Mona Lisa - The late one

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

Light bites

🥘 Explore The Last Supper.

🛏️ Making masterpieces from bed.

🎨 “I am not a black artist, I am an artist.” — Jean-Michel Basquiat

🤖 Meet the humanoid robot artist Ai-Da…

Mona’s notes

Sunday morning came and I was out the door at 8am, trying to pen this newsletter on the train to work. I had to accept that winter mornings were finally here, and denial via Afrobeats, Amapiano and friends is the only way I can function for the next 5 months 🎶 So with the music on 10, I spent the whole journey to work somewhere between Clapham Junction and memories of BBQ’d cassava with a cold mango lassi. (I reached my destination ridiculously bubbly for a Sunday morning☀️ highly recommend you start your Monday’s the same way…)

I came home accepting that my newsletter wasn't going to happen this week, and just as I was initiating PJ and Focus Mode, this slid into my DM’s…💌

She’s here babe - just feeling the instinct to hibernate 🐻. I’ve been ferrying knitted snoods, hoodies and fleeced socks to my studio to keep warm in between jumping jacks, and then coming home in the evenings craving a hot shower and bed 🛌. In fact, the bed has come up a few times this week as a sort of recurring symbol.

I caught Tracey Emin’s show at the White Cube (London) this Friday, where the bed was the star of her paintings - a vibrating constant beneath the translucent figures which melted in and out of the sheets. I recalled conversations with friends who sought their bed in comfort, desperation, to work in or to escape to when the world began to sting. A few painters revealed how they worked in their bedrooms during the pandemic, with canvases drying on their bed and all sorts of pens and brushes knotted away in the sheets. I thought about all the beds I’d had in my life. Homes & hotels. The covers. The secrets. The things I hid in them, the spots I use to stash my teddies, diary, book, headphones, mobile…❣️

So here’s to the humble yet ever-reliable bed. If you’re not in yours right now, I am sure you’ll spare a sweet thought for it. The oblong raft which we climb into every night, unmoored, disconnecting us from the world, and from which I am writing you this letter 🌙 Appreciate yours. It’s a privilege and a blessing.

Have a wonderful week, and lean into the cosy winter nights ahead. 🥰

With love

Mona x

“You have to work hard in the dark to shine in the light” - Kobe Bryant

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