Stream running through Glendurgan – 76 x 56 cmacrylic gouache, pencil, pastel
Hedgerow celebration – 76 x 56cm collage, pencil, acrylic gouache
Wishing on a Stargazy pie – 61 x 61cm collage, pencil acrylic gouache on watercolour card
Playing the long game – 76 x 56cm collage pencil acrylic gouache
Pink dog and pea shoots collage – 46 x 35 cm pencil acrylic gouache on watercolour card
Snowdrops with cat – 61 x 56cm acrylic gouache pencil
Blackbirds with Christmas roses – 76 x 56cm acrylic gouache pencil on watercolour card
Sky goddess hovering over seedlings – 30 x 30cm collage, pencil acrylic gouache on watercolour card
The remains of summer – 76 x 56cm collage, pencil, acrylic gouache on watercolour card
Sheltering in place – 41 x 27cm collage, acrylic gouache, pencil
Tea under rose hips – 76 x 56cm collage, acrylic gouache, pencil on watercolour card
Bathing by candlelight – 25 x 31cm collage, acrylic gouache, pencil on watercolour card
Cockatoo bathing – 30 x 26cm Collage, acrylic gouache, pencil on watercolour card
Starlight tea – 76 x 56cm collage pencil acrylic gouache on watercolour card
Dreaming under the ironing board – 21 x 15cm acrylic gouache pencil on watercolour card
Bad cat with fairy lights – 38 x 51cm acrylic gouache, coloured pencil, collage on card
The last of the summer pudding – 76 x 56cm collage, acrylic gouache, pencil on watercolour card
Taxi to the airport – 30 x 30cm collage, pencil, acrylic gouache, cold wax on watercolour board
Cat on a fuse box – 23 x 30cm acrylic gouache, pencil, collage on card
Tankers passing estuary gardens – 30 x 30cm
Steps at Lani’s de Luxe – 29 x 23cm gouache, pencil watercolour on card
Tea drinker’s delight – 33 x 26 x 6cm
Cyclist passing duckweed pond – 33 x 40cm gouache on card
Planting tulip bulbs – 42 x 42cm gouache pencil on watercolour board
Chocolate eggs under Peruvian lilies – 76 x 56cm collage, pencil sweet papers acrylic gouache on watercolour card
Pool in a walled garden – 33 x 33cm collage, pencil, gouache
Dog rose – 21 x 15cm gouache, pencil on watercolour card
Rising tide – 32 x39cm gouache
Constant visitor – 30 x 28cm collage, acrylic gouache, pencil
Transitions – 20 x 20 x 3cm gouache collage, ballpoint, cold wax on Watercolour paper laid to wood
Falling out of orbit – 38 x 28cm collage, pencil, acrylic gouache
Lemony fishes – 21 x 15cm collage pencil gouache on card
Singing birds under woolly oranges acrylic – 76 x 56cm gouache on watercolour card
Recital – 37 x 26cm watercolour, gouache, collage, pencil on watercolour card
Blueberry speaks google – 26 x 20cm gouache, sweet papers, pencil on watercolour card
Boiled egg with soldiers – 30 x 30cm collage, gouache, pencil, pastel
How the ships escaped the mirror – 58 x 38cm collage, acrylic gouache
Radiator – 20 x 25 x 2cm collage, gouache, cold wax on paper laid to board
Clockwork crocodiles under tropical flowers – 60 x 51cm collage acrylic gouache pencil
Silver ragwort on the Southbank – 20 x 20cm gouache, collage, pencil, sweet papers
Owls flying past a wind farm – 28 x 28cm gouache, pencil on museum board
French truffle tulips – 30 x 24cm acrylic gouache on board
Blue star petunias – 33 x 33cm acrylic gouache, coloured pencil on watercolour card
Little ram with dog roses – 76 x 56cm acrylic gouache on watercolour card
Blue moon with euphorbia – 76 x 56cm acrylic gouache on watercolour card
Sleeping with the pelargoniums – 76 x 51cm collage watercolour gouache pencil on watercolour card
Morning glory under an orange table – 76 x 56cm acrylic gouache, pencil, collage
Peonies in a cobalt cup – 23 x 23cm acrylic gouache on watercolour card
Taking ten minutes for myself – 51 x 38 acrylic gouache collage pencil on watercolour card
Song of the Stargazy pie – 41 x 35cm collage, acrylic gouache, pencil on watercolour card
Horseradish leaves and zucchini – 76 x 56cm acrylic gouache, pencil on watercolour card
Breakfast with iPad - 51 x 38cm gouache on watercolour card
Little zebra and the domino players - 76 x 56cm acrylic gouache on watercolour card 490
Dreaming in the deep – 76 x 56cm acrylic, gouache, pencil on watercolour card
Birthday tea 21 x 15cm collage, pencil, gouache
Dreaming Steaming – 38 x 28 collage, pencil, gouache, cold wax, watercolour card laid to wood
Picnic at Prospect Cottage – 76 x 56 acrylic gouache, pencil on watercolour card
Stars above seeds below – 25 x 25 gouache, pencil, collage, cold wax, paper laid to wood
Ebook at bedtime – 76 x 56cm collage, pencil, acrylic gouache on watercolor card
The marmalade makers – 76 x 56cm acrylic gouache pencil on watercolour card
For those of us who are tired of filthy waterways and corporate greed and governments too fragile to take action. For those of us who need to take a moment to refresh our eyes. We know that on some deep level waterways have always been the veins and arteries of our land. They mirror our bodies. When we heal our waterways we heal ourselves. So symbols carry their power deep into our lives. Bypassing words. An ancient language that still exists. Forgotten. But all the stronger for that.
