You might be surprised. Things have been increasingly difficult of late, and I think that a large part of that has been a consequence of my not having any focus to my art work. I have managed to do some drawing this week, to keep my hand in, but nothing very much. (Actually it has been interesting, in that I have attempted a couple of drawings that depended on very accurate observation of ellipses.) Matters have been made worse by a persistent back strain, developed as a consequence of a gardening session that was too strenuous. I have been very much a growly bear.
By the beginning of this afternoon I really was in a state of some distress. Then two things happened which turned my mood around dramatically. I remembered that there was a piece I had done some time ago, which, even though I framed it I never showed it because, there was always a lingering dissatisfaction about the treatment of the focal point of the composition. I decided to take it out and rework it. Immediately I got it onto the easel I realised that I was right in my diagnosis, and set to work. By dinner time I was not entirely satisfied with the result, but I am clear about the direction of travel.
Then, half way through the afternoon I received a ‘phone call. It was my regular hairdresser, offering me an appointment! Although the date is still two weeks away I cannot express my sense of relief. I have been getting more and more irritated by the hair falling round my face, to the extent that I have now taken to wearing occasionally a hippy-style bandana. It works, but it does make my wife laugh. I had never really appreciated before the extent to which morale can be shaped by the degree to which one feels in control of one’s own appearance. I suppose as a sociologist by training I ought to have taken more to heart Erving Goffman on the “presentation of self”.
I have to admit that I am astonished by the difference these two (very different) events have made to my outlook on life.