Someone asked me the other day if I was one of those people who painted for eight hours a day.
For most of my life I wanted to be one of those people, and I've spent the last 15 years learning about why I am not. Oh to be that person who 'was always drawing as a child', or the one who 'finds themselves drawing' in every cafe, sportsfield, train ride, watching the tele...
I have no answers, all I know is that making an image like the one above, though technically easy as pie, takes me somewhere that I can only bear for about 45 minutes. Honestly. And that's only at the drawing stage.
This morning I have been in Mesopotamia with the Assyrians, again, and also in India and Persia; inspecting stone carvings, wandering up the side of gravity-defying mountains, swimming in vertical rivers filled with lotuses and unrecognisable fish.... I don't know where exactly I go to, but it seems to be the same dimension as my dreams, and I know for sure that when I'm in that place I'm not bounded by the contours of my skin or the limits of my conscious mind. It's intense work, and I can't stay there for very long.
