I first participated in the Kildare Readers’ Festival Artist Notebook in 2012 when I filled the pages without any thoughts that it would be made public, without any particular purpose. It is filled with drafts of stories, writings, notes, and so on.

 

In 2013, however, I set myself a task: for three days every month, using a phone, I tried to capture felt and told experiences of desire in Ireland under three headings (1) objects which we are told are desirable (2) desired objects/subjects and (3) desired but unobtainable objects. During the few months of using the notebook, there were many times I wondered why I had set myself this task and my patience and interest often lagged. I turned to visual art, experimenting with manipulating the paper – with coffee, paints, glitter and glue. I then turned back to my other writing: short stories, a novel. Moving away from my task forced me to reflect on and then re-engage with the interest of picturing and writing about objects of desire.

 

In 2014, I brought the notebook with me as I travelled over land in France and Spain. I used it as a home for snippets of life I collected and experienced on the highways, in the small towns, and at the beaches. I thoroughly enjoyed filling this notebook, probably because I wasn’t trying to finish something or complete a task. All that the blank pages demanded of me was to cover them with interest and life. This notebook, for me anyhow, I think captured something of the raison d’être for notebooks: as records of artistic practice as it is experienced and created.

 

Of course the final closure (and triumph) of completing a notebook is to view it nestled among the hundreds of others – and experience the wonder and excitement of discovering what is within these pages. It is this collective creative experience which has me already signed up for the next Kildare Readers’ Festival Artist Notebook.