Notes to self

I’m working towards a two-year Diploma of Visual Arts and I’m a quarter of the way through. My final conceptual work at the end of last semester was inspired by the humble sticky note. The standard, non-confrontational, Canary Yellow is recognisable the world over. Sticky notes remind us of things. They act as bookmarks and might be for shopping lists. They’re a common tool of the management consultant who boldly aims to lead an organisational transformation with sticky notes capturing actions and milestones. I use them on my bathroom mirror.

A few years ago, I felt numb and broken. I’d failed at marriage, had no sense of who I am, no idea what brought me joy, and believed that someone who obviously was doing love wrong should be sticking to relationships with cats. The only positive attributes I reckoned I had going for me was resilience, independence, and a solid sense of humour. Turns out my hyper-independence is a survival mechanism rather than a benefit. Even though my mental and emotional states have changed dramatically since then, I still have this “toxic trait”.

My bathroom sticky notes were, and still are, my tool for personal transformation. Back then, they helped me wrestle with the dirge of negative thoughts and eventually turn around my self-perception. Nowadays, they help to arrest the occasional spiral when my confidence takes a hit. Rather than being a general character rewrite, they’re scene directions that stop me from getting stuck in the worst-case.

So, I decided to recreate my sticky notes out of clay. I used air-dry clay, because it would dry in time and allow me to colour match that urgent-but-friendly, institutional yellow. I had a few breakages and a few other failed test pieces where the Posca Pen writing smeared when I applied matte medium as a protective layer. I ended up with just enough impressive replicas of my re-scripted inner monologue to adhere to the mirror with a couple of backups to spare. My handmade analog was so convincing that some of my art school peers assumed they were paper and were “astonished” to find otherwise.

Note to Self. 2025. Clay sculpture and acrylic paint, on framed mirror. 30cm x 20cm.

Artist Statement

Note to Self
Medium: clay sculpture, acrylic on framed mirror
30cm x 20cm
Aprill Enright
23 June, 2025

We speak to ourselves in passing—often harshly and carelessly. Note to Self is an invitation to reconsider the inner monologue.

This work began as a personal exercise in reframing: rewriting the quiet, corrosive thoughts I had been cycling around on. The post-it notes were a tool to reshape my beliefs. This project gave me a chance to ask, what would it mean to make those reframes permanent? What if they weren’t temporary affirmations but permanent truths?

Each clay post-it note in this work carries a reworded belief. They are sculpted by hand, then adhered to a mirror where the viewer’s own reflection becomes part of the piece. Could this be your voice too?

Interactions with Note to Self from teachers and other students.

I left a Sharpie and some blank paper sticky notes on the easel where the work was displayed and invited contributions.

What a number our own brains do on us in its misguided attempt at self-preservation. Who needs enemies when so many of our thoughts are a kind of auto immune disease, working against us, quietly keeping us back from living easier and more content lives. It’s a tragic irony.

When it comes to how we think and feel, we must be our only saviour, and that can either feel like an overwhelming responsibility or an empowering sense of control. It all depends on how you think about it.

Bottled Up

Bottled Up is a series of work that explores the social preference to bottle up emotions, by reflecting on my father’s own way of being in the world, through his carafe as an object of still life.

At the end of 2023, I set out to create my first real body of work. Until then, I had produced random artworks—still lifes, self-portraits and other figures, that stood on their own or weren’t part of a bigger theme. This carafe was the only object at that time I could imagine painting so many of. It’s a homage to my dad, who was a bottled-up kind of guy, and it’s also a comment on how we bottle things up as a culture.

Seemingly a trivial object, this carafe sat in the fridge door of my childhood home holding my dad's wine. It's now in my fridge, filled with water. Dad didn't reveal much of his inner life to me or anyone else. When conversation at the dinner table went below the surface, he’d go off and do the dishes.

He was Catholic, but couldn’t explain his belief except to say that he was raised that way; he loved the Balmain Tigers; he was athletic—he had a stint playing AFL, windsurfed, golfed, played water polo, and regularly swam in the harbour baths. We reckoned he was lucky—often winning meat trays at the raffle; he was a great story teller; and was kind to animals. He also bottled up emotions and kept his thoughts to himself. He only became more direct in the evenings when he'd had a few glasses of wine and his defences relaxed. 

As my own kids got older, I realised the hard truth—that we can never truly know the entirety of someone, even those closest to us. In spite of that,  we frequently see them and ourselves in the trivial everyday objects they leave behind when they’ve gone.

Is it all Below the Surface, 2025. Acrylic and Oils on canvas. 49.5cm x 79.5cm.

These paintings culminated in one of the two largest paintings, Is it all Below the Surface, really coming to fully represent all the layers of intention in this body of work. Beyond a reconnection with my dad, and the metaphor bottles (and even alcohol) give us for protecting ourselves from our own emotions, this work is an invitation to the viewer to slow down and reflect. There’s a stillness; a presence; and clarity that’s captured with the carafe and the glass. If we quiet down enough and let the emotions happen, we can see moments of depth in the ordinary things that become a part of our lasting memory.

Baggage claim

Baggage, 2023. Mixed media on canvas. 32 x 32 inches.

I started this painting as I often do, these days; with a layer of free writing with the brush. It’s a good way to fill the canvas with what I intend to convey. Getting all the literal meaning and the superficial thoughts out of my head. Clearing away the baggage to make way for something deeper and more symbolic. My intention from the beginning was to do a still life painting of this little suitcase but I didn’t yet know what the composition would be.

When I moved out of home, my parents cleared out their shed and gave me all the years of school stuff and hobbies and toys that they’d been hanging onto. This little Globite school case from when I was in kindergarten is one of the few things that survived multiple culling efforts over several house moves.

I was cleaning out my teenage son’s bedroom, sorting out the too-small clothes and toys for the op shop, when I found this bag again. It had walkie talkies and Nerf bullets in it. It survived another round of things being chucked out and given away, and I took it to my art studio.

Last year, as an extension to the couples therapy sessions, I had a number of individual sessions with a psychologist. She blew the dust off this school case and dared me to look inside. We all bring something of our childhood into adulthood—the way we see life; the ways we react to it. There’s some nature and some nurture, and until things went wrong enough in my adult life, I didn’t think this bag had anything in it worth examining. There are no scary stories or skeletons in this one; just a child’s experiences of emotions that informed patterns in my own behaviour as I made my way through life.

It’s confronting to open this baggage under the spotlight. You learn how much of your own power you gave away and for how long. You realise how many choices you’ve made in life were driven by childhood fears and shame. You wonder about the patterns your own parenting has created for your kids. How will their fears show up in their adult life? How heavy will their baggage be? I’ve done my best with what I knew, as did my own parents. All I can do now is remind my kids to have the courage to look inside their own bags and jettison what’s not useful.

This artwork was painted in acrylic and has been overlaid with oils and cold wax medium. I wanted to preserve the layers with the transparency of the wax medium. We are all composed of many layers with our baggage showing through each and every one.