Covid-19 has changed everything: the way we work, live, move and interact with one another.
After the lockdown began in March 2020, my physical world reduced to the safety of my home where I live and began to work and my outdoor activity restricted to physical exercise at the Margravine Cemetery, a sixteen-acre woodland, in the middle of urbanised London that operated as a cemetery from 1869 to 1951. It is about a hundred metres from home which I had previously not appreciated. Over the next weeks, I found a different path to paint again in a completely new medium for me: Watercolours. And a completely new subject slowly unravelled as I saw the world experientially through life in the Cemetery. What started as a physical exercise became a spiritual one - the juxtaposition of birth and continuous growth in a place of remembrance of the dead, the emotions evoked by the epitaphs of people from a century ago and its striking similarity to the ones of those dying in the present day, the tranquility of birdsong interrupted with the sirens of fleeting ambulances, the exchange of a nod or a wave to the once stranger now a regular, who you shared this path with in the name of physical exercise. The visual delight each morning of evolution fused with the morning birdsong became the springboard for inspiration. In this series of watercolours, I have been able to express in colour my gratitude for what I have and for opening my awareness to the beauty of my immediate surroundings. It has been a source of nourishment to my soul and transforming fear and anxiety to a sense of gratitude and hope.
These Watercolour paintings are offered as part of the Artist Support Pledge which is a wonderful idea by Matthew Burrow to help alleviate some of the stress to artists due to Covid-19. Artists post images of their work they are willing to sell for no more than £200 (not including shipping). Every time an artist reaches sales of £1000, they pledge to buy another artists work.
Many of the paintings from this series have sold and I was very pleased to have bought Duart Bel Silva's work in turn! For available works from this series, please check the https://www.suchis.com/galleries#/watercolours-1/