I can't think of any reasonable excuse for not blogging for a very long time. But the rot set in some time ago. I know that it began with the announcement of the GDPR. There was something terribly draconian about those requirements that has stifled my creativity in writing these missives from the studio.
Well, I have gritted my teeth this morning and decided to write one anyway, even if it is about nothing in particular.
Of course, there is lots going on. A lot of banging and shouting and inexplicable holes in the ceiling. My studio is being renovated and I am deranged. I am so discombobulated that I pressed "send" on this email Monday morning last, just before I had my breakfast. It took me until now to realise that I hadn't actually sent it.
Two days of silence. Usually my missives get a response of some kind, but this time I didn't take your lack of response personally, I just thought it's been so long since I last wrote that you have all moved on.
It was only when realised that I forgot to include information about forthcoming annual exhibition of the Dublin Painting & Sketching Club, that was due to open at the weekend, that I realised my error. In the meantime, the event has been postponed (as a result of the Corona Virus).
Back to Monday morning . . . .
Yesterday (Sunday), I went on a walk. Himself and myself hit out about midday to a nearby spot known as The Breaches. It is not very far, but as we are both getting a tad slow, so we felt it important to have the mantra, "The Breeches or Bust".
Bust it turned out to be. It was a sunny day. Warm, spring-like with buds shooting up and birds twittering ("like car alarms", he said).
Heading off in sunshine, with neither hats nor coats, we made our destination easily enough, and as we turned back homeward, only then, we began to notice the change. . . The sky, once warm and blue, was now deep and dark and purple and thundering towards us. Before long the temperature dropped significantly and we were being pelted with hailstones. They were really sharp and very hard and more than a few hurt, quite a bit. I found it a challenge to keep moving, in the strong wind on uneven ground.
The day had changed. We hardly recognised the place as we first sought shelter under a blowy piece of rusted corrugated iron, hanging on a willowy stick, loosely secured behind a fence post.
We took shelter under this rusty bit of iron
Even though my head was frozen, the rusted corrugated iron offered about as much shelter as a (folded) broadsheet newspaper, it was good, very good, to be even a little bit out of the bombardment. However, I was afraid that in that wind, our meagre cover would in time, decapitate both of us.
And so we pushed on.
The world around us once very familiar, had turned icy and hostile. We doubted this perception. We felt a very long way from home. We wondered how could this be? We pushed on, and eventually we turned away from the wind as we reached the shelter of the public road. A short time later (with a lift from a fellow walker), we were home and getting dry. But the experience has changed us. We were somewhere very different. We entered a different world.
I can't help feeling that the world has shifted off its axis. There is nothing new except The Virus. We are busily singing Happy Birthday* to ourselves as we soap up and sud up against impending doom.
And yet, I remember a quite similar (but very, very different) experience after which I painted this painting below, near the same spot where the world shimmied on its axis for us. The cold and hailstones were there, but it was without that extra edge of menace that we both felt on Sunday.
 |
| Rainbow double |
*Singing Happy Birthday twice is advice we are getting in these
parts as being just long enough to wash "our hands". In
the spirit of community protection, I am busily washing my feet as
many friends and neighbours are "toe-touching" in greeting and I
am wondering if my scrubbing efforts are for nought?
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