Wednesday 26 January 2022

WOYWW #660: A difficult post with sad news

Just as well that I announced last time that I will blog less frequently - I wouldn't have had the strength to write this post sooner anyway. I'm not sure I'm ready for it now. 

A couple of days after my last post I received the devastating news from my father back in Hungary that my mother had had a massive stroke. The doctors didn't give him any hope that she would survive. She died three days later never having regained consciousness. It came out of the blue - she was in generally good health, but she did have high blood pressure and had stopped taking her medication because of the side effects. I spoke to the whole family over Zoom on Christmas Eve and she seemed fine. They even went on a nature trail during the holidays and there were no warning signs. She was 75 years old. Her mother died of a stroke at around the same age as well, as did my other grandmother, so I'm probably genetically predisposed myself. 

A few days later I ended up in A&E too with very high blood pressure, literally off the charts - no doubt caused by the stress. I wasn't unwell just very panicky so the out-of-hours GP sent me in at 2 am. I'm on medication now and my BP has come down but it's still higher than normal. Because of this ongoing health concern on top of the escalating Covid situation on the Continent, I can't go back for the funeral. I'll see my family some time in the Spring/Summer instead, when hopefully things will have normalised. 

Here's a photo of me with my mum in summer 1988 - ready for my first day at work. She worked in the same business park, so we caught the bus together. I remember that day as if it was yesterday.

While all this was going on, I still kept making art and posting on Instagram - frankly, that's what kept me going. I didn't make any public announcements, just carried on as normal. I don't like drama and attention - keeping busy and pretending everything is ok is my coping mechanism. 

I did snap a photo of my desk on Monday - after all, it's WOYWW

Here's a digest of some of the art I made for the January challenges on Instagram...

- a series I'm doing on corrugated cardboard for the #happyyouin22 challenge:






- a couple of  journal pages for the #creativeunfold2022 challenge:



- and this page inspired by Laly Mille's WOTY (Word of the Year) lesson for #artjournalwithlaly:

Originally, my word was 'freedom' because I want to achieve a level of artistic freedom - and I added 'brave' as a sub-word in light of what had happened. Life goes on for those of us left behind.

Hope you're all well. Please take good care of yourselves xx

Wednesday 5 January 2022

WOYWW #657: Happy New Year - ugly art club challenge completed!

Happy New Year everyone! Who else has their Christmas deco still up? Back to the drudgery tomorrow for me and I have some errands to run this afternoon but I'll make time to visit as many desks as I can before that and the rest later on. I have decided to blog less often - maybe once a month - just to keep my blog going, as much for my own records as for anything else, and of course to keep in touch with  WOYWW and the handful of other blogger friends who follow me. It's nice to look back on my blog as a sort of diary but it's so much easier to post on Instagram. Should you miss me (I don't see why you would, but if you do) just visit my Instagram profile for updates. 

My desk shot from yesterday taken in rare daylight: 

I've completed the 2-week ugly art challenge and started two other January challenges. They are not too demanding as the #creativeunfold2022 runs weekly and the #happyyouin22 every other day. I find these challenges very inspiring as we cheer each other along, otherwise I tend to get a bit lazy and aimless.

Here are the remaining pieces from the #tuac5minchallenge: they were supposed to be 5-minute projects, but some of them took longer - I don't think it matters. These have all been created on brown paper packaging and they all have collaged teabags. I like to work in series, though there's always a danger that the pieces begin to look too similar to each other using the same materials. 






I've also made this reel showing all 14 pieces together in quick succession (reels can only be max 30 seconds in length):  



I have a couple of pieces for the January challenges completed as well but I'll post them all together next time. Until then, cheerio! xx