Welcome to the Journal

I've wanted a place like this for a long time.

The shop tells you what I make. It doesn't tell you what the studio smells like on a Tuesday afternoon, or that I repainted the jaguar's eye four times before it looked back at me properly, or that I keep a drawer of failed paintings I can't bring myself to throw away.

So: a journal. Notes from the studio, written as things happen.

What you'll find here

Work in progress, mostly. The painting that's on the easel right now and the decisions I'm making about it . Why that yellow and not the other yellow, why the leaves got bigger, why I am trying this media.

Finished pieces too, and the story behind them. A painting takes days or weeks, and by the end it has collected things: a song I had on repeat, a phone call, the weather. None of that shows up in a product photo.

And the walls. I'm moving into large-scale work, which means learning in public. New tools, new scale, new ways of being wrong. I'd rather write that down honestly than pretend it arrived finished.

Why write it at all

Because I'm a painter, but I've always been a writer too. The two feed each other more than people expect. Writing about a piece forces me to understand what I was actually trying to do, and I usually only find that out somewhere in the third paragraph.

And because making things alone in a room in Munich, far from where I grew up, is a strange and quiet occupation. Writing it down makes it feel less like talking to myself.

I'm Brazilian, I live in Germany, and most of what I paint comes from far of Munich — colors and references that live im my memories. Saudade is the word for it, and it doesn't translate, which is exactly why I keep writing about it.

Come along

No schedule, no content plan. I'll write when there's something worth saying, probably every couple of weeks, probably longer when a mural is eating my life or some of my kids are sick at home and I have no time to give attention to other things unless them.

If you'd like these to find you, the Mail Club sends a bit of the studio by post every three months: a postcard, a bookmark, a sticker, and a note written by hand.

Thanks for reading. Let's see where this goes.

— Débora CarDu