When I don’t know anything I play with patterns. Adrift at the edge of the unconscious sea a hedge starts with goldfinches flying past. Then somewhere along the painting trajectory an object might surface and rise like a tabletop. An island of consciousness scattered with disparate objects. Where food might become a metaphor for something else. Where characters and animals might take on other meanings. I just let things happen in their own time. Sometimes painting connects the unknown with the familiar but it’s not a rule. And I never really know anything. Thank goodness.
I look up and it’s gone 11. I had no idea of the passing of time. Here it’s always now. With nothing external to consume, my mind had been making up its own stories. I’ve stopped listening to objects. They tend to be too noisy and insistent for me. Trying to draw me back into the collective story of the external world. Always such attention seekers. Always with the drama. I leave them to worry about themselves. On this side it’s much quieter. Where things emerge by inventing their own shapes and patterns. Contrary to the rules of still life but somehow fresher to the eye. As if they’ve just been born anew. Which in a way they have.
When I get lost in the process of painting time ceases to have any meaning. Hours go by without my noticing. Joyous patterns from the natural world arrive. Humour and absurdity arrive. I just open the door and let it all in. Creatures have always had plans of their own. So I let everything go about its purposes and am awake just enough to catch it in the act.
Pink dog dreams and once again all things flow. Cascading down through fractured light. The leaves, the pods, the shoots, the flowers. All wrapping together in a joyous entanglement. Cascading down into metamorphosis. Heedless of rules. Happy in being enmeshed with everything. ‘Attention is the key to transformation’ says Eckhart Tolle ‘and full attention also implies acceptance’. Even while dreaming change is on the way. Waiting for me to catch up like a true friend.
I’m painting this and in a way I seem to be painting myself at the same time. One way or another we all do this. I spend time lavishing attention on what has arrived for me from the unconscious. Getting older seems to have made the winters longer. So perhaps that’s why these snowdrops arrived like a gift after the cold and dark. Perhaps my silly cat nature has infiltrated everything. My attention is the bridge between myself and what emerges. Questions may arise about time and presence but I just stand still blending and balancing the physical with the imaginary. That’s my only job.
Listening to Sherlock Holmes but not really following all that much. Strange events unfolding their patterns. Revealing here. Hiding there. Whatever. I’m confident the solution will arrive by a strangely circuitous route. Exactly the same way as it happens for my paintings. I stay with the uncertainty for as long as I can. Stuff that doesn’t fit. Chaos in a corner. And then, unexpectedly, something happens. I can never work out how. But I know the less I interfere with it the better. Stomping about with my boots and organising makes things worse. Solutions know things, like blackbirds, and when they fly in, they just fit.
‘Ring the bells that still can ring forget your perfect offering. There’s a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.’ Leonard Cohen - Anthem.
It’s October and we have the warm winds. It’s a new thing. I don’t remember it being like this. The acer has turned to gold and everything everywhere is in free fall. I find myself walking and gathering up any remaining bits and bobs that take my eye. No particular reason. Just an old feeling from childhood that was forgotten in a drawer. Silly really. A bit of the crazy old lady leaking out but I don’t care. Here - take a look. Horseradish leaves eaten by slugs, yellowed ferns, rose hips, final flowers. Detritus. Memories. Before everything slips away. “We are children of chaos” says Jung “Inextricably intertwined with it. Our deepest nature is disorder. This is the beginning of all things."
