Looking at green

A gift of rosemary and homemade rosemary pesto

The cygnets are growing so fast

Doing new versions of older paintings

While I try to move my 'office' outside as often as possible, there have been too many days spent working indoors for too long. My eyes get tired quickly in front of the computer, and even though I love the smell of my studio (and I mostly use water-mixable oils now, so rarely need turpentine - and when I do I use low-odour solvent), after a few hours my lungs are crying out for fresh air and I need to look into the distance, at green growing things, or at the sea.

A while ago I made daily walks a non-negotiable, because it can be too easy to not do the things you know are good for you and you enjoy. I no longer count walks into town from work (lovely as they are, past the swan nest and other delights); there has to be a proper walk just for the sake of walking. At the moment it tends to be evening time; the morning mirror-a-commute walk when I work from home has fallen away, but I might reinstate it and go running in the evening. There are no rigid rules.

Even though full-on summer has been sporadic here, at this time of the year  I crave being in nature all the time. Sometimes when taking out the compost - a few steps across the garden to the wall - it hits me how wrong it feels to be indoors on such a glorious day, and I look forward to doing laundry, because I get a few minutes at the clothes line.

This year I want to get into gardening more (and it looks like it will happen). In the meantime I tend to the few plants I have here and enjoy the abundance from other people's gardens.

Pencil and paint

 Mounted drawings

 Mini-in-progress

Sketch for illustration

This has got to be the most productive phase of my life to date, and long may it continue. Though I realise there will be pauses and blocks, and they need to happen. Once I have figured out what has brought on this change from being an expert procrastinator to actually 'getting my stuff done', I'll share it here.

Preparation used to be almost counter-productive for me, a key part of the process that ended up being the only thing I would do for weeks (though the lines between preparation and the 'actual' work are of course often blurred). I would spend so much time preparing, organising and imagining and then wonder why I had nothing to show for all my 'hard work'.

A few weeks ago I ordered a lot of mounts (from a wonderful Irish company), intended for future prints of my paintings. I proceeded to store them under the spare bed, and then worried about them because a) I am a big believer in keeping the space under the bed empty, and b) mounts are fragile and Irish houses are damp. I would take one mount out to use it and try to wrap the rest in a way that would keep them dry and not damage the corners. Then I moved them to some thin drawers, which is a much better home for them.

And then I thought of all the original drawings I have and decided to start using all the mounts now rather than wait for the prints. Five of the original Jumbo drawings are now mounted and available for sale in our Etsy shop. It feels good to move from a preparatory state to action.

The mini paintings of Irish scenes have proven quite popular, especially the Long Walk one, and I finally bought some more 10x10cm canvases and work on them when taking a break from the large works-in-progress. I do a different underpainting each time and change the colours a bit, and they are never exactly the same as previous ones.

The illustrations for the book I have been working on since the autumn are nearly finished - one more double-spread to go, and of course that final scene is the most daunting.

With this newfound energy and productivity I hope to get back to posting here more often, and not just updates about my work...

Treasures on the coffee table - and beyond

Two recent additions to the piles of books on my coffee table - John got me these after I showed him this short film, which he loved as much as I do (especially the bit about Lincoln's pocket watch).

There is so much to discover in these books, down to wonderful details such as the endpaper (third photo above). The endpaper of the book I am illustrating at the moment will have a repetitive pattern of elements from the illustrations, and I am looking forward to adding these little touches. Kalman's work always acts as a reminder of the utter joy and delight of drawing and painting, looking and noticing, for me (among lots of other things), and I would buy her books for the endpaper alone.

On Monday morning I set up office on the wooden deck in the garden, and it was the start of a productive week. Just like sleeping with your head on the foot end of the bed, shaking things up this way seemed to trigger a flood of new ideas and different approaches in my brain. My outdoor "desk" then turned into a picnic table when my friend arrived with her children. This place is paradise when the sun is out. This week we also discovered a new-to-us walk in Spiddal and a new hidden beach. We listened and sang along to a cover of Tom Waits's "Ol' 55" in a lovely pub, which prompted me to play Closing Time in my class yesterday, and just when "Martha" finished the band downstairs in the College Bar started playing that very song in preparation for a wedding, the afters of which we attended in the evening. And today is Sunday.

The in-between

I have been moving between states of joy, exhilaration and gratitude and huge sadness and grieving, up and down and up and down and in-between, and while I am typing this the realisation is this is life, and there will be more and more of this. My 81-year-old neighbour and friend, always an inspiration, who has had more tragedies than should befall one person, would be matter-of-fact: "What can you do? That's life. You just get on with it."

More losses this week (a death - and the suffering that preceded it - that seems incredibly unjust), the week in which John remarked that my new paintings seem to be about loss, again, when it wasn't clear to me. But I also want them to be about the fullness of life, and I am doing or trying to do both, reaching for more vivid colours, painting scenes from my life, fruit, flowers, interiors, people and animals I actually know as well as the archetypes and stylised symbolic imagery I tend to use.

In my twenties there seemed to be so much time stretching out ahead; now I am acutely aware of how little there is, and the geographical distance adds another layer of urgency. People are dying, whole chapters, entire books closing, and I could list my regrets, all the things I should have said and done when they were alive. It is over thirteen years since our dad died. Soon I will have lived more time without him than with, a strange new thought.

And then there are people declaring their love for each other, babies growing so fast you could almost watch, and old friends getting in touch.

So my heart is heavy and full. Two weeks ago a friend sent me this link (by a Galway-based psychotherapist - his website is worth a read), and while I haven't done the exercise long enough to report on it, I can say that yes, there is an instant result or shift, a feeling I rarely get to feel with my usual overthinking - something very close to complete peace and relaxation.

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.