All calm

My current moisturiser, made by my sister

A present for a friend

Milk and mask

December can be stressful at the best of times, but we have a choice in how we deal with it, and while I never really got that worked up about the season and am striving to eliminate the word 'stress' from my vocabulary (I am a big believer in the power of words and Marisa Peer's approach), this year we simplified it even more by agreeing to no longer give presents to every family member and generally opting for low-key in all areas. I kept up the tradition of baking different varieties of German Christmas biscuits, with my nephews helping me. The highlight of the pre-Christmas period was hearing John sing with the ConTempo Quartet again, in three different venues. The last gig had me in tears throughout.

It is an emotional time of the year for me. Christmas heightens the absence of those we have lost - the other day it struck me that I am the age (36) that marks the point where I have had half my life with my dad and half of it without him. Two years ago I miscarried a week before Christmas on the day of our 12-week scan and then was diagnosed with stage III lung cancer out of the blue a few months later. Both last year and this year I had CT scans of the brain, thorax and pelvis in mid-December with all the scanxiety surrounding them, and last year around this time my mum had tests that would lead to her being diagnosed with breast cancer. My feelings are swinging wildly on the pendulum between exhaustion and fear on one end and immense gratitude (my new mantra, given to me by my amazing hypnotherapist, is "Thank you Life") and joy on the other: right now, my mum and I are doing well; we have food and shelter and peace in our countries and loving humans and animals around us. I spend my days with fulfilling and rewarding pursuits, and in a lot of ways life is good.

Self-care is high up on the list of priorities this month and always. Two calming and grounding elements I find easy to incorporate into every day are aromatherapy and nature. I painted the forest scene above as a present for a friend, and it was quite meditative and therapeutic. Forest bathing has become a vital part of my healing, and in a way it has returned me to my roots (excuse the pun): we grew up in a village close to a forest, and my friend still lives there (as do my mum and younger sister). It brought back memories of foraging for wild mushrooms and hiking with my dad and all the exploring and playing we did in and around the forests of our childhood. I loved using so many different greens in this painting. Patients looking out at green from their sickbeds tend to recover faster, and luckily the views from our house offer an abundance of green.

My sister made me a lotion containing frankincense essential oil - I have been using this oil in various ways since I found out about its anticancer properties (I put it in a diffuser during my daily yoga practice, for example) - and geranium oil, one of my all-time favourites. I haven't asked her for the recipe yet, but a quick Ecosia search (I still use 'google' as a verb, even though I switched to Ecosia) yields a lot of great homemade beauty products including frankincense oil. It works well for all skin types, and the scent is heady and musky.

My friend Vu gave me the Weleda lavender bath milk when I was going through treatment. The combination of lavender and a milky consistency makes for one of the most soothing baths. It comes in glass, as does the seaweed face mask from a local company worth supporting, White Witch - their products are organic, vegan and ethical. John bought the mask for me, and I first used it after the worst of the chemoradiation, on the morning I finally felt stronger again, as in strong enough to apply and take off a mask (the things we take for granted when we are well!). I visualised myself emerging renewed and clear of all toxins and illness after rinsing off the mask. It smells energising, as it also contains mint, which together with the seaweed and the green tea forms a perfect trinity of green.

A small island in winter

We picked the coldest day of this year for our overnight stay on Inis Meáin. To conquer the cold we spent most of the time walking and some of the time drinking hot whiskey. This was my fourth time on the island, and it has to be one of my favourite places for walking. If you struggle with practising mindfulness, walk on Inis Meáin. The view is spectacular no matter where you are, and the abundance of stone walls creates a trance-inducing pattern to traverse. You are reminded how very little you actually need in life. We certainly didn't miss wifi; we both read more than we had read in the previous two weeks.

I had brought Robert Seethaler's A Whole Life (I got it in the English translation, as I wanted to pass it on to others), and we both read it in one go and loved it and reread passages. With its themes of landscape and solitude, it was a fitting read for this place. Then I started and finished Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift, and while it would be far-fetched to make a connection, it also seemed a perfect read for this island retreat. Perhaps it is something to do with the act of reading a novella in a small house on a small island, a strangely beautiful haunting atmosphere evoked in a slim volume, an entire universe revealed in one sitting. There was also this contrast: It describes an unusually warm day in March 1924, and I read it on almost the same date of this unusually cold March of 2018 and imagined feeling the buzzing warm air.

The renovated cottage we stayed in gave us a glimpse into what life would have been like for the islanders of the past and still is for some. We saw picture book scenes that no doubt were the beautiful façade of a labour-intensive existence - a lamb next to a cockerel in a field, cows with healthy thick coats, painted water pumps. The Harry Clarke windows in the church are worth repeat visits. The people we rented accommodation from were in love with the island and chose to come back after time on the mainland, and while it can be bleak and harsh, especially in the colder months, it has its own rewards.