Sometimes there is far too much to do and I just can’t be bothered with it. I leave behind good advice and lists. I slip though all intents and purposes. Just now I need to feed my eyes. This is my tiny path to the centre. I don’t know what I think until it paints itself in front of me. Everything else fades away and has to wait while I spend time with patterns. Patterns repeat. That’s their nature. Things take as long as they take. I shelter in place while the world goes on with its business. One of the gifts of old age.
Sometimes it seems as if I follow a magical trail. Of things I like. Nothing clever or sophisticated. I play with things that mean something to me. ‘Hansel and Gretel’ I think. They did it. I find a breadcrumb here (maybe a pattern reveals itself). One step at a time. A breadcrumb there (maybe a shape comes into view). One step at a time. Another breadcrumb (maybe a smile for a silly dog). I follow what I love. One step at a time. Avoiding all the gingerbread houses. I don’t care what anyone thinks. One step at a time. I trust consistency will take me home. Through tangled forests. One step at a time. Things rise up on the paper and I let them be. In the end the painting draws breath and stands up on its own and moves off to somewhere else. Play again?
I find myself being drawn to bathing images. It’s an old alchemical symbol. A metaphor for something else. But for the moment this is what pleases me. I don’t have any reasons. But I have a feeling that resolves itself into a painting. Children love the same story over and over again. So do I. I’m putting down maps. Laying out patterns of a need that I cannot see as yet. Stepping stones into the future. So I play until I don’t want to anymore. Then change comes along and moves me elsewhere.
Sometimes what emerges is not what I want. I admire other things but it’s never what happens to me. I used to fight it but in the end I let go of wanting and started to pay attention to my own story. Sometimes it's the same story over and over but with little twists. I like it. It’s nourishing and exciting. It’s telling and re-telling something I can’t hear clearly. (Deaf old thing.) Repeating. Adapting. It’s why we all watch and re-watch and re-read and listen again to soaps and books and films and poems and music. Metaphors for something else. The start of an adventure…
I try to pay attention to the small things. It’s hard because they slip by so quickly I tend to miss them. Especially when the world is always telling me to hurry up. So I have to slow down to catch them at their own speed. They send me tiny clues. Drawing my attention to things I like. Dogs and tea time and stars and such. Thankfully my memory isn’t as sharp as it was and I tend to hang back. ‘Attention’ said Simone Weil ‘is the rarest and purest form of generosity’. So I take the time to be generous and kind to myself. Slow time emerging gloriously from the inner self. Dredging up delightful treasures of happiness.
A dog sitting weekend. Pepper desperate for a walk. Plunging through the front door with enthusiasm panting on her tongue. Her lead thrumming with wind. Sycamore seeds and rose hips throwing themselves at her head. Adventuring. Then, when we return I walk up to my workshop and meet a stark white surface. Breathing in I take a leaf out of her book and plunge with enthusiasm into whatever is unsafe and unknown.
At first he was looking but not touching. Then he was thinking. (Personally, I would never recommend you do this at home.) Then he made a move and the finger of chaos theory finally caught up with him. He’ll be fine. But the other ‘stuff’ not so much. The cosmos at work.
In other words the life of the plant is also within us and it becomes the symbol for a sort of non-biological quality, for the thing we call spirituality. Plant life becomes the symbol for spiritual life. The unfolding of the spirit is based on the analogies of plant life.’ Carl Jung Visions
Memories of so many early starts for Gatwick airport seem to have blended together with the song "All my bags are packed I’m ready to go... taxis waiting he's blowin' his horn..." inspired by John Denver's 'leaving on a jet plane'.
He sits on a ramshackle fuse box; a dangerous, galvanic lair. All around people pass by making remarks and judging but never touching. He remains spectacularly unconcerned. He and Kali are secretly and silently fused together, swimming side-by-side through the glorious electric sea of life. Moment-by-moment flashing through the tiny spark of the ‘now’, in-and-out of the scalding joy of the present. ‘We don’t care’ they shout ‘we don’t care about your standards and codes - we are apex survivors’. All around people pass by and look but dare not touch. He’s a spy in the House of Kali while she, goddess of all she surveys, provides one of her sublime gestures.
