Some thoughts and new watercolours

Before the shift from normal life I had a dream. I realise now that it could be interpreted as prophetic.

It is night. My daughter and I are stood in the street and we notice that all the lights in the buildings are going off, one after the other. Nothing too unusual in this, but then all street lights go off and we are suddenly standing in pitch black.

A voice from above bellows; it is not God. The voice says something about the abomination that we have caused, that the time has now come. The last thing I remember is my little girl running off towards a light that isn’t a light.

Perhaps there are many events, moments and dreams that can be interpreted as prophetic in hindsight

Sometimes I forget the change. Trees creak and are not oblivious. The fetid swelter and sweat of close proximity on a dance floor. In a pub, hands clasped around cold glass, war m hands caress. The magic of mind to conjure.

(From journal, dated: 11^th April)

Since lockdown strange contradictions have arisen — from euphoric feelings of freedom to claustrophobia and confinement, uncertainty and self-doubt to full clarity and confidence, the massaging silence to the noise in my head.

Each week brings with it something different but at the same time days and weeks merge. Time becomes fluid and then suddenly I become aware of how it stutters and shifts; speeds up and slows almost to a halt. Time expands and contracts all around.

A silence as the earth begins to breathe once more. I notice fresher air and emerald skies.

Within a relatively short period of time I become used to the fragmented screen of online meetings/gatherings/virtual get-togethers and wonder if we are now in the future, disappearing; swallowed into our virtual backgrounds.

Mirrored screens. Unstable connections. Interference. Lost connections.

I realise now, looking at this, how it has fed into my unconscious mind and come through my latest watercolours: these blurry abstracted images with their enticing but subtle details. This is interesting as I have not been conscious about the ideas behind them. I was, I am, simply creating them without too much thought about idea or intention. Though the process is not unfamiliar to me.

The process of painting with watercolours is, like the time, both frustrating and rewarding. There is a sense of having to let go, understand the forgiving nature of the material, if it is treated with respect. There is a sense of freedom once the natural flow begins. It is easy to become immersed but just as easy to become quickly distracted and loose that flow. As with many processes it is important to work with the ‘mistakes’ but you have to be fully open to respond. There is a sense of being out of time that comes with this, like all creative processes when one is fully engaged. Time expands forever and collapses into the now. Surrender.