The first spring of the pandemic, with its chaos, lockdown, uncertainties, showed me another filter on what’s out there in a garden. Outside the windows of my home, there was an abundant world of beauty despite the news. Nature in spring knows no lockdown. From this new world of front porch, deck, and side walkway, there was a world of beauty in all the growing things, and, importantly, in close enough distance to keep a Zoom connection with my art friends as we all painted weekly. And as I tried to paint all this, which is roughly the same every spring, it seemed so different.
The same old garden with the same vegetables and flowers now took on the messiness of everything else, shapes, confused, undefined and disarrayed, not easy to wrangle into any sort of design. The garden represented jumbled and messy with an un-wrangleable beauty. No more value pre-sketches, no clear shapes, just start in painting and see what connects to what. And be so very grateful for this space.
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