Pneumonia Drawing #10 Print

This is an extract of something I wrote about these drawings: I’m not terribly fond of winter. That said, what I do like is that the trees are leafless and their forms are in their starkness to be seen and to be seen through. There is a lot of darkness, as I write this it’s just two days away from the Winter Solstice on the 22 December and I for one will count every extra little bit of light that is added on to each day after that. I’ve been pretty much out of action for the last eight weeks. Pneumonia seemed to sneak up on me without a lot of warning. It’s a debilitating illness. I guess ill people are called patients because they have to be patient, some things will just not be rushed and recovery from Pneumonia is one of those things. I’ve wrapped up warm in the middle of some nights and gone into the dark of the garden. The eight hundred year old church across from the garden is lit for most of the night, and is more visible through the bare trees than in other seasons. I like the borrowed landscape across what was the glebe field and the darkness is both a blanket and a parachute to soften the feeling of falling off the world. Coughing is a sleep stealer, so I’ve sat up and just let my drawing pen take me where it wanted to go. It’s an odd feeling to put pen to blank paper without a clue as to where it will take you, unless of course I decide to draw a dried leaf that festoon the bedroom windowsill. Hours were spent on one drawing, stopping when tiredness dictated rest so that some drawings spread over several days. It didn’t matter when I started or finished. In a way pneumonia was a gift of time, if I wasn’t drawing I couldn’t be doing many other activities. I had started to refer to the drawings as the Pneumonia Drawings then decided that’s what they would be called.