In a not so recent blog of June 0th 2011….I eulogised on my life-long, love/hate, affair with daffodils and my aspirations for future depictions in painting.
They are upon us again in all their loveliness, so here goes for another struggle! I will start with this glorious bunch received from a dear friend the other night.
It’s a Female Fist!………
The attractive young woman in white is the lady who, as keynote speaker at the Conference in the recent National Women’s Enterprise Day , held in The Heritage Hotel Portlaoise, described in detail her three and a half month ordeal rowing single handedly across the Atlanctic…hardly a dry eye in the place and a resounding standing ovation helped express our appreciation for this most inspirational courageous lady………..
Hello! ……. I caught the 8. O clock bus from Arklow to Dublin yesterday, November 22nd…. had thrown in my very hurriedly taken notes from afore mentioned Conference ..tried to make sense of my sparse, scratchy, and incomprehensible interpretation of what were excellent presentations to the initiated….(a fab event)
I now have the heart- sinking feeling of being in mid ocean- definitely out of my comfort zone- I remember Debra’s guts and if I may be so bold as to draw a brief comparison!
I definitely suffer from Cyberphobia.. (Deb’s husband had to quit the trip as he was suffering from agoraphobia) Not in my first flush of youth, I find the language alien and cyber concepts leave me in meltdown…a surging tide of powerlessness and failure eminate from somewhere in my gut, gather momentum, disseminate into my brain and result in an overwhelming urge to just be- an old troglodyte- and forget the whole thing!
I recall Deb’s take on- comfort zones and moving forward….Surfing down 40 ft waves and seeing miracles of nature in your wake- is a comfort zone too far, pour moi…….But, contemplating the enormity of what Debra achieved, little by little surfing the web with a cup of coffee in hand seems suddenly somewhat doable.
At Busaras, on this magnificent God- given Summer’s day in late November, I trip, crossing the Luas Line-As a first time user of said Luas and desperately trying to look nonchalant I pick myself up and join the queue of on-lookers. An elderly lady next to me rushes verbally to my aid with just the right phrases to quell my feelings of being an ejit…‘it can happen so easily’…. ’a friend of mine… etc.etc..’
Consoled and ensconsed in seat, passing O’Connell Street I glimpse The Spire. A glorious shaft of sunlight. In an instant I follow its magnetic gleam of light as it pierces the azure sky and think…I’ll make it up there to cybespace even if I have to shimmy up single handedly..Thank you Debra!
Crossing the Ardeche Mountains
Still not getting used to the wicked ways of ‘Molly’- the Sat Nav with the plummy voice over. Skeletal squeezing terror is instilled in me, the passenger of the left hand drive campervan. Flashes of being buried in a shoe box, assail my demented body as air borne stones fly over the rim of Dante-like abysses, only a thin sheet of metal between me and a plummet to certain death. Climbing, climbing, on pencil narrow roads, looping like ringlets we make our way over the Ardeche Mountains with rattling saucepans through Mezhilhac, Laviol and Antraigues-sur-Vol towards Privas, daring only a rapid sketch stop, or gravity defying photograph.
Our plan was the N102 from Le Puy-en Valay to Aubenas- not so, but, a la Molly!
She has taken us some hairy places in the past, but few as breathtakingly beautiful as the wild daffodil strewn slopes, that were our pleasure to see, a chilly but sunny day last April. Buttercups vying for yellowness, daffodils winning out from the sheer beauty and dint of quantity – acres of them carpeting as far as the eye could see.
I have drunk long and hard from the golden cup of the daffodil, for more years than I care to remember. It is for me simultaneously, symbol of death and hope. Bone crunching Good Fridays of youthful misery giving way in later years to painstaking hours of trying and testing chromes, white, lemon, yellow, oranges, cerulean, mixing and analysing tones- cool, cooler, warm, warmer, grey, greyer greens, till blinded, spring after spring …. year in… .year out.. desperate to interpret the shimmering glory of these demented flowers …. before weeping…. to see them fade away so soon.
Oil paint, watercolour, acrylic and more recently, mixed media and print employed, in my perhaps , never to be resolved struggle to capture the diaphanous fragility…I am convinced that no two daffodils look the same in the zillions that grace the world every year!
It is with my usual positive ambition that I look forward to my next artistic endeavour involving daffodils and emotion recollected in tranquillity… At least this time their colours merge into impressionistic distances so, perhaps this is the year of a modicum of success!
Ardeche Gorge