I have been a bit stuck recently and have struggled to get to my studio and work. I had a difficult time and I needed to let Easter pass and travel to Italy for some sunshine and family time. A break and my childhood landscape allowed my inner spirit to find the lost step.
Even when I am not working my eyes are registering things that speak to me and I realize how lucky we are in these times that we can just snap with our phones and then revisit the ideas we had.
This is one of these examples. 
I was in a supermarket in Italy, and they were displaying these cushions. This was the seed of a new idea. I did not know what to make of it at the time. It reminded me the exercises I enjoyed doing in portrait classes, drawing without lifting the pencil or looking at the page.
My way of working consists of steps that each time move a concept forwards. (I was not going to learn to screen print on fabric, too far from my skillset!)
Recently I spent a lot of time looking at old photos found in my parents’ house and I did a series of drawing trying to get the similarity from these images of family members in the past.
This is the fist “fresh” sketch that came out and I felt very free and excited by the result, looking forwards to develop this further.
I had not thought of my Grandmother porcelain figurine collection for a while and I missed looking at them. So I picked one up and absentmindedly started to draw the face. Pencil and charcoal were the first instinctive tools, but very soon I needed to expand on very big sheets of paper and brushes.
