Backwards And Forwards

I don’t look backwards, generally, and since I don’t make resolutions, I don’t have to do some sort of appraisal of myself at the year end. This isn’t out of laziness or moral turpitude or because I don’t think goals are a good idea – it’s just that they don’t work for me, or not in the usual sense. Instead of goals I have intentions, and these nudge me in the right direction towards aims that sometimes stay way out on the horizon – but that’s ok. It’s what happens on the way to getting there that matters, and how it makes me feel.

In the last twelve months I’ve done much more drawing than I’d done in years, and it feels good. Even though I can’t get far from home, even though there are days when I can’t get out at all, I’ve been able to draw everyday objects and make a record of what’s happening around me, and a part of me that had been asleep has woken up with a yawn and a stretch and is having a very good time indeed.

A lot of this sketching has been in nearby Cliffe Castle Park, and only the recent indescribably wet weather has kept me away. It’s been too wild and stormy for me to wade through puddles and floods and mud to get to the Castle itself, and the museum which is chock full of treasures waiting to be drawn.

The fossils and minerals are wonderful, and I often go into the natural history gallery, but upstairs there’s a whole floor of Victorian toys and games and strange oddities (like the stuffed sheep with two heads) that are just calling out to be looked at and sketched. (Though I’ll have to have a think about that sheep…)

Here’s to wide intentions and to travelling towards those possibilites in 2016 – and a very happy New Year to everyone.