I will work anywhere where there’s a table or a flat surface for my paper. At the beginning of lockdown in March 2020 I didn’t think it would last for very long. I ended up on my own in the house for the vast majority of time from March 2020 through to January 2022. I moved my studio tables around the house as the seasons changed.
I was in my conservatory at my large metal dining table with views out to the garden & the mountains when it was warm, & then up in my living room on a large wooden dining table, with the wood burning stove keeping me cosy & warm. The much smaller kitchen table downstairs was also a great place to work on messier techniques like printing & stencilling.
I would work from the moment I woke in the morning to the time I went to sleep. I woke up & went to the table to work for a short time in my dressing gown, made tea & then went to shower & dress properly. This made me feel ready to start the day & to mark the time as I worked thought it.
Rests in between for walks with friends (when we could), wanders around the boundaries of my own garden & the vineyards right up around it, & of course, to drink & cook meals. Cooking was such a pleasure as was growing my own vegetables to cook. I picked colourful weeds, seeds, leaves to make small posies for my studio tables. I loved it.
I loved the routine of working, cooking, wandering out to the garden in any weather with a hot drink, a bit of weeding, digging, looking at the views, having a quick chat with my neighbours, the small road our buffer. My second brother was in lockdown with his own family, 3 kilometres from me & I had good friends who also lived nearby in their own home. We did meet up during this time to walk in the woods, toboggan down snowed on slopes, out of sight. As the rules relaxed over time, we’d meet at each others homes in our ‘designated’ bubbles & get home before curfew.
During that whole time the fact that I had space, time, combined with that ‘forced’ solitude, I felt so lucky to experience the changing of the seasons every day for such a long period, for the first time in my life. It was a wondrous thing, but it didn’t take away the fact that it was a such a strange, bizarre, sad & sometimes fearful time.
Within 2 weeks of the lockdown in Italy, when a friend suddenly lost both his parents (both fit & healthy) in just a matter of days, to Covid, it devastated him but it also shook me to the core. I knew them, I met them at his wedding, they were lovely & lively. When the numbers in Italy soared, a frustrating fearfulness that I fought to push away, definitely entered my psyche. I felt fearful about my children being so far away & husband not being with me. My mother & brothers all in Malaysia. The people I loved.
I was on my own most of the time. My family was spread around the world & in lockdowns where they were all located. Thank goodness for WhatsApp & FaceTime. It really did keep me in touch, keeping me secure, sane & happy with the knowledge that they were all ok & safe. And, friendships could continue virtually. Thank goodness.
My studio tables became my safe space & my comfort zone. I loved sitting down in the morning & getting to work on pieces I was completing, or thinking up new pieces to keep myself painting all the time. It also kept me in touch with the passing of time. I had something tangible to show myself for that time, those 2 years that passed so rapidly it seemed. It could easily have been a total black hole but the work I did during that space kept me whole, positive & so happy to have been sheltered & cocooned by family, friends & by nature herself, in Piemonte, Italy.
I have to thank Italy for that time as well. I was there, a Malaysian stuck in Italy & they were all so very kind to me.
