I run a fortnightly Zoom drawing club which is proving to be quite popular. It isn’t a workshop – rather a space for drawing in company and sharing ideas and encouragement. We don’t usually have themes but inspired by Grayson Perry’s art club one member suggested self portraits and most of us had a go, including me! I think I look like my mother.
During lockdown I make an easily available model and it is not often I look at myself with this intensity. Usually I catch myself in the mirror and think Ugh, look terrible today. Unless it gets destroyed this drawing may well outlast me, physically.
The past week has been a bit rough – glad to be back on treatment but the drugs are strong. I must have slept for 12 hours on Friday. Before starting the new (old) chemo drugs I did manage a walk with my husband and dog and it felt so good to smell the scent of the bluebells and enjoy moving through the woods and in the breeze.
Today I ventured into the studio for the first time since lockdown started and it felt very weird. I just tried to reinhabit the space …
I do wonder whether the post-lockdown world is going to be any different and indeed whether there is a post-lockdown world at all. We may have to get used to lockdown periods from time to time. Some of the signs are not good – people just dying to start long-haul flights again, and drive everywhere . One thing I’ve found myself able to do is to really appreciate not going anywhere, though I do miss seeing family of course. But it is amazing how strangely intimate, intense and focused zoom meetings can be!
Someone said the other day that the garden has become a destination during this lockdown period. I have ventured into painting … and done a pen and ink drawing for the first time in ages.
Gardens are truly healing places.
I’ve restarted chemo treatment after it being suspended due to covid-19 restrictions (which I have to say the consultant was very fuzzy about), so here is the first drawing of series 2, 12 May 2020.
There was another patient also drawing yesterday which was rather nice and we had a good chat, about Art, living in Africa, pompous British ambassadors… and we wished each other luck.
I’ve also started an intermittent diary:
