversation...a place to share thoughts, words and images encouraging serenity, tranquility and peace.

I am super fortunate to be part of a group of amazing artists who meets frequently online. We come from all over the world, working in different mediums across a wide variety of genres. We always have awesome conversations, and recently we talked about what playlists we listen to as we work on our art in the studio.

My playlist is an empty playlist...I listen to nothing while I'm creating even though I have a deep relationship to music. When I was growing up, playlists weren't a thing and I listened to albums from start to finish. Now we have things like Spotify, custom playlists and curated playlists based on a set of our preferences, and even the option to download a single song from an album.

Maybe I'm weird, but I still prefer to listen to albums as laid out by the recording artists. I think of the musician, creating the flow of the music on the album, and it feels like to understand the story, it helps me to listen to the whole thing. 

The reason my playlist is empty in the studio is because I'm not able to concentrate both on listening to music and to what is happening on the surface of the cloth painting. I used to be a multitasker extraordinaire and when I let go of that habit of high volume doing, I became a listener extraordinaire to serve as the vehicle for the message being told by the painting.  

I wonder what playlists you listen to? Do you listen to the whole album? Maybe you listen to the music of your youth in a different way than newer music?

I made you a little video: so show you some of the cloth I hand painted last summer to use in these juxtapositions works in progress:

youtube (mardell rampton)

And as always, I want to express my gratitude to be living and working on the ancestral & unceded territories of the hən̓̓qəmin̓əm̓ and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh speaking peoples.I honour the incredible depths of grace, courage and perseverance of Indigenous Peoples.

until next time,

Mardell