The waitress takes the crockery and accoutrements of the ‘ultimate breakfast’ I just consumed. Free range egg rolled omelette, a small grilled salmon fillet, potato salad, seasonal green vegetables with sesame oil, natto, nori, umeboshi, brown rice, pickles and miso soup. What are you reading, she asks. I hold the book up so she can see the cover. I read a chapter of that recently, she said. It’s really good. It’s amazing, I said. Affirmative… in the face of… the apocalypse. We both laughed. She walked off.

Sitting, abstracted – paintings become abstracted from their sources over murky jars of water, as sitters become abstracted from their thoughts over coffee. During the process of making a painting, the idea of what it will be shifts, as the materials and the processes of translation from mind to hand have their say in what comes out, and what then needs to be done with it. There is usually a point when a painting becomes its own particular problem, where what appears is not what was planned, and the way forward is not clear – each finds its own way to ask the question of how it will be resolved. If there is no problem to overcome, the translation can feel too direct, too controlled. Through this process, representational elements become enmeshed, obscured, vestigial, a sort of unconscious to the abstracted surface. What are you thinking about? Thinking about… what is this practice? Sitting and asking questions of yourself, every day, in front of these material things. But: as complicit as cafes, maybe. Cafe complicity… zoned for mixed use. One of several thorns in the paw that keep the beast active. Coffee as an accelerant, unrelenting. Keeping yourself off-guard, in a mode where inconsistency equates to satisfaction. Battle fatigues, cafe fatigue. – Helen Johnson, 2015