Pandemic blues
So here we are early January 2021, more or less one year on. I’ll tell you on reflection what has surprised me about myself over the last 9-12 months. I can’t be the only one who has often craved a bit of peace and quiet from the hurly-burly of the world, many times in my life. And I always thought that given the chance, such as we have now what with lockdown, lockdown lite etc. etc., I would grab it with both hands and make the most of it – not least with my art. Now here’s the shocker………….I can’t and I haven’t! well not so far at least.
It would seem that rather than blossom in a quieter world I do much better by seeking my solace in the usual noisier stressful one. Weirdly enough quiet forced on me from outside doesn’t provide what I need to produce my work – as I always thought it would – but a noisy environment from which I have always had the ability to escape, switch off and turn inward does. Isn’t that strange? so here I am a year into enforced “solitude” and I have very little, artistically speaking, to show for it.
Maybe it’s a bit like the Brexit transition period (you remember that!). Perhaps I need a period of time(length indeterminate) before I feel the same old artistic drive start to surface again, something that has always been there before, that I’ve taken as a given, just waiting to snatch a moment to create in between the non-stop madness of hyperactivity that characterises the modern world.
I hope so because this endless nothing is stifling me.
ps: last bit of completed work below, November last year;
