later, evening

Dusk greys the garden, lavender clouds bank in the East. I am acutely aware, despite my limited horizons, of the earth's slow, inexorable turn Eastwards. The evening is all but still; the frivolous breeze of earlier hours has given way to a gentler tide of air; the tall yellow daisies now hardly stir. Minos and I sit together on the bench beneath the cotoneaster. I watch the birds arrowing homewards and wait for the first star to ride clear in the curve of the firmament. Minos curls around on my lap. He purrs, I can feel the gentle vibration of his little body, hear the throaty rumbling.When he gets down from my lap, I repair to the house, murmering an emotional 'goodnight' to him

Still have the 'grid drawings' very much upon my mind; I worry about them, yet am compelled to continue to make them. When at first Britain went into 'lockdown', I drew as though my life depended on it; I have many 'grid drawings' to show for my efforts, among these a good many that please my eye. Two long series preoccupied me; 'as though my life depended on it', and 'with my mother in her garden at sunset'. I came to use a palette which included soft, bright, luminescent pencils; pink, orange, green and blue, several blue pencils of varying shades, crimson lake, dark violet , spectrum orange and turquoise. The 'neon' pencils glowed through the skin of graphite that I apply across the colours when I have finished filling in the little squares.

 Over the course of the last three days, I have made three drawings,using a similar palette to that above, but with the ommission of neon green and yellow; the resulting drawings are light and airy, pink and blue. I am recalled to Agnes Martin's love of pastel hues, and the delicate 'spaceiness' of the large paintings. My own endeavour is decidedly more modest, the tiny drawings intimate in scale and not varying from the format which came to please my eye when I first began to work thus, back in 2016.

As I write, the dusk deepens beyond the window, and I need to illuminate the house with electric light. I still carry the stillness and peace of our tiny urban garden within me, the hush of the threshold time between aftternoon and evening, between sunlight and twilight. Minos remains in the garden. He will have business to attend to which does not include me. Each of us in our different domains have, I hope, been enlarged by the mild scope of this evening and each other's undemanding company.