Kathy
This is a collage of photos of the space I use at home for creative activities. I have taken a number of photos of the space in different sizes, cut them up and put them together. It’s important to me to have a space like this at home where I can make a bit of a mess and leave things out unfinished so that I can come back and continue, even for a short length of time. Although it doesn’t always look quite as cluttered as it does here! This is an important space for me always but has been so particularly during lockdown.
Kathy's collage
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My doctor’s surgery has been posting art-related activities every day on Instagram which I have found really enjoyable and helpful. It is one of the things that has helped me get through this time, along with Zoom meetings and good friends.
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view from my window
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Janet
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Janet's 56th day in lockdown
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Rachel
Rachel's garden daybed
My Garden Day Bed
Tossed out on the street by the neighbours
My lockdown family suggested bringing it in
“No” I protested! It’ll just get wet in the rain – and then I’ll have a piece of rubbish to dump – more work to do –
But gradually I succumbed
It became a beautiful and peaceful sitting place
It became our morning meditation spot
The chickens came and pecked us there
We watched the empty blue skies
We listened to the birds
We pondered on what we would do with our day
We cried, laughed, tended the garden
Lockdown is easing – my friends have gone with the chickens
Work is taking over again
The resting place is neglected – the rain has started falling
Will I lose that peace forever?
Tossed out on the street by the neighbours
My lockdown family suggested bringing it in
“No” I protested! It’ll just get wet in the rain – and then I’ll have a piece of rubbish to dump – more work to do –
But gradually I succumbed
It became a beautiful and peaceful sitting place
It became our morning meditation spot
The chickens came and pecked us there
We watched the empty blue skies
We listened to the birds
We pondered on what we would do with our day
We cried, laughed, tended the garden
Lockdown is easing – my friends have gone with the chickens
Work is taking over again
The resting place is neglected – the rain has started falling
Will I lose that peace forever?
Anna
Homeworking in Hove. 6.30am in Hove Park woods instead of on the 6.20 express to London Victoria
Libby
Mum’s rose and jasmine plants - brought from her little yard to mine - have made staying at home during lockdown a little more bearable for me and help me to connect with my poor old Mum still locked away in her care home.
Celia
Treasured Lockdown Memories
Circling from top left:
1. 23rd March. Lockdown announced. Feeling trepidation. It’s just me and B now!! My birthday card to Bernard.
2. I shift my consulting room to Eilidh’s unused bedroom looking down on this gorgeous little garden. I’m loving the view.
3. 30th March. Our beloved cat Midnight dies peacefully. I make this little headstone in memory.
4. Glorious daily walks in Springfield Park and along the river Lea. Nature has never felt so abundant.
5. Mum has a mini heart attack - spends two weeks in hospital - no visitors allowed. Discharged on the day after surgery – we celebrate on her roof terrace.
6. My BLM Banner. My first solo protest. Someone films me and his video gets 2.5 K views on FB! I’ve gone viral!
Circling from top left:
1. 23rd March. Lockdown announced. Feeling trepidation. It’s just me and B now!! My birthday card to Bernard.
2. I shift my consulting room to Eilidh’s unused bedroom looking down on this gorgeous little garden. I’m loving the view.
3. 30th March. Our beloved cat Midnight dies peacefully. I make this little headstone in memory.
4. Glorious daily walks in Springfield Park and along the river Lea. Nature has never felt so abundant.
5. Mum has a mini heart attack - spends two weeks in hospital - no visitors allowed. Discharged on the day after surgery – we celebrate on her roof terrace.
6. My BLM Banner. My first solo protest. Someone films me and his video gets 2.5 K views on FB! I’ve gone viral!
Big Eilidh's Lockdown Art
Simon
These four drawings accompany Goldmine, a game I’ve been working on for 10 years. Lockdown provided the space to finally complete the project and the image’s themes of work, trade, searching and discovery seem to have resonances, (in my mind at least) with the social, economic and personal concerns of the last few months.
