Corona has turned my life upside down. It was a roller-coaster of emotion when everything first ground to a halt. We had to unpick sooo many plans. Three tours had just come to an end, and thankfully most of our guests were back in their home countries, though there was a lot of flight logistics to work out.
Thank you for all the messages of support for Art Safari.
Now I’m still itching to get back to painting properly. Rescheduling tours and workshops displaced by Covid-19 seems to have taken huge amounts of my time. I’m confident that Art Safari will emerge from lockdown just as strong. We will be ready when you are, and we’re ready to adapt. We’re hoping that regional travel will be possible relatively soon and European travel soon after.
I’m feeling amazingly positive in this lovely weather. The office swallows are back – and I have fixed up the swift boxes too.
The new website is sooooo nearly ready – it’s taken a year of building! I was quoted in the Telegraph last weekend, encouraging people to take sketching materials out on a walk – there’s so much information you can put into a small sketch that you can then paint when you’re back indoors.
I’m also taking time to make quick sketches locally, go through old sketchbooks and photograph sketches and making exhibition plans – something I never have time for normally.
Here’s where I should be with some of you next week:
Any guesses where it is?
Art Safari has been given a small grant to help with running costs during this tough time and (even more pleasing) another small grant from the local ANOB to help run the Suffolk SketchFest here in Woodbridge at the beginning of September (4,5 & 6 September) to which you are of course welcome – I’ll tell you all about it another time. Who knows what the scene will be like then, whether we’ll be socially distanced along the river wall and then have to scuttle back home to upload our paintings into a digital exhibition, or whether it will be possible to run workshops as we’d originally envisaged? Like everyone, for me it’s a game of wait and see, with yoga every day instead of swimming, with time time at home to clear out old files and boxes, to do some diy and dig out the whole garden….and soon to be painting more.