The Garden Table

A reflective note on how stepping outside between studio sessions invites calm and perspective. At the garden table, creative pauses outdoors connect observation, rhythm, and artmaking.

Between sessions in the studio I often step outside to the table in the garden. It holds its own kind of rhythm: cups of tea cooling in the breeze, notes scattered across the surface, the sound of leaves overhead.

The table has become part of the work without meaning to. Sketches gather there, small decisions are written down, and fragments of plaster dust follow me out. Sitting with them feels different from the studio, less focused on the panel in front of me and more open to what surrounds it.

Seasons show themselves here. In summer the table is warm to touch, papers shift in the wind. In winter it holds the cold, a place to pause briefly before going back inside. Each change leaves its impression, subtle but noticeable when I return day after day.

This space isn’t about production. It is where thoughts settle, sometimes leading back to the work, sometimes not. The act of stepping out, shifting view from wall to garden, makes the return stronger.

I don’t think of the garden table as separate from the studio. It belongs to the same process, another surface carrying its own traces. The marks are different: rings from mugs, faint weathering, lines of pencil. Still, they hold the same quiet history of work done over time.

-- AM

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