Neighbour Crows - 2023 11 18

 


Graphite, watercolour paper

Everyday I am out walking with Adele, my rescue dog. Everyday we are walking there are crows in the neighbourhood doing their crow things. 

I am entering my third year of family caregiving, looking after my 93 year old Mom.

Sometimes the light is just right and the crow is close enough for me to catch some quick pictures for drawing reference. Without the detail captured in the photo I wouldn't have anything to work with. I definitely do not have a photographic memory of these fleeting glimpses of crow life.

Mom moved home with me on her 91st birthday on November 1, 2021. She had been living in mental health group housing for forty years and was aging out of the system.

Back in my studio I play with positioning the crow figures and then I notice a story starts to tell itself from the expressions on their faces, the direction of their gaze, the position of their bodies. It is the story that my imagination conjures about the two figures in the two dimensional space of the drawing paper that I find fascinating. It is usually a story about something I am processing or sorting out in my own life.

The last time Mom moved home with me was in January or February, 1982. I had three children, my youngest was born in July, 1981. We had moved temporarily to Vancouver in the spring of 1981 when Mom's mental health precipitated a housing crisis.

This drawing has been rendered in 6 layers of graphite. The next step is to apply layers of pencil crayon colour. It is an endless mystery how the final drawing will turn out. It always feels like I am doing the drawing for the first time.

We tried to set Mom up on her own apartment, but she was unable to handle the loneliness and isolation. I realized she wasn't doing well when I visited her in her apartment and noticed that the shag carpet was all pressed in one direction. Mom had been pacing around and around in the same direction in the apartment, smoking and descending back into disabling paranoid schizophrenia.

I am grateful to my neighbour crows for keeping me company on these solitary walks.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Banjo - Ice Storm - Jan 2024 - 2024 01 21

Image
  LOVE DOES THAT All day long a little burro labours, sometimes with heavy loads on her back and sometimes just with worries about things that bother only burros. And worries, as we know, can be more exhausting  than physical labor. Once in a while a kind monk comes to her stable and brings a pear, but more than that, he looks into the burro's eyes and touches her ears and for a few seconds the burro is free and even seems to laugh, because love does that. Love frees. Meister Eckhart (1260 - 1328) Today I spoke to my Cousin, who has taken on the work of caregiving for my 98 year old Aunt and my 101 year old Uncle. Aunt has been taken off of medical supports to prolong life and put on 'comfort care' as her body cannot survive the pneumonia she contracted after hip surgery from a fall.  Although we had not talked for years, our conversation picked up where it left off, insightful, empathetic, spiritual, and extremely funny.  I am remembering the winter that my Cousin g...
Read more

Happy Anniversary - 2024 03 22

Image
  Watercolour paper, graphite, pencil crayon, acrylic paint, pen and ink - 9" x 11" I have mixed feelings about this piece. I forgot to take a progress photo after I added the ground colour and before I added the warm reds to the subject and then continued to elaborate with white and black ink. I was really happy with the original idea, of a bonded pair sitting perched on a wire, each looking in different directions but sitting in close proximity to each other. That feeling of, "Give me space but don't go too far away." The delicate balance amongst autonomy, solitude and loneliness.  It is thinking about relationships, position, connection, confidence, empowerment, belonging, and self worth that is inspiring this exploration. It is also awareness of the feeling of foreboding that permeates each day. This feeling of precarious balance amongst stability, inspiration and dread.  The stability of having a home address, of having a daily routine, of somehow maintaini...
Read more

A Tough Night - 2023 11 23

Image
  Last night I thought I would get some work done at my art desk after Mom went to bed. I sat down to drink a nice cup of tea and watch horse videos on Facebook to inspire my effort. It was a fitful night of restless sleep. Too many loose threads, unfinished edges, possible patterns. I have added layers of blue and red pencil crayon to continue building shape and character into the crows. At the same time their relationship is evolving in relation to each other and the context of the conditions of their emergence. Around 3 am I had finally started to drift off when I heard singing from Mom's room. I woke up again, trying to figure out if she was dreaming or awake. I hauled myself out of bed again to go check on her. Working on the drawing gives me a sense of purpose to these strange, constrained and unlimited days. This portal of time that opened up when Mom came home. Mom was awake. When she saw me, her singing turned to sobs of deep grief and fear. She named each of her children,...
Read more