Stepping back into painting.

50 Days to winter solstice.

4 Days to lockdown 2

1/11/2020

It’s getting darker. The last breath of summer has been exhaled, and here we are returning to lockdown. There are 50 days til the midpoint of winter, the turning time, the changing time where we will begin to see the light returning.

Uncomfortable uncertainty rules, fear and the unknown. Like our ancestors for millennia before us, many of us are now touching the true nature of this season. Not just the beauty of the trees with naked branches shed leaves, but the true bitter life or death bleakness of the dark half of the year.

I’m stepping into this winter season after Samhain with the deep sense that not everyone will make it through this. Some will die of Covid, some will die of suicide, others will die in the richest countries on our planet of cold and hunger and violence born of despair.

Knowing this breaks my heart, and my heart wants to help. The only way I know how to is by making art. So, for the next 50 days I plan to do my best to make some art each day that comes straight from my heart, for that is the brightest light I know how to shine into this world.

So today I begin with this. This writing and this painting, and I hope that in some small way it helps someone even if that someone is just me in my melancholy.