Sunday evening September 20 2020

 Above the grid drawing begun yesterday evening and completed this afternoon; the first photograph reveals it in it's unfinished state, with the skin of graphite drawn only halfway across, the second completed, with the drawings from the last three days. This latest 'grid drawing' differs in palette from the previous three; I incuded lemon neon, which lends a piquancy to this otherwise pastel hued drawing. 

This afternoon , my workplace was dappled with sunlight spilling through the window; I chose to photograph the drawings in this light because it reflects my experience of their presence- that is how I see them every day when they are completed. I do not 'see' the finished drawing before making it; rather it unfolds, or comes into being under my hand. The process is intuitive, the drawing evolves in it's own terms.Beyond abiding by several 'constants'; a square of thirteen squares by thirteen on A5 gridded notepaper, a pretty consistent palette, I let nature take it's course- that is not to say that I am inattentive, or careless, rather I practise a watchful discipline and attentive concentration, but I do allow myself the freedom of intuiting which colours to place adjacent to one another. The drawing takes on a life of it's own as I proceed.

I did not keep many of the drawings first made when I began to make 'grid drawings'; in a comprehensive collapse of self confidence, I destroyed them, an act of destruction which I now  regret; it would have been interesting to see how the drawings have evolved. That said, not every drawing is successful, and I am reminded of an account I read of the destruction Agnes Martin exercised upon works that failed to satisfy her. I have made it a rule, that I do not destroy, but lay aside drawings which I come to feel as having been unsuccessful- they are steps along the way to drawings that do please my eye and mind.

It has been a day of late summer beauty, a mellow warmth making the garden a pleasant place to sit and read- in fact , I have been in the garden with Minos nearly all day, my partner having been at his place of work since seven this morning. Bereft of his company; I am finding his new shift pattern difficult to accomodate and miss him sorely, I found the garden a place of solace. At least I have completed a drawing, spoken with my youngest sister on the telephone, and tidied the kitchen, even if I have not washed my hair or practised the piano...

My beautiful piano has been silent all of this day, although I did play yesterday. The piano was made by Alfred Knight, and bears the name Knight proudly just above the keyboard. In voice it is 'bright', with a bell like treble and plangent bass. It has been recently removed from my mother's house to the house where I live, and , after three weeks of settling in, been tuned to perfection. Silas died on the day that the piano tuner worked his alchemy. The two events are inextricably linked in my mind; my first touch on the keyboard was tentative, hesitant, and I only touched the piano after my partner and I had buried Silas where I had found him in the garden. 

I am not a proficient pianist, indeed have returned to pieces I first learned at the age of thirteen , when I had weekly piano lessons with an elderly woman named Mrs Hilda Price. Some vestigial remembrance of my early schooling remains; my dyspraxic fingers are relearning the pieces more readily than I had anticipated; two pieces by Haydn, which I appreciate much more as an adult than I did as a child, and 'To a Wild Rose' by Edward Alexander Macdowell, a beautiful, tender composition.

My touch is inconstant; I lack precise fine motor control; a feature of Dyspraxia, and I notice that when I am drawing I hold the pencil extremely tightly in order to exercise control over my movements. I know that my touch on the piano keys shall never be consistent; my grip on my pencil shall never relax, but the discipline of practising scales on the piano, and making grid drawings each day may effect an improvement!As indeed the daily discipline of writing may hone my literary skills and extend my scope in terms of what I choose to write about.

Evening is coming to the garden. The birds are silent, the tall yellow daisies have ceased their dancing. I shall pour myself a glass of wine and go out into the quiet  to sit with Minos at close of day.

remnants II

Further drawings in the series of supernovae remnant drawings. I have spent the greater part of the morning and afternoon photographing drawings and adding them to this online diary; the process has been supremely satisfying. Later, I shall return to the series of solar eclipse drawings that I am making on creamy white Lokta paper, in the cool of the sitting room. However, it would be a pity not to experience the Spring glory of our little wild garden, so I shall repair outside and sit on the step of the patio, where I can breathe the Lily of the Valley scented air. These beautiful plants came from the lodge; when I knew we were to move, I dug up some of each of the plants growing in the garden there, and transplanted them in this Somerset garden. The transplantees have taken to the new soil, and the lovely Lily of the Valley have naturalised beautifully. I would that I were able to pick a posy of them for my mother, but the advice from the Government is to remain at home and avoid meeting with family and friends, particularly if they are members of the vulnerable groups. My mother is vulnerable, and although she craves our company, we are obliged to withold it for the present, however painful that may be.

new moon

In the luminous west, just proud of a gathering of feather edged, dove coloured clouds, gleams the steely sliver of the new moon, a precise, sharp tipped crescent, cut clean into the deepening ultramarine of an October twilight. Alone with the young moon in the back garden of a rented house in Somerset, utterly defenceless against the incursion of rememberance, I am recalled without warning to a garden in a more easterly county, there to gaze in retrospection upon an older moon, one waxed full and buxom, whose light embraces those standing together in commemoration of the event; a small family group, mother, father, and a daughter, one of three. Such a time ago it seems, that August evening during which we gathered to celebrate my father's newly restored sight; to be in his company when he first looked on the moon through the binoculars given as a gift, and exclaimed like a child at the wonders he could now see without the ghostly interference of the cateracts that had hitherto sorely distorted his vision.

Several years hence, he has departed this life, and his ashes are scattered in a county yet further eastwards, that which gave birth to him, but that seems woefully distant from the garden where I now salute the glowing sickle of the new moon in memory of him.

I find that I cannot curtail my tears, for although I am removed to a westerly region with a chosen one, whom I hold dearer than life itself, and have become accustomed, more or less, to our very different place of habitation, there persists a dull ache in my heart, a perpetual nostalgia for family, for places familiar, above all, a longing which cannot be assuaged, for the smile of welcome wreathing my father's face on beholding his daughters coming home to him.