Today’s newsletter is about finding joy in repetition and the generative power of doing the same thing over and over again. You can read it here.

I tried writing this letter a few weeks ago and couldn’t get anywhere with it. And then I remembered this image of stacked drawings by Kate Bingaman-Burt and everything sort of clicked into place:

When I usually think about an artist’s body of work, I visualize piles of sketchbooks stacked up or diaries taking up a shelf:

The thing I love about Kate’s image is that by layering up all these images a black hole appears that seems to be eating up the drawings. It feels spiritual to me, somehow, like a void or a womb from which something springs forth.

I find this often happens when I’m writing the newsletter — if I can find a good image to put at the top, everything else just sort of flows out. I’ve been asking myself why I don’t write books this way, starting with the illustrations I want to go into them, then writing to the images. At least for first drafts…