A couple of weeks ago, I paid a visit to a local antiques dealer, hoping for a bit of respite from my swirl of worries and what-ifs. I had just learned that my much-anticipated summer painting residency in France was no longer possible. My leukemia is progressing, and I’m switching to a more intensive chemotherapy regimen. I was trying to distract myself from my disappointment, writ large.
One thing led to another, and the next thing I knew, I was standing in the dealer’s private storage building out back, asking the kind gentleman who owned it if he might be interested in renting it to me as a painting studio.
He readily agreed, and I left in a little bubble of excitement, fully and totally distracted from my current circumstances.
I spent a whole afternoon dreaming of how I’d arrange the space before reality came crashing down again. I thought about the chemo. The fatigue. The days when even getting dressed can feel ambitious. I imagined the short drive from my house becoming another obstacle, another thing I couldn’t quite manage. I worried that something intended to nourish me would become one more opportunity to feel as though I were falling short.
I climbed back into bed, defeated.
And yet, the desire for a residency persisted, gently surfacing through the fog of my sadness. It refused to be buried. So when I received a note from Rhonda Willers, a ceramicist, educator, and beloved member of this community, suggesting an at-home art retreat, I took it as a sign.
“Maybe,” she wrote, “the residency can come to you.”
I couldn’t stop thinking about that sentence.
I realized that what I had wanted from a residency wasn’t simply uninterrupted time. I craved a new routine. A little healthy urgency. The feeling that this particular stretch of time matters. More than anything, I yearned for a way to organize my days around something besides illness.
Then, one morning, while I was standing in the yard watching the dogs perform their elaborate morning dance of sniffing and trotting and peeing and rolling in deer poop, I made eye contact with the old barn on the edge of our property.
I typically try to avoid the barn. It’s one of those spaces that has served as a catchall for boxes, lumber, bicycles, old toolboxes, and all the odds and ends that accumulate. But—and I could almost feel the gears in my mind beginning to turn—it had potential.
I thought about my mom’s first studio in our house in Saratoga, tucked into the attic beneath the rafters. It was less a room than a space: rough floors, rough walls, no heat, no cooling. An imperfect place that demanded nothing of its occupants. A place where any kind of art or drawing or mess was welcome.
I rallied some help that day. We cleared what we could, hung curtains to conceal the things that had to stay, carried in a big wooden table, and transformed an old kitchen cart into a caddy for paints and brushes.
Within a few days, there it was: my studio.
Standing in the barn, taking in the humble, deeply imperfect space, it struck me that perhaps this was the residency I needed all along. Not the one I had imagined months ago, but the one my life was asking for now.
I just needed one more thing—the thing I cherish most about residencies: a community of like-minded people working alongside me.
That’s where you come in.
Here’s my proposal: Join me for a month-long, at-home Artist Residency.
Each Saturday in August, paid subscribers will receive a painting and an essay by the brilliant artist Ana Martinez Stapleton, along with a creative prompt inspired by her work. I’ll be completing the prompts alongside you, making one visual journal entry each week.
Everything will be delivered via email, and we’ll also be using the Isolation Journals chat, where we can share whatever emerges—finished pieces, works in progress, discoveries, frustrations, unexpected breakthroughs—and encourage one another along the way.
Then, on August 30 from 1-2 p.m. ET, we’ll celebrate all that we’ve done by gathering for a special Journaling Club with Ana. We’ll talk about creativity, process, and making art. Save the date!
And if you haven’t already, upgrade to join us.
My own plan is intentionally modest: one visual journal entry each week. Maybe I’ll start with watercolor, then try collage next. Then charcoal. Pastels. Whatever happens to call my name. I’ve learned that the medium doesn’t matter so much as making a mark, any mark. Once I make my first mark, I almost always want to keep going.
As with everything we do here, you don’t need to think of yourself as an artist to take part. The point isn’t to arrive with some specialized skill—or even to leave with one. The point is to cultivate a creative practice sturdy enough to carry us through life’s inevitable ups and downs.
This wasn’t the summer I imagined. The perfect conditions do not exist. And yet, I find myself almost giddy with excitement about this month and what it might bring.
I hope you’ll join me with a beginner’s mind. With curiosity. With crayons or charcoal, pencils or paintbrushes, scraps of paper or fabric or flowers pressed flat beneath the weight of a book.
Below, you’ll find the first in our series, Border Girl Bingo by Ana Martinez Stapleton, and a prompt inviting you to trace the iconography of your childhood.
Shall we begin?
P.S. If you’d like to join us for the rest of the month but the $6 subscription is out of reach, we offer complimentary subscriptions. No hoops to jump through, no questions asked, no explanation needed. Just reply to this email. I’ve got you.
P.P.S. If someone comes to mind as you’re reading this, you can gift them a subscription.
We’ll be taking a break from the Sunday newsletter for the remainder of August—so I can navigate this next phase of treatment, get some rest, and dream up the next few months of offerings at the Isolation Journals. If you’re looking for Sunday inspiration for your journal, you can always visit the archive of prompts on our home page. There are also 100 of them ready and waiting in The Book of Alchemy.
Last week’s Journaling Club was a glorious journey through the sun maps of Anaïs Nin and Louise Glück’s practice of sifting for gold in her own journal entries—and a surprising example of how constraints can wrench you out of an energetic rut. If you missed it, or just want to revisit it, paid subscribers can find a replay here.
This piece is inspired by the traditional Mexican bingo game “loteria,” which I played many times as a child. We used actual uncooked “frijoles” beans to mark our cards. This bingo card shows symbols from the border that became the iconography of my experience: quinceañeras, piñatas, the Mexican superhero “El Chapulin Colorado” we watched on tv, Jordache jeans, and La Llorona, the mythical weeping mother of ghost story lore.
Explore the iconography of your life experience using words and images. Include the defining myths, figures, foods, traditions, symbols, music, locales, flora, fauna, or meaningful objects in your orbit.
I’d love to hear what this prompt brought up for you—in images and in words. The best place to do that is our Isolation Journals chat.
Ana Stapleton is a Mexican-born artist and writer living in Austin, Texas. She earned a BA in Liberal Arts from Duke University and a JD from the University of Texas School of Law. After passing the bar exam, Ana quickly pivoted back to her true passion for art, building a creative career that spans painting, film, hospitality, and design. Ana’s work is imbued with the cultural richness and dissonance she observed growing up on the Texas-Mexico border. Her vibrant, colorful paintings are story forward, playful, and sometimes paired with written vignettes to offer a language translation and backstory. Song lyrics, idioms, and dreams scaffold the stories she tells on the canvas. She’ll be showing new work at the inaugural Affordable Art Fair Houston in October.
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