On a bad day even the garden is beyond reach. Often feel like I lead pretend life as it’s spent mostly indoors, supine. Worry that my physically shrunk world has also diminished my ability to let my imagination roam, to think big, to push beyond my narrow boundaries. I want to do large scale – make sweeping gestures, splash colour on huge surfaces, cut deeply, fill things with weights of salt or sand. And while I can’t: will I make my small, intimate work count?
These last few years I’ve come to draw on memory more and more. I don’t think I have nostalgia for childhood, unless maybe for its energies and natural inquisitiveness; actually my memories are few and far between, my recall mostly about moods and atmospheres rather than events, at times with flashes of images. And now with M.E. short-term memory has become an issue. This may partly be what pulls me in that direction, attempts at unearthing and holding on, at making links, and creating from there.
Lay on bed for quite a while earlier, literally unable to move a limb. The fatigue seemed to concentrate just behind my forehead, a muddy, swampy sensation, as if the rest of my skull was a huge empty dome. Stopped wanting.
Brief garden walk yesterday, with shoes. Like how they change against different surfaces. Also played around with pix a bit this week, getting interested in the quality of drawing through hair.
I realize there’s pathos in this work, these little girl shoes overgrown with (shrouded in?) a crocheted web of old woman’s hair, and wonder if I should be suspicious of that.
PS. G4A-application is finished – my thanks to Elinor Utwin from the Arthouse who is off to South America now for her invaluable and much appreciated work. Could not have done it without her. Had e-mail from Arts Council, 39.5 % of applicants successful. Cross your fingers.
PPS. Have got two pieces in Discernible which opens next week at ZAP and will certainly be gorgeous. Hope I’ll get to be there too.
