Lockdown Art Book Projects

Work in progress: folded concertina books and boxes project on the theme of lockdown, confinement, travel and places and faces missed during the year to March 2021 living under Covid rule(s). 

Mixed media and collage including acrylic painting, Gelli Plate printing with acrylics and waterbased ink, stamping, photos, photo transfer via Gelli Plate, monoprints. Print outs of Met. Office weather charts, pages from an old road atlas. Also a recycled liquer chocolate box which I kept from Christmas 2019, thinking it might come in useful for something - art about caged animals, perhaps. That's now in the process of being filled by 15-16cm square prints and collages about house arrest, isolation, rivers anti-socially distanced by fencing curtailing rivers / water spirits from meeting people, except those in a select group. Later in the year, the Great Conjunction not only of Jupiter and Saturn but the second Covid wave becoming a surge just as people were hoping to enjoy Christmas. Thanks to the rapid and remarkable development of Covid vaccines, everyone's holding their hopes out for easier times and eventual return to some form of normality; but not before renewed national lockdown - it's been over two months now.  

 Thankfully I've stayed safe from the virus and so have my friends and family but the UK Covid toll has been a national disaster which I couldn't believe could happen. What's hit me hardest has been the restrictions on travel and freedom of movement. Especially because, as a liver transplantee (even if over 30 years now) taking immunosuppressants, I was advised to shield. During the second wave, they backed off (careful exercise outdoors according to lockdown rules was OK) but during the first lockdown, it meant house arrest. 

Even after the advice was relaxed / shielding stood down at the end of July 2020, it took me many months to get over it, especially as I knew there would be a second wave with renewed lockdown and dreaded it all and worse happening again. Even between the lockdowns, they still advised public transport was best avoided. Though I took a few local train journeys (up to 20 minutes each) in August and September, I didn't feel at ease. Pre-pandemic one of the upsides of living in the busy conurbation of southern Hampshire was it being relatively well served with buses and trains. I lived close to a train station and regularly used these services for sketching, printmaking, art exhibition viewing in Southampton, Portsmouth and various places in between. Usually a cuppa and cake in a coffee shop or cafe somewhere. Occasionally trips further afield along the Sussex coast, the valleys of the Lavant and Arun among my favourites; and to London. Trips away were mainly around Britain: quite a few to almost the other end of it to the Scottish Highlands where we have walking and cycling friends. Sometimes on the way up or way home, I'd extend the stay for a few nights at a Premier Inn, Travelodge and before that youth hostels until I found it too difficult to sleep in shared rooms (and worried I was keeping other people awake by padding out to the bathroom at night). During my 30+ years since my transplant, there had been health-related affecting if not me family members. All hit me hard and haunted my mind for some time afterwards. Apart from some bad bugs in the system in 2016 (only one was a virus but won't go into all that now). The years 2013-20 had been stable and at the beginning of 2020 I'd almost forgotten I'd ever been unwell. There was the usual agro women have to deal with around the 50 year mark. Otherwise I considered myself fit and well and liked to be treated just the same as everyone else.