I was horrified, updating my art log-books today, to realise just how little work I have managed to do during the pandemic. You would think that with the cancellation of all kinds of distractions it would be possible just to get stuck in and do some creative work freed from distraction. Evidently it doesn’t work like that. I thank that it is poossible that during the past two years we have all become subtly depressed to a degree. I have really noticed, during the past month, however, as social life has moved towards normal, that there has been a revival of energy.
Clearly the myth of the artist as the solitary genius operating within a kind of creative bubble doesn’t bear much resemblance to reality. Just as the idea is evidently a fiction, that The Lone Ranger might have been able to create justice single-handed within The West, the image that artists (rather like the God of Genesis) might be able to create out of their own inner resources, is also fiction.
I suppose that my own situation is a case in point. Now that things are returning to normal on the social front so my activity has revived. This afternoon I made very good progress with a new piece within my “Green Man” series. It is going to be a reprise of current experience with egg tempera. I’m rather coming to enjoy working in that medium.