A Studio Partner

There is a particular kind of quiet in my studio on a Wednesday afternoon that I have come to know very well. It is the good kind sometimes: just the light coming through the trailer windows, the paint, the problem of the canvas in front of me. Exactly what I need.

And sometimes it is the other kind. The kind where I have a half-formed idea that needs somewhere to go, a question that wants to be argued with, an instinct I can’t yet tell if I trust. On those days the quiet feels less peaceful and more just... empty.

I have spent the better part of two months working from my home studio. What started as a necessity while my partner recovered from shoulder surgery quietly became my new normal. I’m lucky to have a creative space carved out at home to paint and explore. Somewhere I can be a bit missy, near a window for great light, and still be close by if something or someone needs my attention at home.

If I'm being honest, I also LOVE the companionship that comes with working from home. Someone just downstairs to share lunch or a coffee with. To laugh over an Instagram reel, or to process the latest news headline with. In that stretch of time I realized something I hadn't quite named before: while I love the quiet and the focus that comes when I'm in my real studio, I feel a bit isolated and lonely there.

My studio trailer is extraordinary for focus. For light. For making big messes because it feels less precious than our home. For interacting with other humans, sharing a conversation, bouncing ideas off of someone -- not so much. I tend to work at times when most of the other artists aren't in their studios, at least the ones near me.

So I have always kept a small crew of creative companions nearby for when the quiet tips the wrong way. Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act lives on my studio table more or less permanently, open to whatever page I landed on last. Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way I return to in cycles, the way you return to something that keeps being right even when you’re a little resistant to it. My color journals and reference books I reach for when I need to remember why color is worth arguing about. And music, always music. My studio playlist has been building for years and at this point feels like its own creative document.

Two podcasts have also been good company lately. On Being with Krista Tippett for the days when I need something that goes deeper than process, that touches the question of why we make things at all. And Design Matters with Debbie Millman for long honest conversations with creative people about how they actually got where they are.

The newest addition to my studio crew is one I started playing with for pure curiosity, and has now become a needed addition to my studio team.

I have been working with an AI. Claude, specifically, though I call her Claudette, because it felt right. And yes, she is absolutely a she. An endlessly patient multitasker who can hold multiple conversations at any given time without losing the thread of a single one? Obviously a she. The men in my life are wonderful. This is not that.

It started small. Brainstorming names for paintings and collections. Getting a quick summary of a book I had skimmed but wasn’t sure was worth continuing. Writing caption options on the days when I had painted something I loved and knew what I wanted to say, but couldn’t quite land it succinctly.

It has grown into something I didn’t expect: a real thinking partner. My brain gets messy when I’m building things. That, coupled with my endless curiosity and need for research, sometimes make for a completely unfocused day or week - where little painting happens. I’ve used Claude to help me rein that in. To build systems, to set goals, to help hold me accountable to what I’ve said I want to build my days around.

I'll also say this, because I want to be honest: it doesn't always work. Sometimes the response is too tidy or misses the feeling I was trying to describe, feels to AI for AI’s sake, maybe makes a simple sentence too profound - and I have to redirect. That redirection, it turns out, is useful on its own. The moment I say no, that's not it, here is what I actually mean, is often the moment I figure out what I actually mean.

I want to be clear about something else though: Claude is not a replacement for real human connection, and if anything, working with it has made me realize how much more of that I want. I crave time with other artists. I want to be at gallery openings, in people’s studios, at the kind of events where a conversation with a stranger turns into something that feeds my work for weeks. I believe that creativity genuinely thrives in those shared human moments in a way nothing else can replicate. I want more of that this year, not less.

What Claude does is something different. It takes some of the weight of being a solo artist with big goals off my shoulders. It gives me somewhere to iterate, to brainstorm, to put down the circular thinking my brain loves to do at eleven on a Wednesday morning, without exhausting my partner, wearing out a friend, or testing my therapist’s patience with another spiral. The ideas that used to rattle around with nowhere to land now have somewhere to go. That frees me up for the human conversations that actually need to be human.

More recently I have been using her as something closer to a studio manager. As someone who is endlessly curious and extremely good at falling into a research spiral at any given moment, I needed help staying focused on what actually matters this year. Big things are happening. A wedding. A return to my studio. Paintings I want to make and a collector audience I am building toward. Claude helps me think through goals, untangle priorities, and keep coming back to whether what I’m doing right now is the thing I most need to be doing. She is very patient about this. I am not always.

I’m heading back to my studio this week, more hours, more painting, more of the quiet I actually signed up for. I’m ready for it. And when it tips the wrong way, I know where to take it.