This body of work is made up of a series of letters that describe the process of writing a sole-authored book, Guitar! (Book Works, 2020). Supported by funding from Creative Scotland, The Arts Council, England, and The Glasgow School of Art, Sarah Tripp composed these letters during the night hours, while her child slept. The texts were formed into a selection of five letters to the Editor of MAP Magazine, Alice Bain, and published online by MAP Magazine between 11th July and the 8th August, 2020. Tripp purchased a ‘Self-Illuminating Pen’ which meant she could write in silence and darkness; the experience of doing so affected her habits of writing, shaping and adapting her practice.

Alongside these published texts, Tripp collaborated with the artist Isobel Lutz-Smith to produce five 10-minute films that correspond to the published letters. The films record Tripp’s nocturnal writing from moment to moment, illuminating her handwritten script, one word at a time. As such, the letters and films represent Tripp’s research enquiry, which asks: how can our relationships, between mother and child in this instance, be celebrated or revealed publicly as critical to relational conditions in which practice happens?

Importantly, The Self-Illuminating Pen contributes to emerging research within art writing, particularly the kinds of self-reflective and subjective writings of women practitioners, originating in works such as Mary Kelly’s Postpartum Document (1973-79) to more recent practice-led writings by Maria Fusco and Katrina Palmer, where the intimate, personal and individual voice of the narrator, as woman, is foregrounded. Tripp’s art writing, in this sense, offers an inventive articulation of practice-based, reflections on self, in parallel with feminist auto-ethnography, acknowledging that women continue to exist without autobiography (Felman, 1993).