Mona Lisa - Noodles 🍜

Your weekly art takeaway

Author

Mona L
November 17, 2024

Nov 17 | Issue 17

ML - Welcome to Mona Lisa. A weekly newsletter for artists with timeless quotes, ideas and light bites for curious & wandering minds.

❝

If you’re not in your studio - physically - almost every day, you’ve denied the possibility of anything happening. So even if you’re reading a detective novel, you should be there. And then sometimes you just throw your book down on the floor, march off to a painting, and say ‘Ah there’s something wrong here…’ pull the table over, put my painting shirt on and get going.

Light bites

🙏🏽“Work hard in silence, let your success be your noise.” - Frank Ocean

🖼️ Da Vinci painted at least 4 versions of the Mona Lisa.

🫥 Why many of today’s figurative paintings are missing faces…

👀 “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place”. - George Bernard Shaw

🤨The artist who legally changed his name to ‘Anish Kapoor’.

Mona’s notes

Expectations….💔 Last week I had been looking forward to getting some noodles at my favourite spot - Mr Meng. I lined it up for Saturday evening after the studio - 6:15pm. I planned my lunch so as to keep it light and relatively boring. I wore appropriate clothing, because the noodles come spicy so you need to be ready to shed that knitted jumper 🌶️🌶️🌶️. I planned my walking route from Warren Street to Charing Cross Road - a nice crisp 20min appetite builder.

5:50pm - the excitement was building. I popped a chewing gum, chose my playlist for the walk, and plugged Mr Meng into Google Maps….

Noodles with Chopped Pepper and Spiked Potato were not going to happen. Deflation🫠. I raided my map for similar noodle spots but everything felt too new. Too much decision-making and room for disappointment - especially now that my expectations had peaked. Spiked Potato wasn’t happening tonight…or maybe ever again 🥺 

I decided not to walk there to check. Instead I made my way to the underground station, appetite lost, thinking about all the delicious, sweaty bowls of noodles I’d had there - solo and with company. I recalled all the wrong menu choices I had made, before I finally discovered my favourite dish (which I then ordered on every visit). It made me smile. I’d laughed and cried into them bowls 🍜 and they had comforted me in just the right way💗.

I eat soup noodles for comfort. In fact, noodles of any kind. It's a food that is very easy to eat; it's very soothing and comfortable, too.

Nobu Matsuhisa

When I am on cruise-mode, I become a creature of habit. I re-visit the same places, I love to order the same menu items, I walk the same routes, wear the same colour 🖤. I love a routine. I get reductive and remove as much decision-making as I can to save this energy for the more prickly thoughts and decisions in my work.

As artists we are constantly making decisions: colour, material, size, form, value, texture, perspective, concept - with every stroke, cut, hammer, application, mark and stitch. But on days when I can’t seem to paint or make, I know it’s usually because my synapses have been firing way too hard…🤯 It’s called decision fatigue, and it’s good to know when you’ve arrived there…😶‍🌫️

“You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits,” he said. “I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.” He mentioned research that shows the simple act of making decisions degrades one’s ability to make further decisions. It’s why shopping is so exhausting. “You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. You can’t be going through the day distracted by trivia.”

"It's not the daily increase, but the daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential."

I shall have to find another comforting noodle spot where I can decompress and order with my eyes closed - an excuse to go exploring this winter 🗺️. New noodles, new neural links & new comforts - and I’ll take any recommendations ❣️

Have a bright week ahead gang 🌈 

With love

Mona x

“Go for someone who is proud to have you.” - Frank Ocean

— Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled (OUT GETTING RIBS JM) n.d
Pinned onto Basquiat’s door whilst he privately mourned the death of his close friend, Andy Warhol.

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