Turn Off Your Mind…
A Reflection One Year On: Tomorrow Never Knows by Emma Woolley
Painted on Saturday 17th August, 2024
This was a moment. I’d hit a real peak in my painting. I couldn’t put the brush down. I even wrote it at the time: “I’m hitting an absolute peak in painting right now. The universe is calling me to wield the brush once again.” And it really was. Something had opened up. The grief was easing a little. I was starting to feel like myself again.
But it was also just a month after my partner Qui’s dad, Marish, passed away on 19th July 2024. That came just over a year after we’d lost Mum. So between us, there was a lot of grief in the house. It was heavy. But somehow, painting was this thing I kept coming back to. It helped. Not in a conscious way. I just needed it.
And I wasn’t painting for anyone. There was no agenda. No idea who the painting was for or where it would go. I was just painting for the joy of it. For myself.
I’d already painted The Thinker at this point, and I’d loved the pose. That far-off look. The quiet stillness. I was chasing that feeling again. The dopamine hit. The ADHD loop. I found this reference image and something about it clicked. He was looking into the distance again. Wandering off. It had that feeling of wonder. And I was starting to realise by now, this is a series. This is The Wonder Series. It’s not accidental anymore.
The painting came together over 10 to 12 hours, and the whole thing was just fluid. I was sat at the table, working on Fabriano Tela (my favourite paper), and everything about it just felt right. I didn’t overthink anything. I didn’t even have to repaint anything. It was a first pass kind of day. And I loved it.
The energy in this one is wild. His hair is ramped up. His moustache is full-on Dali. And as I was painting it, I thought... hang on. He’s giving D’Artagnan. He’s giving Three Musketeers. And then my brain suddenly went back to that 1980s cartoon Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds. I used to love that. It all kind of came flooding in while I was painting.
Orlando Bloom as the Duke of Buckingham in the 2011 film The Three Musketeers, directed by Paul W.S. Anderson
There’s a real clash in the colours that I leaned into too. Deep bottle greens in the shadows, pushing right up against these high oranges and candy pinks. I didn’t care that it didn’t match the reference. That was never the point.
The song Tomorrow Never Knows by The Beatles was playing on loop the whole time. And the lyrics, especially that opening line, just buried themselves into the painting.
Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream.
That’s what I was doing. That’s what this painting is about. It’s about the art of letting go. About surrendering.
#7-1 Revolver by The Beatles (1st. Issue "Lemon Yellow Paper Label with EMI/Parlophone logo / Metallic Gold Inlay": TC-PCS 7009) 1966
There’s this amazing little cartoon by Frank Ape. It’s just a scribbly figure with the weight of the world on his back, all chaotic lines above his head, and then in the next frame he’s painted it out onto a canvas. And he says, “Ah, that’s better.” I saw that recently and I thought, yes. That’s what painting does. It takes the weight off. That’s what this painting was.
Why artists make art by Frank Ape IG: @frank_ape
I didn’t use palette knives on this one, which surprised me. I thought I would, especially for the hair, but I ended up just using flat brushes. Probably an inch or half inch. I wanted the brushstrokes to stay broad. To feel like paint. I wanted those wispy edges in the beard and moustache. That sense of energy.
And even though it looks kind of mad and caricatured, I don’t care. At one point I did think, have I pushed this too far? But then I thought, no. Why am I even thinking that? Fuck it. I’m painting what I want to paint. This is for me.
That’s what I’ve learned. I’ve learned that the magic happens when I paint instinctively. When I let it get weird. When I just trust the process and go with the feeling. And yes, sometimes it goes wrong. This series has seven final paintings, but I binned four or five along the way. That’s okay. That’s why I paint on paper. It’s not precious.
So when people ask me who this is, I just say, it’s my mum. It’s me. It’s a slice of my childhood. It’s a memory. It’s a feeling. It’s not supposed to be someone. It’s supposed to be something.
Tomorrow Never Knows 2024 by Emma Woolley
Looking back on it now, I see how important this one was. It marked the point where I really started entering what I now call the astral plane. That dreamspace I slip into when I paint. Everything else fades away. Time stops. The room disappears. I’m just pushing paint around a page, and suddenly, I’m remembering things I didn’t know I’d forgotten. It’s like being in a dream.
And if this painting could say anything?
It would just whisper:
Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream.
You can find limited edition Giclée prints of Tomorrow Never Knows in the shop:
