Further thoughts from the swimming pool

I seem to do a lot of my critical thinking while flogging up and down the pool for 1000m.  Today, I was thinking about the jar of marmalade I gave my friend Lisa.  I thought about how making marmalade is important to me, because my husband, Jim, eats a lot of sweet stuff and I think home-made marmalade is more nutritious, tastes better and has fewer additives than shop jam.  I have an emotional attachment to the process of making marmalade for this reason. 

Then I realised that my work is much more successful to me, and more appealing to others, when I have this emotional content in my work.  And it is emotional content by drawing objects that relate to my family in some way.  The pomegranates do not have this emotional input from me.  Therefore this is why the artwork with them has been so hard, and so unsuccessful. 

Tomorrow I will start more drawing.  I have been out and bought more seville oranges (this is the last week of the season), and will draw them in various different ways, along with the maslin pan, squeezer, wooden spoons, sugar etc.  Then I get to make the third batch of marmalade this year(!).  The process of making marmalade is laborious, repetitive hand work, and this fits with my degree essay about getting into "flow" via repetitive movement, this strange link of hand and brain, and the state of contentment that this brings mentally.  I can see coloured backgrounds, made by using pencils/paint in the same fine cutting movement that I use when chopping the peel, line drawings of the squeezed oranges, freely drawn oranges, the pans and the spoons.  Drawn singly and in groups.  And all the time I have the link with the peace, joy and contentment of the domestic environment.  Doing things that are slow and laborious, simply for the benefit of my husband and me.  The contentment of being "glad to be home" after being away for a year.  Having the simple pleasures of being able to use utensils that I have had for many years, the familiarity of handling well used tools.  And maybe once I have drawn many, many times, I will get this state of flow when I am handling paints, pencils and art materials, just like I do when in the kitchen.

I always find the creative state to be quite fraught at times, but last week was the first time that I was so frustrated and upset that I was thinking about jacking in the course and walking away from it.  This morning at the pool, I worked out how to get to that state of peace, joy and contentment, when doing my college work, by identifying the subject that gives me the emotional attachment that takes my work to a higher level.