[Transcript] Studio Visit: Hospital Edition

A behind-the-scenes tour of my painting studio

In the bone marrow transplant unit (February 2022)

Suleika Jaouad: Hi, everyone! Suleika Jaouad here.

We haven’t done a studio visit in a couple of months, and I thought I’d give you a very creative, strange take on a studio visit, which is my workspace and my hospital room.

I’m on Day +7 post-bone marrow transplant. I’ve been in here for about two weeks, and overall, relatively speaking, I’m feeling okay. But the thing that’s really kept me going in these last days is finding some semblance of a creative practice that I can focus on that can help me fill the hours. So one of the very first things I got in anticipation of being stuck in this fluorescent chamber was, bizarrely, a diaper caddy. A diaper caddy that was recommended to me by my friend and the author Esmé Weijun Wang, and I keep everything in here. It holds everything. It holds my special little oils that I like to use. It holds my books. I’ve been reading these two books. I have also have this book, which was hilariously given to me by my brother, who is my bone marrow donor. It's actually an excellent novel, I highly recommend it. It also holds all of my notebooks.

So I will talk you through the function of these different notebooks really quickly. This one is called “Observations from the Nurse’s Station.” And I write down just like funny little sketches and moments and observations from my time here. This one here is my medical notes notebook, where either I or my mom, whenever doctor comes by or whenever there’s any thing happening that we need to take note of, we keep our notes in here. This notebook, I use for my letters to John. We haven’t gotten to see each other every single day, so as has always been the case, we’ve tried to maintain this practice where we write each other letters. Instead of doing morning pages, we read each other a three page letter, and we take a little photo of it, and we text it to each other and it helps us stay connected. And this here is just my my regular old journal, where I do my morning pages and yeah. So lots of notebooks, but you know me, I’m a journaling fiend.

I also have a couple of art books back here that I like to leaf through just for inspiration. My mom gave me this one yesterday. As you all know, I love Frida Kahlo, and for obvious reasons, I’m drawing a lot of inspiration from her in this particular minute. This is another art book courtesy of my maman. But yeah, I just like having lots of visually stimulating things. And it’s very important for me to have everything within arm's reach. The other thing that's just helped vibe-wise to brighten up this hospital room are these candles. They're not real candles, but they make me happy.

And a lottery ticket. Because why not? I’m down on my luck, so I feel like maybe I can strike a fortune in other areas.

Okay, so lastly—I think lastly, maybe not lastly—is my little painting area. I am not a painter. I haven’t painted since I was a little kid. My mom is an incredible painter and artist. She’s the one making this video right now. Salut, maman!

Anne Francey: Hello!

Suleika Jaouad: But, you know, the truth is I haven’t really felt much like writing. I felt exhausted. I had all kinds of ambitious plans and ideas for what I was going to accomplish in this time, and illness really just sort of imploded all of that. And instead of trying to kind of grasp to those old plans, which would have felt frustrating, I think, and demoralizing because I wouldn’t have been able to do them in the way that I imagined I do them, I decided to allow myself the freedom to do something entirely for myself. Something with no expectation of an outcome. And just something that felt playful and experimental. And so that ended up being painting, and I asked the occupational therapist here for a big poster board, she was able to gave me which became my sort of de facto table-top/studio desk. And I work with watercolors. Watercolors are so simple, they don’t smell, they don’t make me nauseous. They also are full of happy accidents. My friend Melissa Carroll, the painter, who was also a patient in here, used to talk about this all the time, how wonderful watercolors are because they’re full of happy accidents, just like in life, and you really have to surrender control.

So this is the painting I’m working on now. I’m not very happy with it currently. So I’m a little embarrassed to show it to you. But I’ll be happy with it once it’s done. And every day or two, basically, I’ve come up with a new painting. I start with a sketch. And I’m not quite sure how they come to me. Sometimes it’s a bizarre dream I’ve had, sometimes it’s an animal that I’m drawn to, and I start with that. And then I start to add these other elements, but I’m enjoying living in this kind of surrealist playscape. And this here is my sketchbook, where I get to practice a little bit and try things out when I’m not quite sure what I’m doing. This is kind of my mess book. And then I use this for my actual watercolors. What else can I tell you? An eraser, very important. I use this probably more than anything else. And my trusty Pilot Plumix fountain pen, it’s my favorite pountain fen… pountain fen...  fountain pen. I think it cost about $5. But I love it.

Oh, and this beeping reminds me of an important part of my studio space that I haven’t introduced you to. This is Scotty, my IV pole. That’s what I call him. He’s kind of noisy and annoying, but he’s keeping me alive right now. So, good work, Scotty. In this here is where I’ve been hanging my paintings I finished them. So yeah, that’s pretty much... pretty much it.

You know, it’s not the ideal workspace. But I think for me, in a way, it’s kind of liberating, because there’s this notion that in order to do serious work, we have to have like the perfect writers cabin, or like the perfect desk, or we need some kind of fancy setup. And I learned this a decade ago when I was sick, but I think, for me, sometimes the best creativity is born of urgency. It’s born from a more kind of savage place. And in order to express what you need to express, you just grab whatever tools are within reach, and you make it happen. And so this for me is that: one painting a day—more like one painting every two or three days lately. But it fills my days. It fills my cup, and it keeps me focused, and it keeps me dreaming, and it keeps me sated and happy.

So I’ve missed our in person studio visits very much, and we’ll return to those hopefully at some point in the next couple of months. But until then, I’m curious to know more about what is filling your days? What is saving you? And what your workspace looks like? So let me know in the comments below. And until then I send my love—