As the earth turns and the day edges imperceptibly into night a door opens and reveals an unknown blue planet. For a moment everything changes. For a moment I am disoriented. Gravity and distance disappear. Remote tankers hang in an ultramarine haze. Shadows transform into plants. Stones metamorphose into sea creatures. The blue air is so still and deep that the horizon vanishes, blending together sea and sky. From the foreground an arc of land emerges saturated in a blue dye, Its details slightly more distinct but still they trick my eye into seeing strange shapes and fantastic flora. Maybe I am under the sea. Maybe I am on the moon.
Most mornings I would put on my straw hat and Birkenstocks and stroll down to the supermarket to buy a few things. Holiday shopping. A little wine, bread, local cheese - nothing too difficult. Most mornings I would pass Lanis with its white stone staircase curving down around its walls and in the distance I glimpse the sea and hear the sound of the waves. Wonderful banana trees arching through the gardens, succulents falling over themselves, magnificent cacti and palms. So I tried to capture a little of that sun-warmed luxurious atmosphere and bring it back to cold, wintery London.
A small ritual carefully prepared and set out ready for the discerning tea-drinker. A favourite little teapot gently steaming, adored by mis-matched teacups that stand expectantly in front of a paper doily. Old velvet birds fly in the background. Maybe it’s a child’s tea party, laid long ago. Maybe it’s a reminder to enjoy the simple things of life. In this three-part assemblage each painted section has been cut and placed in front of another piece, giving the impression of a little stage set. The assemblage has then been mounted in an acrylic box which can be wall-hung.
A cyclist zips past the pond resplendent as a dragonfly in his fluorescent Lycra. One moment a bright slash passing across the eye - gone the next. I sit and move my pencil across the page and reveal my uncertain explanations of drawing while the ducks glide through the weeds, their wake leaving behind its own explanations. I can’t enter his bright fast world. I am engrossed in smaller activities in a different time zone. Then, looking up for a moment it seems as if the humps and hillocks in the distance continue to mimic the bumpiness of his ride while the nearby bitter-cress scribbles mysterious shapes on the breeze. Semiotics everywhere - signs and meanings.
I spend a damp morning planting bulbs. Then, going indoors I start painting tulips until I am taken unawares when a different thought scurries past. So easily distracted. Well, I think, these things happen. The world refuses to be ordered and predictable. Let them come then, rushing and racing. Searching. Intent on surviving and disrupting everything that stands in their way. Life running wild through its patterns. Organised ideas are so often a mistake. Inevitably stale, they bypass the excitements of change and chance, they cut us off and herd us into cul-de-sacs. I was creating clouds of tulips using Fibonacci principles but the squirrels outmanoeuvred me using chaos theory. Come the spring their forgotten bulbs will suddenly appear, rioting in unexpected places. My worthy efforts, massed together, will look pedestrian by comparison.
I painted out most of what I had put in. My eye falling and falling helplessly into an endless sea-green. Then, inevitably, my stalker followed me here waving the rules of perspective, vanishing points and other logical thinking. For people smarter than me. “Yes” I said “Yes, I know” as I walked past good advice and into the hypnotic petals of alstroemeria leaning towards me with their seductive gaze. This is what happens when I try to stop eating chocolate.
I could have drawn into that blue pool. I could have indicated tiles or water or even a swimmer but I didn’t. I kept with it for months but nothing opened itself to me. In the end when everything else had been completed and sat quiet against its neighbour I caught a glimpse of it unawares in a mirror. In that moment it seemed to me as if it was just a breath of blue. So I let it go. Sometimes it’s what you don’t do.
Sometimes I still think of my gentle old Freddie. Sitting under the Mimosa tree with a clump of blossoms on his head. It still makes me laugh. What do we know of dogs? Not enough of their inner life….
Right from the beginning we are warned. Boundary flags. Indicators. Symbols. Just beyond here we enter the waters of the unconscious. The great energy field of life. But for now, while I paint, we are still children bathing in the warm salty sea. We paddle, laugh, take selfies, mess about. Hypnotised into thinking that we are protected by illusions of technology, harbour walls, whatever. So it’s only when I walk away from the experiment that I become aware of the alchemical nature of the pool, its amniotic fluid, it’s transformative power, repairing us, returning us to the beginning. How we are all part of the same web and what we do touches everything.