Working Man
The Search
Economic Activity
Discovery
Kathryn
East London Lockdown
Joy
Shedding
I am saying goodbye to you now
Memory by memory
As you unpeel
Each ancient layer of childhood
So vivid
Whilst yesterday is a mystery
You are shedding
Everything
The pride and satisfaction of knowing
Being in control
Position and respect
Hard won
Softly dissolving
And we are left with now
With you and me
And the breeze
And the little white flower which you can’t name
Smiling and laughing at nothing in particular
In the sun
Joy MacKeith, June 2020
I am saying goodbye to you now
Memory by memory
As you unpeel
Each ancient layer of childhood
So vivid
Whilst yesterday is a mystery
You are shedding
Everything
The pride and satisfaction of knowing
Being in control
Position and respect
Hard won
Softly dissolving
And we are left with now
With you and me
And the breeze
And the little white flower which you can’t name
Smiling and laughing at nothing in particular
In the sun
Joy MacKeith, June 2020
Grace
Tall, tanned
Elegant
Just walking between rooms,
Or making a pot of herbal tea
You flow, possessed, poised
Poverty of movement and richness of spirit
Have hewn an appreciation of the smallest things
Sun on skin
An afternoon nap
Fresh lime juice squeezed onto your omelette
The cat’s warm purr
Laughter follows you faithfully
And life is usually lighter for your presence
But when the darkness can’t be held back
You have learnt to sit with it
And rest in faith
Your joy at others’ triumphs
Is truly the prize of an old soul
Many times cycled and worn smooth and generous
How I long for you to have triumphs of your own
To be able to dance into the world
And grace it with your riches
Joy MacKeith June 2020
Tall, tanned
Elegant
Just walking between rooms,
Or making a pot of herbal tea
You flow, possessed, poised
Poverty of movement and richness of spirit
Have hewn an appreciation of the smallest things
Sun on skin
An afternoon nap
Fresh lime juice squeezed onto your omelette
The cat’s warm purr
Laughter follows you faithfully
And life is usually lighter for your presence
But when the darkness can’t be held back
You have learnt to sit with it
And rest in faith
Your joy at others’ triumphs
Is truly the prize of an old soul
Many times cycled and worn smooth and generous
How I long for you to have triumphs of your own
To be able to dance into the world
And grace it with your riches
Joy MacKeith June 2020
Grace
The Present
I was waking up, realising my reality and the future to come. The future was too painful, too sad, too scary. Another six months, possibly more doing nothing, confined in my body with desire bursting to run free. It was only when the future became too painful was I forced to live in the present.
It’s something like 95% of what we worry about doesn’t actually end up happening. Well my worry is very likely to come true. We must live in the present, not because the future we hear might not come true, but because living in the present will completely change the present.
Today turns from being another day of many more to come being trapped at home, to becoming a day with peace and openness to the possibilities and sensations that may arise.
The present has a presence that is transformative. I am new to the present but all I can say is that it is peaceful and full. I spend my day mostly doing nothing, watching ants and such. But in the present my life feels much fuller, a contentment at that.
Nature is such an invitation to this presence, its non-stagnant energy. Lifeforce. But the present can always be found. God is in the present. The present is all that we have but sometimes it takes losing the future that we think we have to realise that. I wonder if this is what cancer patients who lose their future also find. The present.
Grace Jefford, June 2020
I was waking up, realising my reality and the future to come. The future was too painful, too sad, too scary. Another six months, possibly more doing nothing, confined in my body with desire bursting to run free. It was only when the future became too painful was I forced to live in the present.
It’s something like 95% of what we worry about doesn’t actually end up happening. Well my worry is very likely to come true. We must live in the present, not because the future we hear might not come true, but because living in the present will completely change the present.
Today turns from being another day of many more to come being trapped at home, to becoming a day with peace and openness to the possibilities and sensations that may arise.
The present has a presence that is transformative. I am new to the present but all I can say is that it is peaceful and full. I spend my day mostly doing nothing, watching ants and such. But in the present my life feels much fuller, a contentment at that.
Nature is such an invitation to this presence, its non-stagnant energy. Lifeforce. But the present can always be found. God is in the present. The present is all that we have but sometimes it takes losing the future that we think we have to realise that. I wonder if this is what cancer patients who lose their future also find. The present.
Grace Jefford, June 2020
Mick
Laundry Day
Nicky
Neil
I've been teaching myself figure drawing during the lockdown - these are my efforts to far!
