Lockdown survival strategies

I’m sure many of us have found this second lockdown more of a struggle than the one earlier in the Spring and Summer, even though that one was much longer. The combination of lack of daylight and cold, murky weather, added to missing our families and friends (and for many, very real worries about their jobs and businesses) has made this feel a very uncertain time for so many. 

I’m a naturally cup-half-full person, but even though I have been keeping myself busy I could feel myself getting more tetchy and fed up as every day started feeling like a scene from the film ‘Groundhog Day’ (which, incidentally, is one of my favourite films, and I’m not going to even try to count how many times Phil and I have watched it)!

Then along came artists Jeremy Sanders and Jenny Aitken, who decided between them to arrange a ‘virtual paint out’ on Instagram, offering other artists who were also missing painting outside,  a different daily selection of photographic views from their respective homes in Cornwall and Derbyshire to paint from. Once painted, we put our paintings on our own Instagram pages with the hashtag #l2paintin

So each day this past week I have ‘travelled’ miles across the country via my studio, keeping company with a really lovely, supportive group of artists, each of us painting in our own unique style and admiring each other’s work at the end of the day. 

I’ve taken a screenshot of my Instagram page (@jackyradbone),  which shows a little montage of the  paintings I have done this week, some of which will be in my Oxfordshire Artweeks exhibition in May. I’ve  kept to my usual limited palette, and I’ve kept to the same amount of painting time I would, of necessity, have kept to if I’d been painting at the actual location - no more than one and a half hours. 

I have my own sketchbooks and reference photos I could have painted from, or of course I could have painted some more still life subjects or painted in the garden; but this feeling of community, of ‘meeting up’ to paint with other artists each day, has felt very light-hearted and upbeat, and has helped keep my ‘cup’ half full just when I needed it. Thanks so much Jerry and Jenny x

 Fail Big, Fail Often! -  This is a quote I heard from another artist a long while ago. It really clicked with me when I first heard it, and I now have it stuck on the chest of drawers in the studio where I can see it every time I’m ‘Failing Big’ yet again! 

It’s quotes like this that keep me going when I get stuck doing painting after painting that isn’t working out how I’ve seen it in my mind’s eye at the outset. Time after time I will make the same mistakes and my efforts will look clumsy . . .  and then . . . (hopefully/usually) . . . the day finally arrives when something clicks, and all those disappointing paintings pay off; what I was aiming for, for such a painfully long time, finally happens and I have a painting that is pretty much how I intend it to look.

Here’s longingly hoping that this will happen one day with roses, which are my nemesis. I envisage these gossamer, floaty, translucent things of delight - but it just isn’t happening yet; roses are such complicated structures, and with my double vision I lose track of which part I’m supposed to be painting!

Hopefully though, as I keep studying these delicate, beautiful flowers while painting them from life, and my tenacity in keeping on failing(!) will finally bring about the results I want. In the meantime, I will just keep plodding on, Failing Big, Failing Often, and loving every minute of it. 

If you are also trying to get somewhere with what you love to do, be brave, bold and tenacious, and remember this inspiring quote, it’s a good one! 🌸