Bad day/good day

I had my first wobble on Tuesday, as in a bit of a wig out. With all the talk of how one should make the most of this time in isolation, and get on with various projects that you might not usually have the time or the energy for, I’d been slowly driving myself crazy. I just couldn’t focus, and felt like I just floated around, not accomplishing anything. This article, ‘Stop trying to be productive’, in the New York Times, was really helpful in highlighting how right now, maybe being productive was not the thing to be doing at all. So, Mr Famapa, after having made a daily schedule for Oomoo over the Easter holidays (that we are in now), suggested that it would probably be helpful if I made one for myself. Now don’t get us wrong, we are NOT schedule-y parents normally (and there’s nothing wrong with that - each to their own!), but with an only child, and not being able to hang out with friends or go anywhere and break up the day, having some structure have helped making the time pass. At that particular moment I felt particularly low, but as luck would have it, I was due to go and meet my friend D who lives close by, for a walk together and apart, like we now do. It was a gorgeous day, and great to see someone else, right at that moment, and have good chat about everything and nothing. It was so great that we’ve decided that, as part of our new schedules, two of these walks a week would help us both. I’ve almost completely filled in my weekly time table now, and I followed it to a t yesterday, and I felt MUCH better with a proper structure to my day. These tips from Alastair Campbell (of all people!) are bloody brilliant for right now, and if you find yourself feeling low, there are some very good suggestions there of how to avoid the dark days, and how to treat yourself well.

Painting with the moon

Aaahhh, the magic that is light painting with a camera, but this time with a twist! Using the moon as the light - yeeeeeah! So, back in the summer (when we were in France), after having put the kids to bed, we stayed out on the terrace, chatting away in the moonlight. I wondered what would happen if you tried to do a light painting with the moon, and this is the result. Mr Famapa had way better skills, and could actually draw proper things, where as I went for the more abstract style. There’s a super moon on Wednesday, so look out for it!

Out the window

Strange priorities

A couple of weeks ago, when you could sense the approaching lockdown in the air, I made my way to the Picasso and Paper exhibition at the Royal Academy. I knew that it might be the last chance to see it (and the gallery did close the day after I went), as who knows what exhibitions will still be parked in the same place after the lockdown lifts. I’m not a huge fan of Picasso; I don’t mind his art per se, and I do realise how talented he was and why he is one of the greats, but the guy was an A-HOLE in his private life and caused a lot of people nearest to him a lot of pain, to say the least.

Anyway, you can’t deny that the man was an extraordinary artist. I had only heard great things about this particular exhibition that showed work spanning his whole career that was linked to his use of paper (sometimes a bit tenuously). I especially liked his drypoint etchings. There’s something about the simplicity of the delicate lines that really speaks to me.

Picasso did these little paper cut outs when he was eight or nine years old. Just amazing!

He also looked a bit like Prince in his blue period, don’t you think?

This dry point - gaaah. I should’ve just picked this off the wall and walked off with it. But then I guess I would be in prison now.

It wasn’t that busy in the gallery, as most people had stopped travelling into the centre of London by this time, and the over 70’s had been told to self-isolate. Seeing these two, in their matching outfits, still out, prioritising a last dose of art before keeping safe, cheered me up no end.

This cut-out was only visible if you held it up to the light, and so it was lit up from behind so you could see the hidden artwork inside.

This drawing of Jean Cocteau, Olga (his first wife), Eric Satie and Clive Bell was my fave. My favourite paintings and drawings seem to be of interiors or people just doing normal things, like a snapshot, if you know what I mean. A snapshot as a photograph is not really a surprise, but to see how much time and effort someone has put into painting or a drawing of a fairly mundane scene is pretty special.

Picasso made the costume design for Jean Cocteau’s 1917 ballet ‘Parade’ (which Eric Satie made the music for - I mean, just wow!), and this is one of them. Love the colours.

A paper collage of a guitar - again in a pretty tasty colour palette.

These heads/skulls were torn out of paper.

And this huge collage was made of left over wallpaper scraps.

I loooooove woodcuts (and linocuts), and this is such an amazing example. I’d love to have the actual woodcut up on the wall, in fact in my next life I’d like to come back as a woodcut/linocut artist please. I’m not patient or skilled well enough with my hands to be one in this one :)

Hello naked lady! This would be a really good lockdown thing to do; cut shapes out of cardboard and then make something like this out of them. But we’ve stopped buying stuff now, so there is no packaging for us to use. I’m not complaining! It’s actually really liberating to no longer be a consumer - but I digress.

They showed such a cool film at the exhibition too, ‘Le mystére Picasso’ by Henri-Georges Clouzout from 1956, which you can rent or buy on YouTube, which I’m definitely going to do asap.

In the clip I watched, they showed how Picasso made this piece of art, ‘Visage: The head of a faun’, and it’s fascinating. To see how he keeps changing it, but also how he searches the paper with his eye and then makes his marks with such conviction is kind of breathtaking. You can watch that same clip here.

There are so many great cultural and arty things to get involved with, or listen to/watch on online at the moment - and this link list from The Modern House journal has some interesting suggestions.