I read and walked and slept (or attempted to sleep) through stabbing chest pains that have had me on edge for the last two weeks and returned, if not without symptoms, more at peace. And the sun came out on the second day; we opened the front door and got a chair and sat in the perfectly sheltered entrance.

On the easel | Irish landscapes

The first land-(and sea-)scape is a recent commission, which prompted me to paint another one in the same format. I look at the first one, and certain elements and colours make me think of the writer Ali Smith, whose Desert Island Discs I was listening to while working on the painting and whose book How to be Both I read a few weeks ago.

These formed associations can be strong and lasting - the painting or drawing will bring back memories of whatever I was listening to at the time, down to flashes of sentences. That's why I am selective in what I listen to in the studio (no radio apart from Lyric FM) or work in silence.

Which makes me think, my students have no choice - I can only hope that my playlists of 'mellow music for the art classes' (the general consensus seems to be that background music is desired) do not offend anybody's audio/visual synthesising.

Early morning walks

While daily walks have become a non-negotiable for me, I would love to be the person who goes for a walk or a run first thing in the morning. Especially when working from home, as a pretend commute. And on days off.

At least once a week over the past three months I have got a sense of what it feels like to be that person. I was offered some part-time work in a neighbouring village for a few weeks on the days I would normally work from home (saving up for that external wall insulation!) that mainly requires me to just be there, so in the 90% of quiet time I can do my own (portable) work.

Since we share a car and the village isn't within walking distance, John drops me off on his way to work, meaning I arrive almost an hour early, and in that hour I walk to the next beach. It is wonderful - I get all the benefits of a walk and the sound and smell of the sea and the sublime colours of winter sunrises. The days I do this I feel less lethargic while sitting at the desk. And yet I haven't done it once on all the other days when I didn't have an extra hour 'imposed' on me in this way.

Habits take months to form (the 21 days is a myth, sadly), and this job will come to an end before that magic turning point might arrive, so I will need to rely on my willpower and overcome my 'inner pigdog', as the German language calls the lack of the former, to make it happen. I am a morning person, after all.

In mounts and frames

 

Even though I have most of my illustrations stored quite safely in portfolios, I am always relieved when I mount one of them and slip it into a protective plastic bag or wrap it in florist foil (after panicking about damaging the mount). It is so satisfying to see them well-presented and smoothed out. Generally I am not that precious about my work (twice now I have lost piles of drawings and paintings to leaks/burst pipes, and  the second time I just shrugged it off), but the neat freak in me loves to see everything ordered and safe.

Some of the illustrations for Amie's book are off to new homes, which prompted me to get organised and sort out mounts. I seem to be in mounting and framing and hanging mood - we have been rounding up all the artwork we want to hang and creating clusters and 'gallery walls' (a big chunk of one wall in the corridor) displaying work by friends as well as our own. 

John is obsessed with maps (who doesn't love a good map?), so we are hoping to get a few framed, for example a print of the 1651 pictorial map of Galway he was given and Tim Robinson's beautiful Burren and Arann maps (my aunt bought the Burren map for me, and I always thought it was a pity to just have it folded up in drawer).

It may seem laughable how excited I get about little things like mounting artwork (see also tidying the shed and sorting out a kitchen drawer), but as India Knight said in her column last week (about losing yourself in a hobby in times of crisis), "It is so important to remember the comfort of ordinary things" for "whenever we feel discombobulated by life."

Blue sky, blue sea, blue hours

On Friday, driving home from Clifden, where I was minding our exhibition, I caught the blue hour and saw Connemara like I had never seen it before (not pictured here; I didn't take any photos). It also happened to be very still and dry, so the lakes were perfectly smooth mirrors. Something that had become tiresome (I have been doing a lot of driving to and from Clifden) turned into a magical experience, and I didn't mind being stuck behind a very slow huge truck.

It was a reminder of how our attitude changes everything - even if the external circumstances hadn't changed, I could have accessed that mindset. I had been spending too much time worrying about things large and small, and that drive on Friday put not an end, but a pause to it. Of course Connemara is always stunning, and there is always something new to see, but even if I had been driving through drab industrial estate after industrial estate, I could have gone someplace in my head that would have brought me the same happiness.

But it helps to be surrounded by beauty. Today we came home to a summery evening and spent time in the garden and down at the beach (John went for a swim; I chickened out). Having a garden that, as my grandmother used to say, wants to see its master every day, is such a blessing. It is fast becoming a non-negotiable to be out there doing something (so far it has been mainly weeding and cutting the grass), like our daily walks, and already we feel healthier and happier for it.

