the missing piece

i made this a few years ago, for a small batch of cards. it was a daoist thought i used a lot during my first solo exhibition, and it makes me smile. i put it on badges but didn’t link it to the jigsaw piece until i made the card. i like the way the shapes work, like keyholes or mushrooms springing up, or antennae feeling their way forward….letting go of the ideal makes room for all kinds of possibles 🙂

new space?

i went to look at a flat round the corner – being at emilia’s flat made me realise how much easier life on one level is. the landlord had let this one without telling the agent, it turned out, but being in a warm, sunlit space with a giant bow window felt lovely. the flat next door to this one is being renovated and will be finished soon and hopefully i am first in line for it!

being away blew some cobwebs away, being cherished by lovely em, meeting her partner n interesting flatmates, going to the beach, going to a gallery and lucking in to a guided tour by the curator of anna barriball’s exhibition of drawing/sculpture…it was tiring and revitalising all at once!

i downloaded gimp and hope to work on some mixed-media assemblages, once i crack how to load my work photos into gimp as base layers, no mean feat for my bleary brain, but i can see a new way to ‘paint’ coming out of it.

new spaces seem to breed new possibilities – and the train journey along the coast, with open horizons over the sea was just what i needed, i could feel my optimism welling up again. space is the FIRST frontier, not the final one!

allowing change

i am struggling a bit with the thought that when i move, i will be shifting boxes of almost untouched materials.

i am not ready to say i will never be strong enough to paint again…but it doesn’t feel very likely to become easy again in the next couple of years. after three and a half years, i still dislocate my clavicle really easily, and painting and hanging work are two of the areas almost guaranteed to put my collarbone out.

i certainly can’t paint with the stiff/opaque oilbars. so perhaps i will offer them on gumtree. i would hate them to dry out without being used.

i had a conversation recently where i could see someone’s grief at losing his freedom of movement, and i felt very tearful, as losing my freedom to create is as challenging for me, as that was for him. i always wanted to be an artist, and it was a long and hard journey to getting to paint. the fatigue of fibromyalgia is one thing, but the weakness seems to be another, in terms of grieving losses. to now lose painting seems impossible – surely if i just tried harder, pushed more? but that is part of what has got me here, always pushing to keep going.

and at the same time, i AM pushing to keep going, to find the ways of maintaining a creative practice that don’t leave me wiped out and in burning pain. and looking at the boxes of unusable materials is demoralising. unused materials can be a feast of inspiration, or a nag, or tat to dust, but unusable…i think they need to move to a new home.

allow the change to come, keep on growing….