Pink-tinted

Some more antidotes to excessive worrying (which is ongoing, but I have decided to stop whinging):

|  Painting. I am finally back at the easel painting for myself. What took me so long? Also, why do I always end up with the same colour combinations? I am determined to have at least one painting without berry colours by the end of next month.

|  Spring was here in the form of a mini-heatwave, then disappeared briefly, and now it's back. This was a note I came home to last week. It turns out it is safe to swim down at the shoreline that is a three-minute walk from my house. That only took me six-and-a-half years to figure out (simply ask a local).

|  A pink flower sans stem spotted on the ground by a neighbour I hadn't seen in a while and handed to me through my car window as a spontaneous gift. I put it in a glass of water, and it brightened my window sill (and mood) all week.

| Baby feet and cat-in-armchair. Whenever I visit it is like stepping into a quirky picture book, which of course is a completely rose-tinted view that ignores the sleep deprivation and other realities...

Cake for calm

 

I would like to think that when I am quiet here it means life is just so full there is no time to document it, but the opposite is true: I find that when things are good, I have more energy and can do all the living and creating and blog about it all, and there is a nice flow to it. The more you do, the more you do.

At the moment I am so stressed about money, health, work, deadlines, problems with the car and the house that I haven't had the headspace for much else, apart from certain commissions and some passive planning and researching (i.e. listening to podcasts - this is a treasure trove for creative people). As a result of being stressed my energy levels dip even lower than usual, and I neglect my relationships with others and cancel or avoid social situations, which stresses me out more because I feel I cannot function and that I am a terrible friend/partner/daughter/sister/... I just about manage to pour energy into my relationship, but almost every other area of my life seems to be suffering.  And so goes the vicious cycle.

People close to me would point out that I have a tendency to catastrophise, and I am aware that in the grand scheme of things, my current situation is trivial, and I certainly don't want to turn into a hypochondriac, analysing each physical complaint when most likely the majority of my health issues are psychosomatic. But I am just so aches-and-pains-cannot-face-the-world tired.

As usual I am not doing an awful lot of the things that I know would make it all better (I am still convinced I would be a much better person if I meditated every day...), though I did get a run in this morning - as part of my attempt to make my working-from-home days more productive, I am implementing little tricks such as pretend-commutes, and it does help to get the exercise and fresh air and sunshine first thing. But somehow my 35-min jog (and some yoga) ended up taking up most of my morning, or so it seemed.

Our exhibition in August is suddenly panic-inducingly close, and I still can't get myself to work towards it.

Sometimes I try to have more compassion towards myself and remind myself that all the work stuff doesn't matter that much at the end of the day, and that I place too much value on doing, but the fact is that my sense of self is inextricably linked to my work as an artist and illustrator, and it is important to me. And that exhibition is a real deadline, one of many. And I love what I do and made this choice. And of course while I am working on something, I am in the zone and that begets energy.

So I am rereading Art and Fear, though I already know the reasons I am stuck.

And I am adding more of the things that help me calm my mind and feel energised (see photos):

|  I made another cake from this book - this one has butternut squash in it, and I used coconut sugar instead of caster sugar. It is so good.

|  Fresh flowers and finishing illustrations.

|  Being with dogs and cats and babies.

Mini March

 A new addition (bottom right - a variation of the Long Walk view) to my series of 10x10cm canvases

Book and knitting - beautiful colour combinations happening by chance

Lionel signing books at his reading (photo by Conor Gallagher)

March is here and almost gone again, and my focus is on reducing or managing stress, panic and anxiety and working my way through everything that needs to be done with zen-like calm. At least I am aspiring to the latter.

The only thing I have painted this month apart from the illustrations is a tiny 10x10 canvas, which was a commission. Now there is only one of the ten mini paintings left (the one on the left in the photo), so I am going to get more of those canvases and continue with these scenes, parallel to working on some big(ger) paintings. I have unwrapped the canvases and lined them up; it's a start...

I am also knitting tiny things and hoping the babies they are for won't have grown too big for them by the time they are finished.