From the West of Ireland to Wertheim

Work-in-progress in this case meant sitting-on-the-easel-untouched-for-months, a silent reproach every time I entered my studio/spare room, a reminder that I was most definitely not "getting my stuff done"(I just watched this again... my life in a nutshell). But now it is finished, I think. And it made me nostalgic for my hometown, especially when I put the lights into the windows of the houses.

This painting is for my older sister and my brother-in-law, and a recent development means that I may unwittingly have painted the new home of my younger sister and her husband. Not the castle... somewhere beside the church. Or maybe it is just beyond the frame; I haven't asked her yet (Sibylle?). But in any case, this is soon to be their neighbourhood. So this painting is linking the three sisters in an unexpected way.

As much as I love working on the illustration projects that are more active works-in-progress, I need to make space for my own personal art-making. The last two Sundays enabled me to do that, and it's the best start to my week. The Daily Drawings shall return (my discipline for turning up here has been woefully inadequate, but there is a lot of behind-the-scenes housekeeping going on).

November can be desperately bleak, but so far it has been kind, with blue-sky mornings when I walk down to work from the Park-and-Ride and pink clouds above my house. I have finally got into the mood of the season - until last week I was still in May in my head.

Last night I resisted the urge to go to bed early - my default in the colder months - and watched a Spanish movie (another neglected thing on my list: keeping my Spanish alive) while knitting a scarf. This made me nostalgic for Spain, where I lived in 2004-05 (where did those ten years go?). So all in all it has been a week of sentimental thoughts and the resolve to be better at keeping in touch with loved ones.

That was a long break...

The weeks are whizzing past me, and I am slowly working my way through an impossibly long To Do list. I haven't shown up here because various work projects have included a lot of time spent creating and managing websites and social media and volumes of e-mail, so when I wasn't working I wanted my eyes to look at green trees and the expanse of the sea, or anything that was not a screen.

There have been so many big and small changes - both in my work and my personal life, all positive for the last two months -, and I am still adjusting to the new rhythm. It continues to elude me how people who work full-time and have families look after themselves and keep their energy levels up. I seem to need a disproportionate amount of time to myself and an early night at least three times a week in order to function, and I am responsible for myself only. I know it's a HSP/introvert trait to be so easily overwhelmed, but there have been too many mornings (especially after working late and/or socialising) spent sitting around in a daze with aching muscles trying to muster the energy to step into the shower. I know a lot of people who would see that as luxury me-time they would kill for, but I just think of all the things I could be doing and the seconds ticking away.

Last week it struck me how much of the low-level everyday anxiety I have been feeling is fuelled by neglecting friendships and not phoning home enough, even when that neglect is not one-sided. So now I am surrounded by half-written letters and cards and e-mails in my draft folder. And of course I acutely feel my sister's absence after her three-month stay here. We had a little farewell party at my house, and Galway Bay put on a spectacular evening sky with a lot of pink and a rainbow. A friend took the photo above of us three sisters in the twilight, and due to the latter and also because I enlarged it from a small photo it physically possesses that blurry nostalgic quality that I have already imbued it with in my mind.

On a less emotional note, my inner minimalist is delighted with Dr. Bronner's liquid soap and its multitude of uses (I haven't tried it as toothpaste or for washing the dishes or laundering clothes yet, though all that and much more is possible). It had always been on my radar, but since I generally prefer soap bars, I never bought it until a couple of months ago. It works really well as a facial wash, and you don't need moisturiser afterwards. I love travelling light, so this, the smallest bottle, will serve as a one-in-all on future trips, and I will get a large bottle for at home. I was going to dedicate a whole post to this soap, but then India Knight reviewed it for the Sunday Times, so I will just quote her: "Come the apocalypse, you want a bottle of this about your person.". Yes!

Tranquility

 

The response to what I pondered in my last post is shingles in my eye and a kidney infection. That's what I got for a lifestyle and tempo of said lifestyle this introvert was unable to maintain for long. Or maybe it had nothing to do with that, but was a delayed reaction to the upheaval of recent months. Whatever the reason, I obviously need to remind myself that one day every week must be a blank in my diary set aside for doing nothing (doing nothing may include reading, running, swimming, meditating, baking, cooking, organising and a whole lot of other doings, but I have to be on my own for most of it or in the company of someone similarly disposed).

I managed to continue with the teaching, as well as going on -relaxed, inspiring- day trips to beautiful corners of the world, so today was the first day I was able to work from home and take it easy. Stillness is in order, and it is easy to attain in a house filled with beautiful flowers, among them the sweet scent of hyacinths, and with my own little assistant-sister who just made me dinner.

As a soap bar enthusiast I always get ridiculously excited when I try out a new one, and this Brigid Soap with its intriguing ingredients is extra special because it was a gift from my older sister, who presented it to me in Brigit's Garden, with a touching explanation of why she had chosen it. My aura expertly cleared after using this in the shower, I am now sipping tea made with cayenne pepper and lemon and envisaging a wild Friday night bedtime of 8pm. This is exactly how I used to live.