It’s my own fault really so it’s no use complaining. He comes every day. A nuisance and a delight. A nuisance digger and a breath of life rummaging in the garden. “Have you been feeding this squirrel?” My friend asks staring into the garden. Guilty in one. “Yes I have” I say. She turns and just looks at me. I know, I know. I live somewhere on a continuum between regret and happiness. But age tends to even things out in the end and I’m content to let things slide and just see what happens. As in painting some things may need to be patched up. Some things can be left and they will see to themselves eventually. I just enjoy the sunshine and the light.
Displacement activity is a vital component of my life. I find things to occupy myself with while elsewhere, in the back of my mind, as if behind a curtain, the unconscious prepares whatever surprise it wants. It’s a slower being. Totally unresponsive to tricks or pleas or requests, always going its own way. I scurry around reacting to one thing or another. The treadmill of life is my daily bread. But somehow I end up cutting a fern out of card, or coming across an old design marked up with biro, or a discarded image made years ago. Nothing purposeful you understand. Nothing that could be misconstrued as planning. Just playing. Assembling. One thing transitioning into another. Random spots into a butterfly. Paint into collage. Little shifts in perspective. That sort of thing….
I sit at my workbench, the windows flowing with water, beside me a dish encrusted with gouache. I am adrift in one of Alfred Wallis’ boats. I am adrift watching mysterious planes come in to land. I dip into an envelope and draw out paper scraps - maps celestial, maps terrestrial. Haphazard directions. Let me throw them in like runes. I know nothing of this, how things come together but anyway my wet brush revives these forgotten drab colours and I journey on. An uncertain traveller in a strange land coming from the cold and dark using pencils and paint to search towards something. Attentiveness is the natural prayer of the soul. (Malebranche). It’s all new to me. Every time.
Looking over things I begin to wonder about sardines. I seem to paint them on a fairly regular basis but I don’t know why. Unconscious in the middle of life. Asleep. The evidence is there. Indisputable. Symbolic of the silver suppleness of ideas, thoughts. Giant shoals of them moving through the seas. Thousands. I just manage to catch a scant few and put them into tins for consumption. A clumsy attempt at something.
I didn’t think this one was going to work out. I spent some time trying to assemble its parts from things I liked the look of. Several times I was going to paint over and start again. But then you know it started to breathe and life arrived in the shape of the twining of leaves and the dipping of flying birds. Before I knew it I was just following along behind just filling in the spaces it left for me. It’s no good pretending to be in charge of things. Best not to think.
Inevitably, movement draws my eyes. My sight has been genetically engineered to spot lurking predators. An ancient risk management strategy which, today, has its limitations. But still it’s hard to suppress my Stone Age imprints. Trying to separate what I see from what I know leads me into strange perceptions. Pushing against the grain of taught logic. ‘Nothing worth knowing can be taught’.
I have no idea what on earth he’s taking about. To my ear garbled sound-fragments seeking resolution. Still, he looks back at me expectantly. I’m charmed and hypnotised into responding but only with equally inane phrases. Two idiots talking nonsense to one another. You’ve got to laugh...
Under a glowing arc of light sit the familiar nursery foods. Friendly toast and eggs. They invite us into a comfortable, homely world. Marking a boundary. Outside, moving past what we know and out into the cold and dark, anonymous cars drive by under a star filled sky. Headlights and brake lights reflect from chrome and paint. Rushing. Purposeful in their mysterious activities. Further away, half hidden behind the trees a fox waits for something. Watchful eyes reflecting the light. An impression of a suburban street in darkness. The familiar in the middle of the unknown. Acrylic gouache layered over collaged elements, objects immersed in the deep peering out into the conscious surface. What do we know?
Mirrors. Ancient magical fields. An eye on a separate world of endless probabilities. An eye on the quantum field’s delighted response to ships freeing, sailing away. During the day firmly restricted by consciousness to a painting on the side of a pot. And yet, (despite all our combined efforts) those other, secret, realities are never lost, hiding in cracks, mistaken for something else, unwittingly glimpsed. Quantum power at work. Then, in the night mirror liminal spaces open up and those separate realities emerge from their hiding places. Living unexpected lives. Living the excitement of playing with endless probabilities. ‘You become what you give your attention to’ (Epictetus).
