Saturday afternoon

A sunny and windy afternoon. My hands are cold and I crave tea. The wind whips the clothes on the line, shirts upside down, snapping like flags, long live the country of argyle.

Cold hands and painting, an association with deep grooves in my mind. I have never painted with warm hands. I have never painted without feeling an inner shiver. Even when I have painted in the summer or the tropics, my body cools, concentrating blood in my mind and leaving my limbs goose pimpled.

What comes first, the cold hands or the desire to paint? Today, I think it was the cold, keeping me inside on this bright spring day when I would rather be in the garden.

I recently read Alain de Botton's "The Art of Travel" (2002), a philosophical treatise on travel in the post-modern world. The penultimate chapter was about drawing or sketching while travelling and the importance this can have in our perception of our journey. De Botton uses the artist and art teacher John Ruskin to illustrate the influence that drawing can have on how we see the world around us. I still remember the square in Venice where I spent an afternoon trying to capture the light and shades of decay on a row of buildings. I remember the feel of the stones beneath my feet, the grit and the light as I tried to draw statues on the Cathedral in Santiago de Compestello. I remember these moments much clearer than much of the surrounding journeys. Making art doesn't have to be something done only on a journey, the point is that in slowing down, in taking the time really look, whether inward or outward, I am more present when I make art. I remember spending hour upon hour last winter (again cold) making an alphabet book for a little friend. I remember that kitchen, the radio playing "Key of Charles", the joy of making a perfect aubergine with purple, black and blue pencil crayons.

Today, I painted a picture of my son and I and for the first time in as long as I can remember, when I finished it, I took a nail and a hammer and I hung it on the wall. I am trying very hard not to be stuck on results (it is not a very good painting) but on the process of creating and what that painting now is in my memory: a bright Saturday afternoon in April. All the clean clothes soon to be brought in from the line. MIA playing on the stereo. The simple joy of being alive. Cold hands.