The invisible threads of love and longing.

We imagine we can control so much don’t we. We concentrate so hard on the seen world. The things we create, the caring of our chidlren, the dinners we cook, he cat coughing up furballs in the corner.

But all the things that really matter, that we love and long for and our heart moves towards, are invisible.

The ties that bind us, the longing for someone we love and no longer have with us, the child in pain and on another island.

Even with artwork like mine, such a concrete thing [even when viewed online, it’s still a thing] it’s how we feel when we look at it, the relationship [association] we feel between the artwork and our lives, that really matters, not the object. I remember standing in the Wellington City Art Gallery many years ago, looking at a Seraphine Pick artwork of a child falling slowly back onto a bed, that brought me to tears. Looking at a blue I’d never seen Colin McCahon use before and being overcome. It’s not the object itself that I loved, it was the feeling it made me have. Of course, the lovely and crucial thing about artwork is that all of that IS CONTAINED in the work itself - that’s why you want to have it in your life, because you can return again and again to the feeling, to the association. It’s a vehicle for feeling.

We so often concentrate so hard on the material in this world, at the expense of all we can’t see, that is what really matters. THis lockdown has given me breathing room. To think of what it really is I want from this life, and what really mattesr. To ahve the time to think my own thoughts about what is true, to think about what it is that I really want.

I’ve been working for a month away from my home/studio, not even in the same town. While I’m looking forward to getting back to my painting studio, and to being able to send out work and my beautiful workroom, it’s made me realise it isn’t as important as I’d thought it was. I’ve made serious inroads into working in new territory artisitically in the last month and waht a joy it is.

+++++

I was on my daily walk around the hilly streets, thinking thinking thinking about which way I want to go. Head down, walking fast, I barely noticed the birdcalls and the teddybears in the windows. Then right there in front of me on the footpath was the most beautiful child’s drawing of two people holding hands with big smiles on their faces. It pulled me up short, made me wish I had my phone to photograph it. As I stood and looked, I thought how, once again, I’m being reminded that it’s connection that matters. It’s enjoying right here right now that’s importnat