Sometimes just sat sitting, contemplating the holes in your socks becomes
the starting point...
A busy time lately; enforced duties that take hold moulding your week into a mangled mass of medical meetings gives you little time to create. The biggest event was moving an adult child into their own home and dealing with the evacuated space and the sweet memories of a little toddler trying on my shoes or teething on a gingernut biscuit. I know all parents deal with the empty nest situation differently; 'Mister A' and I certainly did, as he turned the house into its next stage. I certainly found it emotionally hard as she was my constant and made sure I laughed every day. Juxtaposed against that scenario was an elderly parent falling suddenly and needing comfort and support. Odd times. Unsettled times. And once again, the rambling sketch seemed my creative lot this week.
Mainly because my feelings were running high, I found contemplating everyday objects, doing menial tasks and concentrating on my senses quite comforting. Moving bits and bobs aimlessly from room to room, folding old clothes, filling bags and bags of old clothes, misshapen small socks, hair ties and unwanted shoes. Django Unhinged the emotional doggy became needier, Maggie the eighteen-year-old moggie more confused and followed me from room to room. There were moments when I just sat. Stared. Stared at bits of textured bedding, a tattered towel a mound of washing. Mister A did his thing around me and seemed happy. I wasn't actually sure what I was supposed to do, but aimlessly being domestically appropriate seemed warranted. Funnily, observing the small details on everyday objects made me notice other things.
When I finally got to sit in my safe place, in my studio away from the world of personal expectations and altered spaces. The number of sketches I had acc
umulated over the years, the unfinished canvases piled in a corner and my collection of beloved blue pencils. The golden metal biscuit tin with a Mucha on the front, previously full of my mothers' stage paint now full of paint and pit pens. Sitting typing this I can see on my desk again a mother memory; her favourite bear and then mine. Upward glance to a cup I bought in London. A Vincent cup. With a quote:
'I dream my painting, and then I paint my dream'
Suddenly around these familiar, loved things it dawned on me that these all had a history. My history and my daughters'. My mothers. These objects speak volumes of dreams, stories and narratives that can be turned into visual metaphors and new beginnings. And the beautiful thing is that the blue pencils beckon me the most. This whole week has been about shifting time of incubation and to another stage. The atmosphere has changed.
Cheers, my creative lovelies.
JFP X
