Lockdown Days

While coronavirus lockdown has created uncertainty, fear and problems for us all I have been grateful for the blessings I have with a studio and garden. Our normally busy road has been amazingly quiet, bird song and activity constant and the clearer air and sunshine a bonus. Lockdown has offered time to ponder, notice and be active daily in my own space.

I have watched and sketched every day small changes in seeds, plants, flowers and trees which revelled in the sun. However occasional dark moods and the reason for lockdown are never far from my mind. There is poignancy in watching beautiful flowers and leaves bud, change colour, fall, fade and die. Tiny birds sometimes fall from nests or are pulled and attacked by predators. Finding feathers attached to flowers or in bundles beside a hedge is an everyday occurrence. Nature for sure can be cruel and uncertain but nothing in comparison with a virus that appears to have no boundaries or controls and so far, no way of stopping its spread.

This series of work reflects the darkness and light of these lockdown days. Life has stillness and growth, beauty and horror, worry and optimism, hope, despair and uncertainty. We don’t know which way coronavirus is going, when lockdown will end or what our future will look like. Like seeds, pollen, feathers we don’t know where we will land.