Day 3- #18 - Finished (13/05/20)

This morning I woke up with a headache again but after a few teas and a biscuit I felt ready to tackle some yoga. I completed a sequence called 'Anchor in Hope' and then followed up with 'Yoga for Brain Power'. Both were really good and I felt buoyed from the practice and ready for the day.

R took F to the park this afternoon to kick a ball around. This is the first time he has been able to do this since March 23rd! F was so happy and I am sure we will do more of this as a family in the coming days and weeks.

I worked on finding the right place for the final pieces of the Yellow collage today. It sounds so simple and I'm sure people think you just grab a glue stick and slap things down in any old place. It really is nothing like this. Well, certainly in my case it isn't. I constantly move things about, trying them in a few different places until I find the spot that feels right. Sometimes this happens quickly, other times it can be really difficult to decide between locations and other times pieces have to be discarded altogether, even if I really like them. This is because it is always important to look at the 'bigger picture' (something I do in every aspect of my life) but in an artistic sense, any artwork has to be considered as a whole and there needs to be a flow and a cohesiveness to every piece I create. Being as my work is almost entirely abstract by nature, I appreciate that in other people's opinions it may not matter or seem important about what gets 'thrown at it' or omitted but to me it matters a great deal. This is why my work is so laborious because I consider each and every piece of paper and often times delay committing anything permanently in order to give myself time to come back and look with fresh eyes. Interestingly, I rarely ask for advice from others when struggling to make a decision and if I do, it is often ignored anyway...usually inspiration or clarity just strikes me out of the blue, providing me with more confidence and certainty in my own next steps.

This piece has been inspired to an extent by Boris Johnson's speech on Sunday night and his choice of words about easing lockdown. He talked about 'a roadmap' an idea that I have tried to capture in #18. I can explain this in more detail tomorrow when I will add photos to this week's posts. I included some numbers in this piece which came from one of E's old school workbooks. It has the number 18 circled which she tells me was her score in a test. Tomorrow I will also detail other sources of the scraps used in this piece.