With the latest twist in my husbands health, I’m trying hard to take stock of the situation and get on with some art. To be honest, I’ve known there was a problem for ages and the knowledge has become overwhelmingly sad and rather blocked out my ability to prioritise art and my personal ambitions and needs. All my energy has been directed towards coping with his care and in shifting the general organisation of our lives. This has been, I see at last, to the detriment of artistic endeavour. I’ve probably gone overboard with caring. Possibly making it less likely that he will care for himself. Smothering him fact and even eroding his independence, overloading myself in the process.
I have to learn that things cannot be as perfect as they once were and that good enough is good enough; to allow myself to save some energy and time, purely for my own hopes and dreams.
Somehow I managed to switch off long enough to thaw out my frozen oil paints and after reminding myself on how to use them, I reworked this painting.
I posted it on WhatsApp and was rewarded with a fair amount of reassuring likes. At least enough to give me confidence to continue. Then after a delightful visit from a fellow-artist who is completely competent with technology, I decided to keep the website which she helped me construct and to add a blog to the site. Again with her kind help. Had previously thought about deleting the website. But decided it would be worth keeping so I could stay in the loop and feel part of the artistic community.
To refresh my memory on blogging I reread my a-n blog and it made me remember how helpful…even comforting… writing about the process of making art can be. So once again, I’m making a fresh start. Wonder how many times I , and possibly many others, have said that?
I’m currently living in a hiatus. Having decided we must downsize to a smaller home, the current financial/political climate has caused the property market to stall making a potential move substantially unlikely. The upheaval potential of a change of lifestyle has impended on my current mindset. The main thrust of which, has been to edit and generally rethink my art practice. Wondering how to move forward, I have started to question the subject matter of my paintings. Having largely abandoned, albeit temporarily, my obsession with swimmers, I’m sure I will return to that at some point, I wanted to investigate in more detail the genre of Landscapes . noticing a book on the shelf , The language of Landscape by Anne Whiston Spirn I opened the pages and read the introduction. The book was recommended to me while I was studying for my MA. I confess I bought it, but did not actually read it then. However, today having time on my hands I soon realised how exciting were her thoughts and ideas. In short, I couldn’t put it down and quickly found myself captivated by the fascinating links she enumerated. This spurred me to rush into the garden to begin a series of photographs.
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By taking closeups and then rotating to a different perspective I created new ‘landscapes’. Possibilities for connections and abstract images seem to leap into view. Must keep reading. It’s a long time since I had the energy to cope with intellectual texts but I think it will help to clarify my thoughts.
Difficult to see perhaps but I’ve made subtle changes to this painting since starting to read the Landscape book. Blocked colour stands in for figurative detail. I’m trying to use the materiality of the medium to express my memories of the colours of the soil I walked on during a wintry, sunny visit to Cornard Wood. During the walk I remember trying to conjure the image of a young Gainsborough walking in that exact spot.
It’s a start but much more to do.
Feel I’ve reached a bit of a crisis point. The garden, which I love working in and being in, is really getting too much at my age. The photo of the inside of the compost bin struck me as quite beautiful. The roses are flowering their heads off at the moment. So much so that keeping up with dead-heading is almost impossible. That and the 45 degree bank which has been 7 years in the making is now pretty much OK. Choosing the right plants; building barriers and just rearranging all the plants has been a labour of love. But how much longer I’m able to scramble up the bank to weed and prune is seriously questionable.
I need to prioritise my energy for painting. It’s so easy to get distracted into gardening and then my arthritic hands ache for days so much so that holding a paintbrush is painful. We decided we had to move to an easier to run smaller house. But finding a small house with a studio and a workshop is nigh on impossible.
We bit the bullit and tried. But it’s sending me into a spiral of depression and fear. Further distraction from painting. Even though I’m actually on a bit of a roll experimenting with different ways of applying paint right now.
Using wide flat brushes and trying not to aim at polished finished images. Instead just playing with what the paint will do.
Using my favourite acrylics and lots of water to run and drip. Then back to brushes and bits of rag to manipulate the wet areas. It’s cathartic to allow the medium to dictate the outcome. I start from a memory or a sketch and let things develop organically.
There is so much scary news at the moment which also upsets my equilibrium ….Ukraine, Global Warming; the terror of France tearing itself apart. I’ve always loved visiting France for it’s culture and sophistication; it’s civilised lifestyle. What’s happening to the World? Everything seems to be turning upside down.
So I’ll end this post with a little bit of beauty and goodness which it’s still possible to find if you look close to home. I picked cherries from my daughters garden before the annual carnage when the birds decide the day has come to strip the branches. I made cherry jam and took this photo
Life is just a bowl of cherries.
Having rediscovered blogging after a huge gap I seem to be becoming addicted again. It’s slightly weird how writing thoughts down makes them real. My Queensland trees painting has moved forward and the marks I made have helped to resolve another painting which had lain dormant on the studio wall. This time nearer to home.
A memory of one of my Covid walks along the Stour. It was very bland and with no sketch or photo to refer to I was relying on a distant memory.
These two cropped images of the Queensland painting show the flattish brushstrokes I’ve started to use. These showed me the way to complete the rather boring Stour River image.
Think this is now complete. Having run out of Cadmium Yellow I’m now having a break from painting until I have time to visit the art supplies shop
So long since my last blog. I don’t recognise myself in that last blog. The Covid years were bleak. But now , after having spent 5 weeks in a long-postponed visit to the Australian branch of the family I’m feeling much more buoyant and optimistic than on my last blog post. It was so good being with my stepdaughters who have supported me from afar in caring for their Dad. Incidentally he’s so much better now which is wonderful.
Inevitably the stupendous foreign scenery was impossible to capture but drawing on so many wonderful memories, brief watercolour sketches and numerous photos, I’m beginning to use the images stored in the back of my brain. Tropical trees, brilliant colours, vast skies, exotic plants are swimming into focus and creating a new series or artwork. Still experimenting but edging nearer to my memories each time. Applying some of the things I’m learning to scenes nearer home here in the Water Meadows of Sudbury, Suffolk too.
Two images of Queensland Australia. Sub-tropical wild wilderness
And here are my two lovely granddaughters. So different but both are amazing…. Kate studying Art History and English at Edinburgh and Sophie – Robotics and Computer Science at Sheffield. Adore them both. Sophie’s a great swimmer who took me to a Lido in the Peak District ! She swam the Channel aged 16 !!!!
