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.

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.

sunny Saturday afternoon

 

I finish the third grid drawing this afternoon after my partner, M, has left for his weekend shift at work. The house is quiet. In the garden the fulsome breeze quickens the air and stirs the tall yellow daisies into a Gavotte. I photograph the three drawings, copy the photograph to the computer. I prefer to photograph my work place and thus my drawings , in natural light. The light which penetrates the cotoneaster beyond the window is dappled at midday, silvery in the late afternoon, which is when I photograph the drawings. 

 As I did yesterday, I find my wondering about these small, subtle drawings. My mind is full of the book by Anne Truitt; I am reading the third volume of her autobiography- I have the second on order from the United States, but this arrived by post today and I cannot wait for the third to arrive-and am swiftly drawn into her world. I cannot share her experience of being a wife, mother and artist, only that of being an artist, and a much less prominent one at that. In the third volume she describes herself as having been reclusive, a state of being with which I can identify; since the outbreak of the Covid 19 pandemic, I have become more withdrawn, less able to share my work; indeed withdrew from an exhibition at the cafe of the local Arts Centre because I felt unprepared and had lost faith in my work.

I was to have shown the grid drawings; a major stumbling block would have been-and still is- the cost of having them framed by the framer of my choice, who conducts his business in ethically admirable fashion, and is a framer par excellence. I could imagine how the little sensitive drawings would have appeared- modest- is the word that springs to mind. I am pleased with their modesty, their subtlety, but I was terribly anxious as to how they would appear to others. Often I question whether they are 'art' at all; as I wrote elsewhere it is difficult to keep the faith.

I take myself into the garden with Anne Truitt and Minos and spend a thoroughly absorbing hour or two in their company; Minos claiming my attention periodically as only he knows how to do. The little violas planted over Silas's grave are coming to the end of their exsquisite life; I must seek out winter bedding for him. Beneath the violas are planted bulbs; parrot tulips in shades of creamy lemon, burgundy and burnt orange. I only leave the beguiling Autumnal afternoon when I hear the telephone sound within the house; my youngest sister calls me, then almost immediately afterwards, my mother; we speak for nearly an hour. 

Perhaps I am a mother after all; to my own mother, who turns to us for reassurance and the allaying of fears which assume monstrous proportions in her mind. It was ever thus.

September afternoon 2020

 

Is it perversity of my part to persist in making these intense little drawings, of whose artistic merit I am undecided? I know that my partner, M, prefers the supernova remnant drawings and views the grid drawings as something I do to pass the hours and soothe my mind. It is true that colouring in one hundred and sixty nine little squares is a calming activity, and it does indeed fulfill my need to be engaged in an act of creation. If only I knew! Both Agnes Martin and Anne Truitt persisted in their work of creating abstract works which sometimes found no favour in the eyes of an audience. I am by no means aligning myself alongside these two significant artists in terms of my prowess, but their example lends me courage to continue in my own endeavour. 

It is a fine, blowy afternoon. The breeze sets the tall yellow daisies dancing, blows the thin wisps of hair that frame my face across the field of my vision. I have taken my notebook into the garden to finish the grid drawing that I began much earlier in the day, and so sit with Minos, who requests my attention every now and then by giving gentle utterance. The bench where we sit is shaded by the cotoneaster, dappled with sunlight, the moving air is refreshing without chilling.

 All the while that I am drawing the question posed above flickers through my mind. Am I truly obsessed, am I following a genuine path to growth, or stumbling through the underbrush? It is impossible to know, and difficult to keep the faith. I only have scattered comments with which to shore up my fragile confidence. I know that the person whose judgement I have come to trust, the person who frames my drawings when I am able to have them framed, likes them. My great friend L said they were beautiful; she said it twice, and although I remember changing the subject quickly, I also remember the glow of pleasure that her words engendered within me. I gave one of the drawings, entitled 'my sister's harlequin slippers', to one of my sisters for her birthday, as she had admired it. These three persons, whom I believe to have discernemnt, are those for whom I continue to make the drawings, in the hopes that perhaps one day they might find and enjoy a wider audience.

temporality

 

Hard on the heels of Silas's death , an exquisite torture overtakes me; a truly fathomless panic. I am made acutely aware of the relentless march of time and although I had somehow expected my dear little household to persist forever, I am all of a sudden persuaded that it is extremely perishable, vulnerable to the ravages of the passing years. I ask my partner to look up the definition of temporality, a word that impinges painfully upon my conciousness; we find that it is the word that describes our ultimate lack of defence in the face of changing circumstance, that it describes the condition of all that lives. All will die; we ourselves shall return to the dust from which we are contrived, the very stars will wink out and a profound darkness will prevail. I am at the mercy of this realisation for the whole of the day, although yesterday, the day when I committed Silas's obituary to print, the pit of despair yawned deeper. 

Today, despite the closing words of the journal that I keep alongside this online diary, which conveyed a desire to relinquish for good the notion of being a visual artist, I gather together a fresh palette of coloured pencils, I take up my notebook of squared paper, and I make a grid drawing, the first for days for which I have any regard. As yet untitled, it is not reflective of my state of mind, rather it suggests a lighter mood, being rendered in spiritual blues, luminescent orange and pink, dark violet, light ochre, crimson lake and turquoise.

