Matéa’s Atelier: A Studio Journal

Marks That Remain

Studio Journal — Entry One

Lately, I’ve been contemplating how I want to track and recall my studies within my art practice. I first began by keeping a journal, but quickly realized there was no real pressure to remain consistent. Eventually, I came to the conclusion to start a blog on my website—not out of a desire for it to be a huge success, but as a way to share my process while also being able to easily look back on these periods of my life. A record of learning, unlearning, and becoming more intentional in my practice.

I went into art knowing I wanted to tattoo. That clarity shaped everything that followed—how I draw, how I paint, how I observe the body and the natural world. Tattooing matters to me because it is permanent. It exists on the body long into death. There are mummies that have been found with tattoos still visible, marks carried across centuries. That idea has never left me.

Along the way, however, I fell in love with painting. I thought I would hate it. Instead, I found myself drawn to the way paint can be layered endlessly on a canvas. In many ways, painting feels like the opposite of tattooing—it is not permanent, yet it can be infinite. Who is to say when a piece is finished but me? I can stop after a single layer, or I can return to it again and again, building ten layers or more.

I enjoy that freedom—the ability to revisit, revise, and respond. You can never really ruin a painting unless you stop trying. That openness has changed how I think about my work as a whole, and how I balance control with experimentation.

This blog exists as a place to hold those thoughts—and more importantly, to hold time. It’s a space to document my studio practice as it unfolds, to track patterns in how I learn, revisit ideas, and allow my work to evolve without pressure for perfection or performance.

Here, I want to record the in-between moments: what I’m studying, what I’m questioning, what feels unresolved. Tattooing, painting, preservation, and process all intersect in this space. This journal is meant to be returned to—by me, years from now—as a record of where I was, what I was chasing, and how my understanding of permanence, impermanence, and intention continued to shift.

Marked with Intention

— Matéa