Breathing Deep, Free From Our Cling-ons
Taking time to play – green food colouring, bamboo pen and wax blobs
A couple of days ago, whilst cycling during our delicious ‘break out of isolation exercise hour’, we rounded the corner at the end of the village, turned right into Market Weston Road and instantly met a small gang of tree surgeons. They’d obviously been at it for a while, as wood chippings lay dusted across the road. My first thought was, “OMG! not the oaks!!”, but as I slowed down I quickly noticed that they were not in the process of felling this glorious avenue of 15 oaks, but engrossed in something much more hopeful.
Since we’d arrived in our village two years ago, I’d bleated on incessantly about how the dense ivy was running amok through the majestic bows of these great elders and was in the sure process of strangling them to death. I felt powerless. It seemed inevitable that these ghastly ivy-triffids would win the day and destroy their mighty hosts.
But salvation arrived wearing hard-hats and wielding chain-saws and I wobbled past with joy, catching sight of the severing of these life-sucking ivy stems, which were as thick as my calf and running in dense criss-cross tendrils around each oak’s trunk. At last these suffocating parasites were being cut from their source and given their marching orders. The stranglehold of these invaders must have been immense. They’d been at it for years, slowly, slowly encroaching on the trees, determined to possess them at any cost.
Dramatic language I know, but it got me thinking about how creativity can get sucked from us over the years, almost without us noticing. Or maybe it’s more that life intrudes so aggressively on our lives that we forget what we’ve lost and can’t remember how to breathe deeply, free from our cling-ons.
This week, troubled by the news and alarmed by the suffering that COVID-19 has brought, I’ve found it hard to breathe with ease in my art practice. I noticed that I could only work for short stints and I was struggling to make instinctive decisions and focus. At one point I retreated to the kitchen, pulled out some food colouring and had a play, just allowing the inks to run free and then adding marks with my bamboo quill. My collage work had felt intense and claustrophobic. I needed to step away.
I’m only a few weeks into this process of observing my creative journey and I’m aware that a tightness to ‘stay in control’ and ‘get it right’ is starting to muscle its way into my thinking. So I’m cutting that free right now.
My lovely friend Louise put it perfectly, as she described how the pandemic was affecting her in all aspects of her life, when she said, “I’m fighting for sunshine and light, everyday.”
Food colouring, cold tea, black ink & wax
