Making art in a tiny space

So -- most everything in the house and studio that I have anything to do with has been packed up; only my husband's office and garage remain.

And this is because we'd been told the movers would arrive on the 6th -- three days from now. But due to CoVid -- and the fact that the movers are working from home, not from their office -- a ball got dropped, and they neglected to tell me they needed a deposit to secure the 6th.

So when I called to confirm (and ask why I hadn't heard from them) we ended up having to reschedule til the 21st. Which means I have a couple of weeks still stretching out in front of me, and no clear task beyond my usual occupations of reading, meditating, blogging and packing.

Luckily I left a small cache of supplies in the studio -- a pad of watercolor paper, little trays of watercolor, pencils, pens, charcoal, pastels, brushes -- and a small table to work on. So I've decided to continue that final exercise we were given in Louise Fletcher's course: the one where you use 6 or 7 different tools, just a couple of strokes each.  I scrape bits of color from the watercolor trays onto the paper, spill/spray water over them and smear them around with a plastic palette knife, then add other marks and whatever collage pieces I can round up from the few bits of paper that haven't yet been packed or recycled.

In a way, I get my wish: paintings with lots of white space, limited colors, and marking practice to see what comes naturally. I'll be curious to see where this goes, but my plan is to stick to my pandemic practice and do one a day until we leave -- or until I get my new studio set up, whichever comes first. It should be fun!

... and I keep thinking about the woman I know who said in our zoom call yesterday, "I'm just done. I've finished all my projects, watched every show on Netflix and Prime... There's nothing left for me. Yesterday I never even got out of bed, and I'm still in my pajamas."

It makes me very grateful -- for the challenge, however daunting, of moving; for my husband, however irritating he may sometimes prove to be, and for my art, which offers endless opportunities to play, to write, to blog, to explore... life is good, and I feel very blessed.