Keira McArthur

Sideways works best.

I’ve been away from this studio for a month – longest time in three years – to work at sorting out old family issues that had reached a boiling point, then (surprise) to feed and look after a teenage cat mama and her three kittens who appeared in my house half-way through June.  Quite a distraction, four cats. Welcome in my life while I chewed on old family gristle.  Happily I found a generous adopter who has taken all four of them in so the family can stay together. They are installed there now, charming and distracting other people….

You’ll want to see a picture (I have many)

Finally I’m back in studio to work, changed and feeling more than a little stupid as I look at the pieces I left at various states of completion.  What was I planning?  The notes I left are a clue, yellow wash left-centre, white on overlapped spirals, throw brass-green, where is the guitar, but I’m seeing these pieces from a different place, differently.

All of my fine procrastination skills are in full play. I understand the principle of stick with it but when you are slightly out alignment with ‘it’, there’s no way to force this.  It’s also hot.

…just went to pick up my camera and tripod at the house, paused there to pull some weeds, water the plants on the deck.  Returned from that extended errand I realize I need fresh cream for my coffee.  I need the black table and the cutting table cleared for work and photos, but it’s covered in Purcell, Handel, Haydn, Bach, Beatles – all taken out of my carefully constructed quartet binders, loose.  I twitch every time I look at it, but I know it will take a full day to put it right again….shall do this now, right after I sweep the floor and put the ink away, or walk to the corner store for cream first…..

I compromise, pile the music mess and put it somewhere safe for later, clear the surfaces for new work, fill the water jugs, check which mixed paint has dried and what’s still good.  I take photos and develop them for the ‘process’ files

Cashews, fan, cleared work surfaces and some mixed yellow paint that’s still good

and the first wash is done:

There.  The story thread has been woven back in, and my bodymind is happy in image mode again.  I can now safely go and get cream for coffee #2.

This is heaven.