Mid morning. A dead time. Cold pearly light falling on a piece. Doubtful, unfinished. All thoughts muddled and foggy. I hold a cup of tea. Radiator has my back. He glows with constant, friendly encouragement. Positive in his heat as patterns and shapes emerge. Glowing here, rising there, crackled, irradiating. I turn towards his small fierce warmth and start on something new and immediate. I turn to his positive energy, his optimism, his stoicism in times of misgiving and risk. ‘All shall be well’ said Julian of Norwich. ‘All shall be well and all manner of things shall be well’. So I take courage and plunge on with my brush and scissors revealing hopeful thoughts buried within the depths.
Sometimes ideas just come along, banging on my door, demanding I play with their games. “Who are you?” I shout pretending I can’t hear. “What do you want?” I ask - but deep inside I know they want to cause disorder and silliness and won’t leave quietly. So logic says I might play for a bit and they will let me alone. But the truth is that once in, they will spread themselves about and bring their friends. Then anything I might want gets pushed aside and painted over. Some things are just not worth mentioning.
Across the river from the Southbank stands the Savoy Hotel. Strong and sturdy, firm of purpose. Corporate. A grey pyramid of a thousand windows. But here, on the south side of the Thames silver ragwort hides its its delicate nature in the flower beds. A shy, unregarded weed. A delight of butterflies. Scattering its tiny seeds to the wind. The taming power of the small.
I don’t search for happiness but still it can find me. In liminal places. Along the edges of things. While I’m filling the kettle owls flying silent against the dawn sky. Existing in the remaining slivers of unclaimed land. In our forgotten leavings. Walking upstairs to my workshop I am unexpectedly filled with delight to find a dark river flowing under a blue tree. And so time flies, hours pass and I am caught like a midnight boat on a current anchored by a red buoy. Marking in a landscape, painting wind turbines high on the crest of a hill. A bush happy with its silver leaves growing on a slope. The joy of the simple. If it can find me it can find you too.
They come from the darkness. From the mysterious sleep of bulbs. From a spade’s depth of earth. From having been planted and, quickly forgotten, slipped down into unconscious caverns. But always silently alive. Patient living crystals. Then, in answer to some imperceptible command they begin again. Searching for the light. Searching for warmth they thrust out and then arriving unexpectedly, they softly explode their ruffled petals. Opening. Blazing. Drawn up by the wonderful glory of the sun. So we have that in common then. We are all creatures of light. We just don’t remember. Here they are surrounded with black and the heat of orange as a mark of their journey.
Every year I grow petunias in my window boxes. A ubiquitous plant, often overlooked. An old lady’s plant and a hypnotic enchanter. The way the flowers space themselves out to make the most of the sun. The way the dying blossoms disappear overnight. The way new flowers arise and replace, finding new spaces. The way they have no time for looking back and need to move on with life. The way they direct bee traffic signalling runways with white stripes across velvet petals. But to arrive here I had to let go of things. Realism - I let go of that.
On my walk, before the morning breaks open, I come across entanglement. A great polyphonic chord stops me in my tracks. Filaments of morning mist still hiding in its busy heart. Flat paper roses popping here and there. My thoughts skittering, as they do. Polishing the surface, unable to gain entry through thinking. Such riddling, such tangling and twisting. Such mazes and puzzles rooted in our shared history. The impenetrable forest. The unreachable castle. The insoluble problem. Then, carrying this wonderful randomness home I reach my blank paper. We are spirits briefly caught in the net of life.
Euphorbias stand proud in my garden. They catch my eye as I water the lavender. Their huge heads last for months. Slowly turning from a vivid green to yellow before they completely fade away. Their cycle somehow imitating that ebb of energy between paintings when I return to my boring self and have nothing else to say.
Coming home with shopping, my bags brush past the trailing pelargoniums by the front door. I put the groceries away and, cup of tea in hand, make my way up to the workshop. Just sitting with paints and brushes. Doing nothing. But still somehow the citrus smell of their leaves has found me here. Absorbing me into their dark scented heart. Dreaming them into a long narrow space the way they hang. Not a shape I would personally have chosen but I move myself aside. They don’t need me now. Doing nothing again.
Just so much music here. The big blue trumpets of the morning glory. The pink silver bells of the Rosa glauca. Even the orange table is not free of noise. The milk jug continues to remonstrate with the coffee pot. An old grudge. No one remembers how it started. The glass keeps well out of it. Only the coffee mug does what it should and contentedly puffs out a cloud of steam. Lovely.
Not everything has to be liked. Not everything has to be sold. Some things are for my own delight. I’m on this path just like you are. We can enjoy our own things, take pleasure in our own thoughts.
