For several years now I’ve been trying to learn the Italian language, and recently (as it has been difficult to locate a convenient public class) I’ve been working with an individual teacher, on line. These are very rewarding occasions in many respects, but can turn out to be startlingly different from working with a whole class of students. Today’s experience was, in many respects, a shock, but perhaps a productive one.
My teacher, discovering that I am an artist, asked to see some examples of my work, and I selected a couple of examples. One was a portrait I did many years ago of my grandmother. The other the last picture I had done of Almscliff Crag. Talking about the second of these, I was surprised and disturbed by the fact that I was fighting back tears. She asked me the title of the piece, at which point the penny dropped. It is entitled Farewell to Almscliff. Not only did it represent a view of the crag as if one is walking away from it, and looking back, but symbolically it catches the feeling that perhaps I will never again climb there. Most of the routes have become just to hard for me. With this realisation came the sense of enormous loss, and I found myself on the edge of a breakdown into tears.
Reflecting on this experience I found myself wondering whether this is indicative in some way of the causes of my current inability to work. I’m not sure what follows from this practically, but it does feel as ion might have made some progress today.