Layby: how some of the best art collections in the world have been made.
I woke up heavy and down, despite waking up to my lovely partner. Forced myself to get up and put on my workout gear. Went for a walk around the streets. I began quite tearful, my head full of feeling locked in by the lockdown: fck all this smallness.
Read MoreAll of a sudden, for all of us in New Zealand [and around the world] home means something so much more than it did.
Read MoreTrying to orient myself to this stay-at-home new-normal. Spent the day feeling dark and down, trying to find my way up. It wasn't easy. Full of stuttering stumbling difficult navigation.
The rain fell heavily all day. I felt trapped. Caged. Even the ridiculously excellent scrambled eggs with smoked salmon made by my partner, accompanied by an excellent kiss, didn't lift my mood.
Finally the rain stopped and we got out for a walk. Christ it was good. But there was of course the polite moving away and tight smile from every person we encountered: social distancing is horrid.
But I did see the most beautiful sight. Two kereru in flight. They are my very favourite birds. I've been seeing them all week here in Wadestown, but they've been sitting /shuffling in trees. Today they flew low down and right toward us and I got to hear the gorgeous sound of their heavy wings beating. It completely and utterly made my day.
I'm thinking that if every day I can find it in myself
to find one beautiful thing/experience/moment, then that will keep my damn wobbly arrow pointing upward, and away from the dark fearful place it seems so easy right now to get lost in.
One beautiful thing: I hereby set my compass.
[ Navigation, 2020 is available as a limited edtion studioprint.]
A red cross for all of us who need a bit of care right now.
For the nurses and doctors and all those in essential services, including two of my sisters and my brother.
A red cross for the small grief I feel everytime I pass someone on our daily walk outside, and we move to separate from them, hold the requisite distance. Small griefs that add up to feeling quite tearful by the time I get home.
Read MoreThis is the perspective I'm taking on this. One day at a time, one foot in front of the other.
I'm a recovering alcoholic [11 years sober, YES!] and in AA they teach you the value of what many would call these days "being present". If you think to yourself "I'm never going to have a drink again for the rest of my life", it makes you want to run at a sprint to the bottle store. If you instead think, I'm not having a drink today, it makes it all so much more manageable/possible. Especially at the beginning.
So that's me now. Not freaking myself out with the wide-angle view of this lockdown [or rahui, as my friend Lisa called it, which is a much gentler and less restrictive word]. Instead going, okay, today, I'm staying at home, today I'm just seeing the people in my bubble..today I'm standing in line at the supermarket, today I saw a kereru at closequarters feeding, today I had a videocall after-work party with friends. Today. Today. Today.
And then tommorow comes and turns into today too and soon enough, all the todays become the length of time we've had to stay at home, and we will have gotten through.
[One day at a time, 2020 is available to purchase as a studioprint]
Drew this. Because here we are. Together. Us.
Read MoreThe hope of the body, on my workroom wall, 2020
I’ve had these words on the wall above where I work, for thirty years. I typed them out on the typewriter I wrote my first poetry on.
Read MoreAlways to the stars, 2019
I’ve reached for the stars my whole life.
When I was young and felt invincible, the stars represented my dreams. I wanted to be the just like the best and brightest of them, believing that with hard work and little luck, my skill and talent would make me shine and shimmer like they did. The stars were inspirational, aspirational. Especially on those not-a-breath-of-wind-cloud-in-the-sky late summer’s evenings. The kind where you walk for an hour along the shoreline, head up to the twinkling, head down to the glorious reflection in the wet sand, and the whole sky feels like it’s there for the taking.
Read MoreI made this artwork for an exhibition of the same name: Tenderness.
What is tenderness?
Google gives a definition in two parts: 1. gentleness and kindness; kindliness. 2. sensitivity to pain; soreness.
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Lay me down with a gentle hand, 2017, in L and B's unfinished bedroom, July 2018
L bought this artwork for her husband, B, for his 50th birthday. When I was at her home in Wellington the other day, she talked about how she'd wanted to show me the artwork in the finished room [they're in the middle of renovations] but kindly let me in to their bedroom anyway, and let me take photographs, too.
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