Shakad, hasty awakening amygdalus communis, March 2021, watercolour on Fabriano 200gm smooth paper, 42x60cm, £350

Shakad, hebrew for hasty awakening, the almond is the first winter bloom, full of hope, rebirth, amygdalus communis dulcis, sweet almond. I guess we are here to recognise the sacredness of life, the connection to a web of life, this quantum entanglement.

I started to listen to a podcast with Merlin Sheldrake his specialisation is fungi he discusses the interconnectedness recognised by how they exist on the planet. This symbiosis with the environment, he talked about how if we were to understand, appreciate the oneness and how everything is interlinked this might reduce ones destruction of the planet, if we understood how very integral we are we would feel less inclined to want to purge and destroy parts of the living ecosystem. It really struck me as have the conversations of Tolle or other curioushumans that this oneness is the antithesis to separatism, individualism, this separateness and how it is at the root of so many of the world's problems.

To understand that enmeshment reduces conflict and encourages cooperation. He talked about an apple tree and if we only valued the apple, you miss the whole infrastructure, how the myocil interplay with the roots, this intimate relationship, the hidden parts.

I thought about drawing and painting blooms as I do, these flowers are such a magnificent, hopeful, mediatory part of the growing process and I thought about how this relates to an artists practice, that the drawing of the flowers can be quick and easful but it's the years of experimentation, delving, play, falling, sketching that is so vital, looking at the bigger picture, the lifetime, the deliberations, the fits and starts and also how this fits in to the whole picture of life, experiences, surroundings.
And when painting blooms, consideration and knowing is made to not only the tree at that point in its cycle but how that particular species differs from others or sits in the landscape, in reflecting the way the sun touches the petals or trying in some way to reflect the surroundings, the sounds of the bees, the sweet fragrance. How I paint the almond blossom may or may not be different this year to last and how that too is a reflection on how so much can change in one cycle. That how these works are consciously or not reflective of this emerging, interconnection.

Almond blossom, there is something soothing about the annual assurance of the cycle of blooms, the first is always the almond, inevitably it snows as it flowers. The trees near the terrace have a haunting, looming presence, the bees drone is encouraging and the skies backdrop varies from bright cerulean, to graphite, platinum to payne’s grey, or they stand proud, ghostly against the dark eerie evening.

Working still in intermittent bursts, initial sketches are later adapted in an instinctive, immediate process., much of the aesthetic decision making is done in the moment - intuitively working. Bold, flat, graphic colour fields sit alongside swift, gestural marks contrasting with sharp punchy lines. Fluidity against stillness, loose over gusto, finding the balance in composition and palette, there is so much satisfaction in a sweeping chalk mark, or a play on finding the humming, vibrating energy.