Flowers

Sketch a day - Day 45/365

First (in case you were following events from yesterday) Lara Darling is home safe and she's doing ok.

She is high on pain killers, wide eyed and freaked out with 3 less teeth than she used to have, but she's gunna be ok.

Thank you universe.

The other thing to say is that tonight's drawing has been such a whirl of emotions.

It wasn't meant to look like this.

I thought I was using a fountain pen with waterproof ink in it, but I wasn't. So the ink ran in ways I wasn't intending.

But then I decided to just go with it. And added a fuck ton of India ink and layers of new colour and in a funny way this picture has turned out how I am feeling tonight.

Full of love for the world and also full of a kind of deep sadness and loss, as I watch the early days of the Trump administration begin it's desecration of people and planet.

I listened to a podcast today from https://endoftheworldshow.org/episodes/is-this-the-rapture-with-roan-boucher on US Christian Nationalism and it's an extraordinary episode.

Eye opening.

Deeply heartbreaking but honestly I am glad I listened.

It contextualises how the attacks on trans people right now are part of a long line of attacks on indigenous folks, women, black, brown people (most recently Palestinian people and the genocide there) and also how this toxic thinking is linked to climate change denial. I think if you care about people, or planet or both it's worth a listen.

So, here I am trying to figure out how to learn to hold grief and also see and feel beauty and love all at the same time. Because we are in for a really rough ride. But giving up is not an option.

I think this all somehow came out in my drawing. I didn't intend it. But the inks knew, even if I didn't.

It's funny as I started the day having such an interesting conversation with a writing squad writer about the links between image, metaphor and dramatic action. We talked about how image and action are so intertwined it's hard to think of them separately. And I look at my picture and can't think of a better example of that idea.

Anyway. Inky mess and seeping darkness aside, that's the news.