Daily drawings | Not drawing, but painting (and knitting)

I've been having fun with these: tiny canvases to do quick paintings on (I chose a Galway theme). If I make the Daily drawings a regular feature, I had better change the title to include painting.

I find myself using the colours of recent evening skies:

And another colour pairing: I only noticed when I started knitting with this yarn that it matched my nail polish.

My sister and I are preparing for a crafts fair this weekend, and in my usual fashion I am doing lots of last-minute projects - painting by daylight, knitting and crocheting at night.

Recently

I was absent here for a while for various reasons - family visiting, work in the Uni starting again after my long summer off, needing time away from the computer after long sessions of teaching myself Adobe InDesign - and came back only to find Blogger stubbornly refusing to cooperate, so I have temporarily lost bits in the sidebar. While I attempt to solve this, here are some glimpses of recent happenings and be-ings:

View from the prom in Salthill. Galway Bay was eerily still for a few days - a mirror-like surface, coupled with thick warm air and people moving slowly; it felt like walking through a dream.

 

Encountered on another walk. I must emphasise I do not approve of people dumping old furniture in the landscape, but this was at least aesthetically pleasing. It also reminds me of that famous Cranberries album cover. 

My sister and I are busy preparing for crafts fairs, Christmas markets and online shops. I am trying to establish whether buttons or hooks and eyes or snap fasteners work best on crochet cuffs.

Baking. There has been a lot of baking, for birthdays, hikes, visitors and visits. I found out that liberally substituting honey for sugar is not always a good idea (banana mash instead of banana bread) and that a cake described as "really moist" in the recipe still can turn out excessively moist (pear mash instead of pear cake), to the delight of my visitors, who thankfully were all family and brave and ate it anyway.

Rab and I presented some of our collaborations at the first ever Cong Arts Festival. My sister and brother-in-law kindly helped out in various ways, from driving to filming our show. Cong is a picturesque village most famous for the film The Quiet Man. We loved this sign plus painted ducks' footprints.

Connections (cutlery, crystal)

 

Not feeling the best, I haven't ventured out much apart from a short walk in the woods and onto the cliff beside the beach (Tolkienesque woods and beach just a few minutes apart is heaven) - and to the local swan rescue. Most of my time has been spent in bed reading The Secret History and tending to domestic things.

Amidst the chaos of moving in, my sister somehow conjured up a three-course meal (berry crumble pictured), and my brother-in-law played his first gig with his old band at the weekend - I can only marvel at how fast they are settling in.

I drove away from their house with boxes of books from my childhood room - my entire art library - that came in one of their containers, as well as fancy glasses my late grandmother had given me and the extensive set of cutlery that had been stored away in my mom's basement for 20+ years, one of those gifts "for the bottom drawer" that relatives contributed to over a few years.

I washed the glasses and cutlery and made space in my kitchen and only noticed then how dull the cheap cutlery I had been using all the time looks in comparison. There are many areas in which I still don't feel like an adult at age 30, but I am in possession of sparkly silverware that includes tiny forks for cake and crystal glasses that I am determined to use for non-alcoholic beverages, seeing how rarely I drink at home. I don't believe in reserving things for special occasions.

But more than giving a semblance of grown-up-ness* at a time of doubts and financial insecurity, these objects are a reminder of home and a link to my family and past, and my inner minimalist recedes in respect for their significance (though I do seem to have way too many books on art!).


* I don't intend to ever grow up fully - note to somebody who keeps saying I act/look like a 4-year-old!

Oh yes

I did work hard on Friday as planned, so for the remainder of the weekend I was able to do all the things I mentioned in my last post minus the baking (there was no need; there was still Christmas pudding!).

We did find two new beaches and also looked for, picked and ate sea beet (it's a bit like baby spinach, but with a thicker texture and with salty sea taste - really good). The turquoise of the water is misleading - it was freezing, so this all-year-round swimmer (ahem...) did not take off any clothes. But the cold wind gave me a boost similar to a swim, and just being surrounded by water, animals and Tolkienesque countryside was exactly what I needed.

I am aware I have all these things on my doorstep - the sea beet was actually from the shore here, a few minutes' walk from my house -, but sometimes going somewhere new or less familiar is required to rewire one's brain. I feel almost ready for the (admittedly very short) crazy week ahead.

Skies

Co. Clare

Connemara

Living between two of the most beautiful landscapes, Connemara and the Burren, I have the luxury to go on the kind of day trips people come here from all over the world for any time I want. I don't intend to glorify driving without a destination - I do try to be green - but since the railway no longer exists, it is the easiest way to see a lot and be independent (as an occasional treat). My head is always clearer after moving through these landscapes and under their skies. I will get a bicycle at some stage, though.