The unconscious is entirely unconcerned with my sense of time or urgency. A slow, unreliable companion. Even in its gentle moments it’s never biddable. Shape shifting as it swims around the conscious island I have made for myself out of scraps and notions. Its dark waters hiding ancient purposes. Just now and again leaving apparently random fragments for me to encounter. By comparison I am an idiot child, impatient and full of silly ideas stumbling from room to room distracted by shiny things. I still don’t know how we found each other.
Old summer has grown his whiskers now. Dry grasses nodding past the solstice. Birds half disappeared standing among the drying stalks of shepherd’s purse. Winter still distant but looking around. I ferret through my workshop throwing out things I had once thought important. Now dried up husks, their meaning forgotten or never really my own story. Always getting ready for the flow of coming change. I have nothing I want to win and nothing I want to do. Those ideas belong to some previous story. Age has embedded me here in its delightful present like a fly in amber. So happy to pick up whatever comes….
I grow horseradish for its leaves. It feeds my constant amazement. How they grow straight up and up from the soil. No dividing or fanning. No fancy business. They only have one job. On the other hand zucchini go for unexpected consequence. Such swellings and protrusions leading to contorted flower hats. Leaves scrambling every which way. I can only admire such rich diversity.
Each morning the news comes scrambling to my door. Cramming my eyes with its mix of the starving, the money-glazed, the poisoned lands, the greedy. Until I lose myself and have to fall back and touch my simple inner world where the green springs out with its abundant growth. Where the ancient seeds lie. Where I reach up to birds flying into blue and I am home.
Enjoying a little time with my granddaughters, seeing their delights, listening to their stories. So my painting and playing roll in together as I go. So the unconscious comes out of the darkness rich with leaf and colour and into conscious light.
So once again I arrive at the white page that offers no solution and once again I am hopeless in its grip. So once again the real work starts. Dreaming again among the glorious entanglements of nature. No big vision here, no fully formed composition. Painting among the odds and ends. The treasures from below. Just the wonderful mess of reality coming together in random spurts. It’s always further than you think but still closer than you know. And I never know anything. So that’s helpful.
At my time of life birthdays are no longer the welcome celebrations they are for my granddaughters. For me, it’s just another one to add to so many that have gone. But still I love to see their anticipation and excitement - and once again I can laugh and share their happiness and that of so many others. Happy birthday.
Becoming a dog owner I became a pack member. I didn’t know it at the time. There was no clear explanation as to how it came about. But after a while I understood it and had to give way. It was in part the constant following. Everywhere. It was an ancient, serious business. I say this, but I have no proof. But since I am “not entirely dependent on space and time” (Jung) I can say whatever I want. And then again I am comforted in this because people say all kinds of things they know nothing about. So there is that.
Somehow the unconscious scatters the seeds of synchronicity and entanglement across my painting. Ideas spring out of the darkness and burst into leaves and flowers. Thoughts twine and twist above my head. Everything with its own voice. Dogs and cats give advice. Stones dream and remember and speak. Below mimics above in its own way. Here at the unclaimed boundary a vanished forgotten sea still ebbs and flows. Still not finished with us after all this time.
For those of us out on the edge, far from the noise, far from reality, I catch at silence and its intangible offerings. The fascinating pull of objects that appear when I don’t know what to do or how to do it. Putting one foot in front of the other. Disinterested in the results but still moving along through my own darkness while planting my own small thanks for everything.
There’s a lot of comfort to be had from listening to pulp fiction. Mostly it removes the need to think which I suppose can also make it pretty pointless. But I find that it can also be freeing since it allows other elements, previously hidden by logical thought, to emerge. Life goes on as the writer burbles away in the background. Mysteries get solved. Goodies get their reward. The missing are found. Bad fortune turns to good. Baddies get whatever they deserve. Mostly. It’s another world but not one that needs my close attention. A relief really from the news and the general unhappiness. Mostly.
Sometimes I can’t get out to be in nature as much as I would like. Walking and using my eyes to pay attention to all the tiny details, slowly allowing the greenery to cleanse my spirit from the outside. Step by step. So instead of rambling I feel the unconscious conspiring from where it lives in its non-spatial universe, sending its images to restore me from the inside. I wait for its arrival by being available, by paying attention. Step by step. Only doing what I have to. Being quiet, being alone, slow and patient. No expectations. Then happiness begins to unfurl itself like a great flower. So much to be grateful for.
Copyright © 2026 Gertie Young