Sunday, April 18, 2021

My week

Cece asked me on FaceTime on Friday: 'When are you going to write another book?'

Another book? I can't even write the blog.

Admittedly the sun has been bewitching this week, and the current painting has been absorbing, but really, I've not been in a bloggy frame of mind. 

This is what I am trying to paint - our front garden when the daffs are out:



This was how I began:


I didn't have a fine enough brush to do the tree correctly and the result was rather Hockney-esque, but it didn't look like a hawthorn, which is what it is. Here's the second attempt with some added first-draft daffodils:



The tree is better but then I realised that daffodils have six petals, not five. Durrh.

They now all have six, 




but need some definition on the petals, and the stalks need sorting out. Then I need to add the blue Adirondack chairs.

There are other things that have happened this week - e.g. a hospital visit in which a breast lump turned out to be normal breast tissue - but I cannot find the words to make the relating of them entertaining. Maybe after a year of keeping going with the blog, as some kind of lockdown contribution, I've flopped... just as we're emerging into the spring sunshine and the shops and pubs are opening up, and we can have family and friends in our gardens. 

I don't care about the shops, but hooray to this latter liberation. My daughter and grandson came yesterday afternoon and it was so lovely, that in the evening after they'd gone, I felt like a normal person and not a locked down one.

Did you see this article this week?

Brain fog: how trauma, uncertainty and isolation have affected our minds and memory  


A friend emailed me the link, saying:

It’s official - your worries about memory are shared, and lockdown related!

With the advice to get out there and have as much variety in our lives as possible - bring it on.

To which I replied:

I am pleased you sent me the brain fog link – I saw the headline this morning in the Guardian and thought I would read it later and would probably have forgotten to!

I hope you're enjoying the sunshine and that like me, you're feeling a little less cramped, and on the start of the journey back to being your old self. 

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am in awe at the intricacy of your painting. Thank you for sharing the process. And the link to the article, applicable not just to lockdown but to many who have retired, or long term ill and find their days blending into each other with no sense of purpose. I have always admired your determination to use the time you have well, also your honesty with the struggles you have to do so.

We too have enjoyed a visit from Grandchildren this weekend in the garden - its so lovely to have something to get ready for and then clear up after.

Usually we would be planing to come to Derbyshire soon - not this year though sadly, so I look forward to seeing the season unfold though your photographs and paintings. Greetings to all, Jenetta

marmee said...

What a beautiful front garden and how wonderful to have daffodils! And oh yes I am in awe of people like you who are able to paint what is front of them. I often wonder what is the mystery that makes a painting or a drawing both softer AND more meaningful than a photograph. I listened to a radio discussion on how sameness accounts for brain fog etc but I was thinking back to childhood visits to my aunt's farm and they almost never even went to the small village in the vicinity. Life was the daily round of hens and eggs and feeding pigs and cooking and bread making. Is that not sameness?

Sue Hepworth said...

Thank you very much for your comments and compliments, Jenetta and Marmee.

Marmee, a photograph can take my breath away, just as much as a painting. I'm wrestling with the question you pose.

and that last question about the sameness - it would be interesting to investigate.