Sick Days

Sick Days

Artist and writer Kat Hudson shares her experience of life as a chaotic person who craves order.

Kat Hudson

I’m good at attracting chaos. Accident prone, I’m the person who gets a concussion falling off a table, or somehow gets gastritis in the middle of lockdown. I spent a lot of time in hospital as a teenager, where order and routine attempts to restrain the chaos of our bodies and our minds.

I like routine, it keeps me well, helps me focus. I am messy and forgetful, but I am also diligent and I pay attention to tiny details. I get anxious, so I write everything down into a clearly laid out bullet journal. I am an artist, and I am in a constant tug of war between allowing myself creative freedom, while retaining this attention to detail and not becoming overly controlling of my outcomes.

It feels like I have these two opposing sides – chaos and order. Control and freedom. I started creating these self portraits during a period of poor health when I was stuck in bed. Drawing digitally from a photo, taken quickly of myself half asleep, was accessible to me and gave me that small sense of accomplishment that I needed. So I continued, hungover, tired, sick, sad – that’s when I stay in bed and give myself a bit of extra time just existing and drawing.

The other side of my art practice plays with order and obsession as well, I like to hoard and collect – mostly receipts and ‘rubbish’. I believe that using items other people would consider junk is a way to provoke thoughts and memories, creating both autobiographic and fictional narratives. A shoebox full of receipts mirror my own ways of thinking and approaching the world.

Find more from Kat on Instagram @kat.rat.art