“Do you ever wake up and feel that you don’t want to do any art work?”

My friend H asked while we were out walking. At the time my answer was “No, not really” and I explained that even if I’m having a rough time mentally and/or emotionally I still turn to making art as a way to navigate my way through. Obviously, it’s not art to share publicly, nor is it work in business terms but it’s still creative work. It seems that I always want to be making art of some kind for some reason or other.

This last week has reminded me that there is a time when I don’t make art and it’s when I’m physically not well enough to do so. I’ve been laid low with a winter bug, nothing serious but there was enough, what felt like incessant, coughing, sneezing and nose-blowing to put a stop to doing anything other watch videos of sea otters on YouTube, eat a lot of comfort food and take ridiculous quantities (for me, anyway) of painkillers and cough medicine.

Today has been the first day when I’ve felt the urge to create and here it is:

Untitled (as yet)

Digital painting.

The original, unedited photo which the inspired the painting.

It’s such a poor quality photo that it needs an explanation! It’s the waning moon at dawn taken through an ice-covered window. I was more than half asleep, had forgotten to put my glasses on and was none too steady holding the phone. Still, it did it’s job.