Handiwork

'A glass jar of brushes is permanently accompanied by another of cloudy water, and a ball of clotted kitchen roll. The ferrules of the brushes are narrow and wide, rounded and straight; the bristles are natural and synthetic, soft and rough, filbert and fanned. I only ever use the same three, the plainest three, but I keep them all because I am constantly susceptible to future projects – to the possibility that some day I might be confronted with a surface that requires a more exotic class of stroke’.

handiwork is a contemplative short narrative from acclaimed writer and visual artist Sara Baume. It charts her daily process of making and writing, exploring what it is to create and to live as an artist. handiwork offers observations at once gentle and devastating, on the nature of art, grief and a life lived well. Baume’s first work of non-fiction offers readers a glimpse into the process of one Ireland’s best writers, written with the keen eye for nature and beauty as well as the extraordinary versatility Sara Baume’s fans have come to expect.

Shortlisted for the 2021 Rathbones Folio Prize