Week Thirty-Two | Connections

School is back in session, having missed last week due to the Drawing Symposium. I found it hard and I am working on my own negativity around being here. I am aware that will have to start curating my blog soon and it’s a bit bitty so time to focus a bit.

What is positive is that I seem to be at a point where connections are popping up everywhere (dare I say like mushrooms…)

Boneyards - reading Larry McMurtry and Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations only to find them talking about the same thing

“Why, think of all the buffalo that have died on these plains,” he says. “Buffalo and other critters too. And the Indians have been here forever; their bones are down there in the earth. I’m told that over in the Old Country you can’t dig six feet without uncovering skulls and leg bones and such. People have been living there since the beginning, and their bones have kinda filled up the ground. It’s interesting to think about, all the bones in the ground.”

Aurelius considers all the Emperors who went before him. What happened to them? Their bones are all jumbled together in the Earth.

I was writing about things I’ve never gone near before, like witchcraft, magic and other ancient rituals as a little off-shoot of my Research Paper, thinking about indigenous cultures. In our DCS this morning Roz says almost the same words I had written the night before. Spooky.

My research paper is starting to make an inductive leap (somewhat late in the day). I found myself reading Olivia Laing’s ‘Funny Weather’ and in it is a passage specifically about John Berger and kindness.

I loved meeting so many women drawing artists last week who have similar thoughts around drawing and kinship It felt good to speak to like minded artists.

I am trying to bring my work together, the learning from the Research Paper has been good and the drawings seem to be interesting. I just need to bring it all together a bit more. I have asked the DCS if we can brainstorm together to see if I can find a way forward.

Below are images of Emma Douglas’s piece at the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize. It is titled ‘These are the Only Measurements I Have’ and it memorialises the familiar height measurements of her kids up to the point that her son, Cato, died. Her piece made me cry - I can hardly bear to witness her loss and I also feel bad for myself as my work just isn’t as good.