My son danced around my chair playfully jabbing me in the arm with a pen. I scrabbled round the table to look for another pen to stab him. He dodged out of reach laughing. I screamed, “Go watch TV.”
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My son loves documentaries and recently discovered the series, Abstract - The Art of Design on Netflix. I watched two episodes with him. The first was Paula Scher, a graphic designer who works in New York while the second featured Christoph Neimann, an illustrator based in Berlin. The theme for both explored creativity and the source of their ideas. When Paula needs inspiration, she hires a yellow cab and sits in the back looking at buildings as she is driven around Manhattan. Christoph stresses the importance of routine and “turning up everyday” to your desk but also agrees that getting outside and looking at the ordinary with fresh eyes is key to getting new ideas.
My son then stepped up to a wall and rubbing both hands lovingly across its surface said, “This wall is aching to be filled. I’m thinking I could paint a mural on it. How about that opening scene from The Simpsons? You know the one with the blue sky and white clouds and I put our family name instead?”
“Ok,” I said.
He looked at me stunned, “Really?”
“Yes.”
“But what if I make a mess of it?”
“We’ll paint it over.”
“But I have no paint.”
“I have,” I said and heading into the kitchen, I pulled out a little wooden suitcase from the bottom of the dresser. It contained 30 neat tubes of acrylic paint and four brushes. Behind the box were two virgin canvasses. About three years ago, I was in doctor’s office flicking through a magazine when I came across a pencil drawing of a street scene in Amsterdam. I thought, ‘I could copy that’ and I did. Then I heard Aldi were doing a special deal on art supplies. I dashed to our nearest one in Grange and bought the suitcase, extra brushes and three blank canvasses. I drew the street scene, filled it in with colour and then lost interest.
“The paintbrushes are dirty,” whined my Millennial son.
“Wash them.”
He filled a mug with water and carefully dipped the brushes into the water. The paint came off easily.
"The best thing about acrylics is their strong colour," I said.
“But I need delicate.”
“Then paint delicate.”
“Canvas or wall?”
“Practice on the canvas and then do the wall or better still practice on the canvas and then hang it on the wall.”
He threw his hands in the air in despair, “Oh, the endless possibilities.”
Other key developments today:
When we picked this house from the builder’s plan, I chose this particular one because the back garden faced south west. What I failed to notice was the single house at the end of our garden which means that in the depths of winter the sun - if there is one that day - plummets behind this house before it reaches us at all. I now use that house as my barometer for summer. Once the sun stays in the sky long enough and it rises high enough to clear the roof, I know summer is on its way. And this evening it happened. At 6pm, my kitchen was like New Grange on the 21st December, long rays of glorious, bright, delicious sunshine filled the kitchen all the way to the back wall. I can't tell you what that does for my morale. I saw a documentary once about a town just inside the Arctic Circle that experiences 36 days of total darkness each winter. Sometime, around mid February the sun makes an appearance just barely above the horizon and then after half an hour it disappears again. The entire population turn out to witness and cheer their first sign of summer.
When we picked this house from the builder’s plan, I chose this particular one because the back garden faced south west. What I failed to notice was the single house at the end of our garden which means that in the depths of winter the sun - if there is one that day - plummets behind this house before it reaches us at all. I now use that house as my barometer for summer. Once the sun stays in the sky long enough and it rises high enough to clear the roof, I know summer is on its way. And this evening it happened. At 6pm, my kitchen was like New Grange on the 21st December, long rays of glorious, bright, delicious sunshine filled the kitchen all the way to the back wall. I can't tell you what that does for my morale. I saw a documentary once about a town just inside the Arctic Circle that experiences 36 days of total darkness each winter. Sometime, around mid February the sun makes an appearance just barely above the horizon and then after half an hour it disappears again. The entire population turn out to witness and cheer their first sign of summer.
My husband’s niece is due to make her First Holy Communion in May. She sent personal, hand-made invitations to each of her cousins. They are heartbreakingly sweet. She cut hearts out of red paper and inside stuck a smaller heart cut from white paper and wrote, 'Dear Joe, can you come to my communion? Love from Laura'. Her mother then posted all three in a large envelope with a cover letter saying that because of the Virus the Communion may be postponed but she hasn't the heart to tell her daughter just yet.
Since we are four mouths in quarantine, my husband has decreed that we all take turns cooking. Last night was my son's turn and so we had his favourite, steak and chips with lashings of gravy. Tonight, it's my turn and I'll be making Chickpea Stew. According to the Irish Times, it has taken the internet by storm. It's my favourite kind of dinner; everything in the same pot, wet and unidentifiable.
Since we are four mouths in quarantine, my husband has decreed that we all take turns cooking. Last night was my son's turn and so we had his favourite, steak and chips with lashings of gravy. Tonight, it's my turn and I'll be making Chickpea Stew. According to the Irish Times, it has taken the internet by storm. It's my favourite kind of dinner; everything in the same pot, wet and unidentifiable.
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