Sketching and superstitions

These are two quick sketches created with time limits under 15 minutes.  As my drawings for completed artworks can take well over an hour, I try to practice sketch whenever time permits.  Or toddler permits.  I usually can’t do any drawing when she’s about as she will swoop in, look at me with those lovely eyes and say ‘Lottie draw?’ So of course I relinquish my paper and pencil.  How could I not?

There are some things in the pipeline.  I won’t write much about them right now as I have this weird superstition, or belief, that if you speak of a thing before it is solidly confirmed, it can disappear.  I tend to get extremely excited about opportunities and start to talk about them before they are even set and then poof, it all evaporates.  So.  Am trying to reel in the joy.  It isn’t easy.

Today I made playdough (but yesterday I cried)

  
This is one I made at home. Instructables have very easy instructions on how to cook up your own batch. This is in preparation for L’s birthday party. Today has already been a success and today I think parenthood is cake. Or playdough, rather.

Yesterday was the flip side of parenthood. It was shit. It was a button pushing, tantrum inducing, tears in public kind of day. It was the third time of L insisting on not following the song circle rules and instead striking yoga (or breakdancing) poses when she should’ve been sitting, clapping, making the spider go up the spout. This was also my one day to connect with my parent pals and again, I missed out on that much needed network.

For those of you that know anything about me, you know I adore L. She brings with her boundless joy but also such extreme frustration I can hardly be in the same room with her.

The impossibility of my situation, the going this alone-ness, is something I’d never envisioned. There are no ‘can you please just watch her whilst I scream into a pillow for five minutes’ or quick ten minute walks to regain balance. Day after day after weekend after weekend the same the same the same.

And then attempting my own life and creative practice whilst feeling spent on other things. So. I am now attempting to remedy a situation that isn’t working for me. My person has an allergic reaction to asking for help, but I’ve caved and am making requests of my very small support network, made even smaller by the fact I don’t have family on this side of the pond.

It has been suggested that perhaps I go back home (to The States) but I receive that with much confusion. THIS is my home and in all honesty, I feel that Edinburgh is the best springboard for L to jump into life. Cultural. Educational. Life style. It will open up so many possibilities.

So. Today I made playdough. Big deal. It was for me.

Your life is in our hands

  
This is the most recently completed piece for a body of work I’ve titled ‘Your life is in our hands.’ I think the very first piece was created a few years ago in the form of Geocockenzie. Or even the Torness piece. Solid, cold slabs of impersonal concrete held up by a skeleton of steel. I’m sure whatever I write here will sound like pretentious artist’s bullshit, but hold on for the explanation. 

It’s easy to miss the obvious, the fact that there are people working away in these unwelcoming structures. And in some way, sometimes tenuously, our lives are in their hands. They direct us. Move us. Heat us. Connect us. Whether we actively want it to be true or not. Our lives are in their hands.