The Blindfold (Oil on canvas, 16 x 16 ins)
Sometimes I feel I'm in a darkened corridor, inching my way along the wall, my hands outstretched, looking for an exit. It's an exit that may not be there, but there's a reassurance in the knowledge that I can easily find my way back to the entrance.
I'm still having trouble with my eyesight and am waiting for a hospital appointment to see what might be done about it. Meanwhile, I'm learning to cope with a couple of pairs of glasses for the first time in my life. One pair is for reading and they've already proven their worth, in that my rate of getting through books has increased dramatically. I've also been able to make use of them for cartooning because that kind of work I do quite close to the paper. You'll find some of my newly invigorated cartooning skills over on my other blog, The Cartoonist's Hat.
The other pair is for near distance and they're the ones I'm finding difficult to get used to. They're fine for reading the computer monitor screen and even for messing around in the kitchen, but I've yet to summon up the courage to use them for what the optician prescribed them for - painting.
In part, this is because I'm in the middle of a period of Not Knowing What to Paint. I have it in my mind to tackle some subject matter quite different to what I've dealt with over the last few years. These paintings wouldn't necessarily be to the exclusion of all else but they're things I've wanted to get at for a long time, so I set my sights on getting one or two moving - to no avail so far.
Which is where the darkened corridor metaphor comes in. I think I know where I want to go, but finding the way into it is proving difficult. I could just retreat to the known exit and resume what I was doing before, but that's happened before and this time I really, really want to see if there's a different room beyond the one I know.
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