After having coloured in one hundred and sixty nine little squares, I repair to the garden with notebook and graphite pencil, and, in the company of Minos, ambassadorial Minos, proceed to overlay each square with the graphite pencil, until a delicate veil shimmers across the colours. The completed drawing hangs in my mind like a screen; the relief I feel is immeasurable; I am convinced that the grid drawings represent the straight forward path, a path I had somehow lost sight of during my wanderings in the forest dark. 

remnants September 2020

 

It is hard enough to work at present. I am aware of the presence of a depressed mood, dulling my mind, rendering my hand inactive. Am I depressed, or is the lowering of my mood the sadness of grief? I need to be watchful, for I sense the winding sheet of depression about to enfold me. Nevertheless I find within me the resources to capture images of recent drawings with my camera. The above drawings were made, with the exception of the fourth, before the death of Silas. The fourth, the following day. There have been two others, but they do not please my eye. 

It is a day of still air and great heat. Minos seeks shelter beneath the cotoneaster; a rambling shrub that grows alongside the wall separating us from our neighbour. I sit with him for a while in quiet companionship, then repair indoors to photograph the remnant drawings made during this month. The act of photographing the drawings is helpful; satisfies my need to be active, engaged, even if I feel something amounting to horror at the hours yet to pass before my partner returns from his place of work. 

 A poet once wrote something along these lines; 'what keeps you from your work becomes your work'. I ponder this whilst I sit on the bench with Minos. I feel no inclination to work in visual terms, although did make a fresh beginning in my notebook a couple of evenings ago. I am reading 'Daybook' by Anne Truitt, which  is deeply satisfying and illuminating. I know that I could never write as she did, yet reading through some of the notes made earlier in the year I sense a voice, timorous in places, yet nevertheless a voice distinguished by it's uniqueness. My youngest sister tells me that she is keeping a journal; I resolve to do the same, to chronicle my life as I live it from day to day, jotting down thoughts, ideas, should they come, chart my emotional responses to life events as they unfold around me.

I write in different places; I haven't a consistent , dedicated repository for my words. Perhaps that does not matter at this stage. I am aware that the words I commit to this online diary are different from the words that I commit to my notebook. The very act of setting down words is different; sometimes I feel that although I cherish the idea of writing longhand in a journal with a fine black pen, I am, despite my lack of fluency at the keyboard, a better thinker when I type. Perhaps it is the question of audience that influences me and my thought processes. I know that when I publish words here, I am writing for an audience; that necessarily shapes one's thoughts in a way perhaps not utilised or appropriate when one writes in a journal. 

During the seven long years in which I was unable to make visual work, I yet found myself able to write; this means of communication has never deserted me in the way that my capacity to organise my thoughts and ideas in visual terms has, leaving a fathomless void in my life. At least there was something, a vestige of the facility to communicate; I held fast to that ability, using it to scribe my deepest fears and and insecurities about being an artist. For, despite these ephemeral drawings, and my love of the sooty black paper on which they are made, I still do not consider myself an artist; I do not believe making visual art to be my first love, despite my training and background, my years of practice.

What then? How do I then define myself? Am I a writer, despite having failed to complete written assignments on time, if at all, owing to an inability to organise my thoughts in coherent sequences? I remember the piece of written work that I submitted as part  of my undergraduate degree; I described the condition of not being able to project a presence in literary terms, the utter collapse of my thinking and ability to complete even simple sentences, my fear at making an appearence in terms of textual discourse.  It seems significant that that piece of work gained me the marks of a first class degree, even though my visual work did not.

I am moved to write at present, not to make visual work; the lack of desire in this respect is an indicator; I need to rest, during this difficult period in my life I need to lay aside any thought of visual work and instead concentrate my efforts elsewhere. Perhaps it is not helpful to worry at the question of how I define myself; it is only profound insecurity that makes me do so, an insecurity that may well be relieved at least in part by the act of commiting words to this diary, and, or, my notebook. 

I am aware of a lightening of my mood, a sense of relief; I can write, even if, for the moment, I cannot draw. I shall end the day with a feeling of accomplishment, a blessed gift that I shall carry with me until I close my eyes in slumber.

Silas

 

My partner and I had been living at Garston's Lodge for two years when the kittens were born of their feral mother whom we came to know as Alice. Their place of birth was a burrow deep beneath the wall of the garage, adjacent to the compost heap, whereon they can be seen in this photograph taken a short while after we discovered them. Silas is the tabby tucked behind his tabby sibling, for whom disaster struck and who one day was absent. This kitten we have named , posthumously, Mimas. Alice disappeared around the same time and I began the long, slow task of accustoming the remaining youngsters, Silas and Minos, to ourselves and our home. Months were spent in quiet care of them, until, one brilliantly frosty morning they came bounding down the path to meet me as I brought their breakfast. From that day they became bolder, gradually venturing into the lodge, until they became dearly loved members of our household, along with Alice, who 'adopted' us for a short while before leaving us when we were obliged to leave the lodge.

Fourteen years have passed . My partner and I no longer live at the lodge, but in a very different house in Frome, Somerset. Until September 2nd, we all; my partner, myself, Minos and Silas lived together in loving accord. On September 2nd, Silas, our gentle tabby, died. I found him in the garden where he had been sleeping. I gathered his dear body in my arms and wept into his fur. My partner and I buried him where I had found him. Days later I plant tiny, beautiful violas over him. My heart is heavy within me, for we have lost a beloved friend.