These are strange and worrying times for all of us. We were due to move house on April 15th. That’s not going to happen now because of Covid 19. We live in a remote part of west Cornwall so isolation isn’t new to us but we’re half packed to go and the studio is full of boxes full of books and painting gear.
Now that our move is indefinitely postponed I’m trying to change gear and get my head around partly returning to a working routine and have unpacked my outdoor painting materials.
To add to the surreal nature of existence at the moment the view from the house and studio has undergone a strange transformation. New potatoes have been planted and covered in polythene to warm the ground. Most people find this method artificial and incongruous in the landscape. As a painter I find it quite exciting to look at a hillside of what looks like rippling water in the wind. It looks as though the skyline has been drastically lowered and the tonal norms reversed.
Meanwhile the rooks are behaving as they always do, oblivious to our human plight, and are pairing up whilst soaring and diving in a brisk, cold, easterley wind. Its reassuring to see animal life continuing as usual when it feels as if the constants in our lives have been all but obliterated.
What you can’t see in this small work on paper is the song of a skylark that accompanied me whilst I painted.