Covid-19 has changed everything: the way we work, live, move and interact with one another. Human beings have always adapted to change and challenge in the past and are now learning to adapt once more. This project reflects my adaptation to this crisis.
After the lockdown began in March 2020, my physical world reduced to the safety of my home where I live and work. At the beginning of the lockdown, the physical confinement combined with the fear of the spreading virus, news of images of the dying and the heightened pressure and anxiety of the people on the frontline, the constant escalation in the count of deaths day after day whilst dealing with the reminder of being so far away from family and the lack of contact with my artistic community brought over me a cloud of despair.
I began to look at things differently and the thought of painting again became my refuge but what I was going to paint or how I was going to start without the access to my studio was unclear.
After the lockdown, my outside activities were restricted to 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 and where I started going for daily walks after lockdown. Over the next weeks, I found a different path to paint again in a completely new medium for me: watercolours. This was a good alternative to oils, my preferred medium which would have been challenging to work with at home. 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.
It became my temple where I offered my gratitude for being able to watch so closely the magic of Spring unfold. To witness every bare branch bearing new leaves and buds, transforming the greys and browns to the lushest shades of greens slowly adding fuchsias, lavender, orange and white blossom, dramatised by light which varied throughout each day. The visual delight each morning of evolution fused with the morning birdsong became the springboard for inspiration. In these watercolours, I have been able to express in colour my gratitude of what I have and opening my awareness to the beauty of my immediate surrounding. It has been source of nourishment to my soul and transforming fear and anxiety to a sense of gratitude and hope.