Lavender, An Apology

4 Jun

With all the submissions in now, I am finding it hard to focus. I sort of miss blogging as it punctuates the work - I stop, take photos, think about what I am doing and write it up. I may continue as it’s so ingrained now. It is maybe that I am a slave to productivity and maybe I should just let the blogging fizzle out when it is no longer serving me, I will see when I have a proper rest in August.

I am feeling tired and reluctant to get going again although ideas are swirling and I am dreaming in paint, thinking about all the things I want to do now. I did some quick drawings with oil stick in the kitchen just to decompress the creative pressure in my head. The tracing paper lavender drawings are coming along nicely and I hope to submit for the Trinity Buoy Wharf exhibition. I wanted to make some colourful versions, abbreviated but no less melancholic. The lavender I killed over the winter is preserved carefully in the greenhouse and photographed for posterity. I feel sorry, so much devastation, the keeled over hedges and trees, vegetation we have pulled back but the neglect is slowly coming away. I want to re-wild and seeing the bees and butterflies, new species of birds is enlivening. Part of the joy is also the sorrow, but not for long, nature doesn’t hold a grudge.

I am finding a rhythm again… I find it interesting the work I can’t seem to help making even when I am tired and reluctant and the work I don’t feel I want to make. It goes in cycles of course, but sometimes I just want to draw and paint and they seem to be the times I make work I am most interested in making. For now, the lavender are speaking to me and are soothing to draw.