We had a room full of children (and adults, and beautiful paintings on the wall - this was The Model, which has a great collection, including one of the most significant public collections of works by Jack B Yeats) for Lionel's reading for the Sligo Children's Book Festival. It was a lovely event and one of the few times a year the three of us who worked on the books (Lionel, Conor and I) get together. Lionel did a mixture of reading and storytelling, and the children got involved, answering his questions with impressive attention to detail.

There has also been a short trip to Germany for my cousin's wedding, a long weekend that flew by but simultaneously seemed to stretch out, due to its being so different from my normal routine. That's a micro example of how 2015 has felt so far - one week rolling into the next, all a blur, while at the same time so much has happened that I marvel how it all fit into these almost three months. From next week I'll be teaching on Saturdays again after a short break, so Sunday will be my only day off, and it shall be a day for day trips, to capture a bit of that feeling of time expanding and a proper (albeit mini) holiday.

Contradictions

 Light and rice

'You may not know that an artist is not as well equipped for everyday life as you probably are and I am.' Lucian Freud's mother defending him to a police officer (quoted in Breakfast with Lucian by Geordie Greig, FSG, New York 2013, p. 58)

This sentence describes how I feel most of the time. I don't mean that in an 'I'm-an-Artist-with-capital-A' kind of way. It may well be to do with being a HSP and an introvert, two characteristics that often go hand in hand with being artistic (yes, I am deliberately piling up all the labels here, though I should be careful with such labellling...). I can be socially awkward to an extreme; chores tend to overwhelm me if they involve the outside world, and plenty of time alone is as vital as oxygen for me. I still haven't mastered ending a conversation and moving along, and being faced with a huge selection of things to choose from makes me break out in a cold sweat. That's only scraping the surface, and in case anyone thinks I am drawing parallels to Freud, I am not - I may recognise myself in a few of his personality traits, but I certainly could do with a bit of his devil-may-care attitude.

Dealing with the small everyday things is bad enough. In hindsight I can look back at two weeks of worrying over something trivial that other people wouldn't lose sleep over (and have told me so repeatedly) and marvel at my overanxious mind, but then there are the big life things - and I know there will be more and more of them as I get older, more losses and illnesses, tragedies and crises -, and I can only hope that I will get better at dealing with life.

Then I worry about how all the overthinking and fear and panic manifesting as pain or tension in my stomach/heart/lungs/head has affected and will affect my health, and bang - there is more worrying to worry about. And on and on it goes.

And even though I have made a song and dance about how much more productive I am with my new wet palette, the truth is I haven't been painting or drawing for over a week. I haven't worked on the illustrations and I haven't done anything for my 2015 exhibitions. The kicks in the backside I have requested from John now just hurt. I get cranky when he sends me a not-so-gentle reminder (threatening to keep my favourite pair of socks he has borrowed if I haven't painted anything by midnight), replying "I haven't had time - life is just too much at the moment!". Cue a spiral of self-loathing, low energy, early nights because I am so tired, more self-loathing because I didn't stay up, low energy because I slept too much (that's a thing), followed by the thought that I am almost 32 and don't have much to show for the years since I finished college.

But then I look at people like Lisa Congdon, who only started out as an artist when she was my age, and that gives me hope. If I manage to put in the hard work and deal with all the other parts of my life a bit better so I'm not too exhausted to do said work, I'd be happy with a tiny fraction of the success she has.

--------------

Lionel will be reading from our book Jumbo Discovers Giraffeland  (a physical reminder that I have done a few things in the years since finishing college) at the Sligo Children's Book Festival this Sunday. 

In a child's world

Print, mounted

Illustration and wet palette

A beautiful book

In the time that has passed since my last blog post I became an aunt (my older sister had a beautiful baby boy), which has opened my heart in  wonderful and wondrous ways.

Lately, a big part of my work has been populated by illustrations and paintings for children, and what a happy dwelling place it is. Several prints of the festival artwork have found new homes in nurseries and children's bedrooms (but not exclusively; it is nice to see that adults want the picture for themselves, too), and I am planning to do more in that vein. After years of teaching mainly adults, a new opportunity has come up to teach children again. Children's books and illustrations are such a big passion of mine, it is lovely to now be so immersed in this world as an aunt, artist and teacher.

