It's half way through March, my heavens where does time go ? I'll admit to a fair amount of drifting recently. My proposal for the River Waveney Sculpture Trail 2016 has been accepted. And my application for a textiles symposium in Latvia was not, which is how it goes. Oddly whatever the result it always feels like it is the outcome that was meant to happen. Working on applications that get rejected is quite lovely in way, because in my head I will have already started in to the work that I am considering making, ideas begin to push their way forward like spring seeds pushing through the earth. And there are connections to this, to that and the flow of energy feeds new life into idea that had maybe been shelved. And then marrying one thing to another creates new pathways and new notions. 
So, now, within my drifting space, I have one definite point of focus which is a strong draw forward and simultaneously lots of lovely space to play with the ideas that arose from my rejected application. 
As a starting point I have been playing with colour. I have a bit of a fear of colour and I tend to default to white and neutrals. But, colour is gorgeous and I love dyeing and so some of my thoughts are moving in that direction. And in the meantime I decided I'd get my tubes of water-colour out. 
A year or so back my mother gave me a pad of good water-colour paper which I had been saving until the day that I was miraculously brilliant at painting. What is it about saving things for best ? I realised that I wasn't suddenly going to be good at painting so I might as well use it, so I have, and it's been lovely. 
I am a terrible painter, I don't know one brush from another and I am definitely not producing works of art, but, I am having a lot of fun which is just what I have been needing. 
It is so easy to get all determined about things, trying to be perfect, perfect, perfect, but so often for me it's the moments when or where I break or fail that teach me the most. 
The awful thing with growing up is that we learn that there is a right and a wrong. Is there a right and a wrong ? This is such a subjective judgement. Subjective and yet maintained or authorised by the collective. I guess it's all about balance. About knowing when to push and when to yield, taking the space to be great sometimes requires the grace to be not great. 
I suppose what I'm documenting for myself here is how joyful it is to make bad art. I can feel myself expanding and growing and letting myself be and not answering to other people because I am making just for me, just for pleasure. And this is the stuff that my art is rooted in,  the things that work that are fit for exhibition don't come out of thin air, they are the embodiment of whole heap of work, that may be fair, middling or dreadful, all part of the journey that is life. 
I am wittering but  in the spirit of sharing I'm going to post some pictures of bits of the paintings I've been doing because although they do not work as wholes and were always sort-of samples, there are tiny threads where one colour has met another that I think are very lovely. And I am not ashamed of my ugly "children" because they all have value, we all have value. 
  

As left - 2/2/16

Although the face of the gate was much faded, where the cloth had been hidden from the light the colours were still bright -2/2/16

And the front - 2/2/16

The back of Bigod's Way 2 - 2/2/16

On tuesday of this week I went back to the River Waveney Study Centre, the site of the Waveney River Sculpture Trail in which I participated last year. The managers of the site had very kindly allowed me to leave my piece, Bigod's Way 2, to over-winter so that I could observe how it weathered, how it took on time and the elements. It fared much better than I had hoped, in fact. 
I've been to see it several times over the autumn and early winter but now it is time to take it down, so that the space is clear for this years sculpture trail. 
The weather was bright and beautiful, sunshine and clear skies but very cold with a sharp, skin-biting breeze. 
The site has a different feel, of course, wind singing and reeds rustling, geese, and the colours are fawn and silver-grey, bright green (grass), bright blue (sky), and shades of purple, red and gold on the twig ends of trees. 
After taking some final photos of the piece in it's entirety I knelt to begin dismantling it. Just as setting it up became a kind of prayer, so too is the taking down it seems. 
Slowly, and with cold-stiff fingers, I began to untie the scraps of cloth. Remembering the love that they represented. Remembering the journey beyond that love that they represented too. The new friends, the year just past, and the years before that year. And wondering what this year will bring.
It will take me some days to remove all the pieces. I am doing it carefully, no scissors, so that I can re-use the cloth, and also so that I don't hurt any of the creatures that have made it their home over the past few months, mostly spiders, but also a ladybird and a few bugs. Breaking it up felt like a meditation in reverse, not better or worse for that but a different quality of contemplation.  Just as folding and unfolding have a different quality. 
It will be interesting to see how it feels when I rework the pieces into a new something. They have so much of me invested in them, tho' I daresay no-one else would know, to me they are the dreams of my being - excuse me if that reads like nonsense I don't know quite how to put into words the feelings that those lost dreams arouse.