Deborah
Home is where the mum is
I missed last year’s Small Festival, because of my mother. I was about to travel from her care home in Cambridge to Kent, to join the set up team, when she entered the dying phase. So, instead, I slept on a camp bed in her room for 2 nights, and she died on the day the festival started. Lockdown gave me time to make this collage – from condolence cards I received, birthday cards I’d given her and 8 photos, including her valiantly celebrating her 93rd birthday a month earlier. So I’ve paraphrased Grayson Perry, who said at the end of episode 5, ‘home is where the art is’.
Lola
This is some art I have completed in lockdown. :) I’m a beginner and still trying to figure out my style.
Lola
Lola
Lola
Lola
Tanya
Life under Lockdown
Here we have a little painting of the spring flowers on one of the first really sunny days of lockdown, Stanley made a bird feeder, we had an Elephant hawk moth attach itself to the trampoline, a glimpse at the baby Swans on the local canal(we went on a daily swan patrol to check if they had hatched!) my first attempt at visible mending and Arthur turned 10!
Stanley and Arthur
For sheer lack of anything else to do and because Arthur was obsessed with the Simpsons at the time, we drew each other as Simpsons’ characters on Arthur’s birthday, which was during lockdown. Mark is Stanley and Arthur's Dad.
Stan by Arthur
Dan by Stanley
Tanya by Tanya
Arthur by Mark
Dan
Mark by Dan
Audley
The last few months have been pretty shocking for many of us. For me they have offered insights and teachings ensconced in the frame of the domestic. I have looked slowly, and with a quite different pace, at the views both inside and outside. Loss, and the sentimental attachment I have to the past, was already present last year as Christmas turned the year. This is something I wrote and have not finished and a picture I took on my phone.
The only concession I make to further explication is that the typewriter is from a collection I have and belonged once to Neville Samuel Billington OBE who had patents here for air con! It is a war reporter’s compact little metal Corona Zephyr.
The only concession I make to further explication is that the typewriter is from a collection I have and belonged once to Neville Samuel Billington OBE who had patents here for air con! It is a war reporter’s compact little metal Corona Zephyr.
Liz
In lockdown, to make daily walks more interesting I would decide on a colour for the day. Here are my blue, green and yellow days. This was an idea inspired by my friend Viv who is an amazing photographer. During lockdown she was dying of cancer and I couldn't see her so I did this in her honour too!
Liz
Liz
Liz
Philippe
Alphabets: I gravitate towards trying to find balance in the composition of the letters, avoiding language and meaning by using just the 26 letters of our alphabet - my home key. The sequence has a particular and unique rhythm which can be played with and broken, utterly familiar but with infinite possibilities. Even with more abstract designs, there is a harmony that emerges. Each like a jazz solo: the aim is to jump into the unknown, with no plan, but create something in the moment that has its own logic, and that is complete in itself.
Alan
Alan
Paola
Fermented vegetables Lockdown meant more time to be in the kitchen and to follow natural processes. This is a batch of fermented vegetables I made back in April. They are delicious and I love the combination of colours (as an added benefit, probiotics support the immune system).
Street art We spotted this during lockdown on a pedestrian street near where we live.
I don't know the story behind it - my fantasy is that this is a mother's work to entertain her children during the time they could not go to school/kindergarten.
Celebration of the end of lockdown It is the first time we are able to visit my mum since the beginning of the pandemic. The other day I picked plums from my mum's garden. Ansgar took photos. My mum - who turned the fruit into jam and who normally puts pen to paper only to write - surprised us all with these labels showing different moment of our jam-making process. A celebration of our being together again.
Street art We spotted this during lockdown on a pedestrian street near where we live.
I don't know the story behind it - my fantasy is that this is a mother's work to entertain her children during the time they could not go to school/kindergarten.
Celebration of the end of lockdown It is the first time we are able to visit my mum since the beginning of the pandemic. The other day I picked plums from my mum's garden. Ansgar took photos. My mum - who turned the fruit into jam and who normally puts pen to paper only to write - surprised us all with these labels showing different moment of our jam-making process. A celebration of our being together again.
Fermented vegetables
Street art
Celebration of the end of lockdown
Gillian
Lockdown - so many possibilities, so little inclination to do anything too demanding
Gillian