Just before I was offered the new teaching job, I had made the decision to free up some space in the summer (the fringe festival I worked for over the last five years has been put to rest and will be replaced by a new festival, which I chose not to be involved in). I have a two-person show in August and hopefully another exhibition in September, and it feels good to see the next few months shaping up in quite a different way from previous years. Not least because this summer will bring another nephew or niece!

On a much much smaller scale than the truly life-changing events of my sisters becoming mothers, my working life has been revolutionised by the purchase of a wet palette. It keeps acrylic paint wet and means I can snatch 20 minutes here and there working on a painting instead of spending 20 minutes cursing the tubes that are so hard to open, running them under hot water in order to be able to open them, trying to gauge which colours and how much of each I need, mixing the colours, sticking the palette in the fridge afterwards in the hope they'll stay wet until the following day, when inevitably I won't have time and end up with hardened paint yet again. Now all my colours are there for me to use straight away, and when I'm finished I just put the lid on the palette and rinse the brushes. Increased productivity lies ahead.

Now that the busiest time of the year is over I am looking forward to doing things that have been neglected because they were neither work-related nor crucial for survival. One of them is to bake something from the book in the photo above, which my sister gave us. These cakes include vegetables and alternatives for regular flour, and, while far from healthy, are certainly better for you than cakes made the traditional way.

Warmth and centre

"I have always lived in houses with a chimney, that's also very important to me. 

Always fires because it gives warmth and centre, it gives light. 

I always had animals, cats and dogs." 

(Juliette Binoche in a recent interview with The Sunday Times Magazine)

As the little house I have been renting for the past six-and-a-half years (where did the time go?) begins to show the signs of the extremes in the Irish weather (cracks, damp, failing to heat up properly), I have been tempted to think in terms of need and want (complete first-world problems) rather than gratitude for what I have. I still love this place, but when I came across the above, it brought into sharp focus that the structure she talks about is missing - I felt the absence of a fire, the absence of pets. Both will come when they are supposed to, I'm sure, or maybe they won't, and that'll be ok, too, if it has been ok for the last six years or so.

After the three weeks of the cosiness of blazing fires in my mom's house, I am finding it hard to adjust again. I have been walking around with a hot-water bottle tied to my body; we attempt to curl up under a blanket on my way-too-small hard couch, and when I am on my own, I retreat to bed early because it's the one warm place (after the addition of a hot water bottle). Then I think I am missing out on so much of life by going to bed so early, and I blame the cold. Yes, ALL the procrastinating and ALL the stress is due to living in a cold house.

And yet I love spending time at home. So I am shifting the focus back onto the good things, of which there are plenty. The flowers on the table (each time I am as touched by this gesture as on the first occasion, and I photograph every bunch) are my centre in the absence of a fireplace. Or the gigantic candle with the tall flame on my coffee table, a mini fire. And I am making small, mostly inexpensive changes, because change is good, and while I don't agree with the 'update your home decor every season and buy tons of new stuff!' mentality, I do believe in Feng Shui, and I have found that some of the objects and arrangements that have been the same for years feel stagnant or are actually disintegrating into a state beyond a welcome wabi-sabi aesthetic. New bedclothes (a generous gift), the aforementioned candle, thick towels, buying prints of artwork by friends and framing them.

Even just rotating my books has helped clear some mental clutter and the feeling of being stuck. And mending clothes, sewing on buttons, finally refilling my fountain pen, polishing the coffee jug - nothing earth-shatteringly important, but it makes me feel more grounded. It may all be yet another way of procrastinating (this is how I am spending the limited time I have at home during the busiest time of the year), but it is just what I need, a form of domesticity meditation.

Floating away...

'Float Away' - artwork for Múscailt 2015 | Acrylic on paper

...for this year's Múscailt Spring Arts Festival.

In the painting the land in the distance was inspired by what I often see of County Clare from my window: tiny rectangles of white houses on greenish grey. At the weekend we went down to Clare for our escape from the busyness of this time of year and ahead of Blue Monday, today, purported to be the most depressing day of the year. I was too busy with work and being cold to ponder the latter, and my mind was still filled with the right kind of Blue - the colour, in this case of expanses of water and a cloudless sky all day yesterday.

Dog and waves, Spanish Point