Day two at La Chapelle Saint-Antoine, Naxos

The second day of any residency tends to be the one where things begin to settle. The disorientation of arrival gives way to a quieter sense of actually being here, of having a reason to be in the studio rather than simply finding it.
A significant part of that shift has been the arrival of my fellow resident for the month, El-ham Tabsoba, a painter and mixed media artist based in Accra, Ghana, whose practice centres on neurodiversity, identity, and emotional expression through layered figurative compositions. She set up her studio this morning and went straight into the work. We have already had good conversations about our respective practices, the contemporary art scene in Ghana, and the very different processes we each use to arrive at an image. These incidental exchanges between studios are part of what residencies do best.
In my own studio, the day was given over to continued experimentation with image transfer methods. I am working through several approaches in parallel, trying to find a process that feels right for what I want this body of work to do. Today’s experiments were useful less in producing a finished outcome than in clarifying the direction. The plan is to keep testing before committing to a single process, then return to the figurative source material, the heads and faces, and build the work out properly.
The piece I made on a marble offcut is a step on from yesterday’s first attempt, but I am still searching for the right relationship between image and stone. I want the image to feel as if it is part of the marble rather than sitting on top or wrapping around it. The current piece still reads as surface to me. One unexpected dimension has been the act of photographing the work. Looking through the phone lens shifts how I see what I have made and begins to suggest how a viewer might encounter it. The frame becomes a thinking tool.
I also spent time today in the chapel of Agios Antonios, which adjoins the residency and gives it its name. It remains unrenovated, the walls bare and weathered, the dome quiet, the light extraordinary. The long-term plan is to develop it into an exhibition space, but for now it is simply a space to inhabit. I want to take the laptop up there and play some music through the dome, just to hear how the architecture responds.
Jetlag is still working through me. But the day has had a coherence to it that yesterday did not quite have, and that feels like the right note to end on. More tomorrow.