Here’s the first colour beginning to come in. I’m concentrating on the three close poppy heads as I’m very aware these may be gone tomorrow. A metaphor for the relationship of Medea and her sons, fragile and so beautiful. This is done from life looking out of my sliding sash window at these in the cool of the evening from my living room. I have the paper on a drawing board on my easel. I work stood up.

Here’s the first stage of a large A1 drawing I started on Thursday evening using the poppies in our front garden as a starting point. I made a small sketch on Monday which I will share after I’ve shared the stages of the drawing so far. I’m exploring the theme of family, hence the poppy family idea. I’m thinking of Medea with her boys as a trio and when they were with Jason. There’s a trio of poppy heads in this, very close. I’m also including fleece like spirals in the opposite corner. There’s an area of undergrowth which I’m calling ‘the thicket’ which is also pulling me in the centre. It feels metaphoric, but it is just beginning at the moment. I am staying open to where this work takes me. I’m reading and watching medea related stuff all the time too.

Here’s a little sketchbook study in pencil and oil pastel made on the spot in our local park. I love how the tree is damaged and broken but is still beautiful and growing. A bit of a metaphor for us all maybe. I made a large A1 study from this yesterday which I will share next.

Here’s more tone being laid down in the sky and waves. I’m including some text from a song I’ve been listening to called ‘Lighthouse man’ by The Waifs, it seemed appropriate for Medea in the stage I’m at in her story. I’m not going to depict the actual moment she destroyed her children, but am more interested in her state of mind subsequent to that. As in Euripedes’ play it is not necessary to show the act, it is enough to know she did it.

Here’s the first stage of the drawing where I’m mapping out the main directional lines and some shapes, as well as the beginnings of blocks of tone.

This is the second drawing that I made on the workshop again of my earrings. This time we were also asked to draw something else belonging to someone else in the room. I chose a lovely necklace belonging to a lady called Margaret and brought it together with my earrings. Sonia was very concerned that none of us in the group knew each other previously. We didn’t, which made for a very interesting day!

Thought you might like to see the two drawings that I made in the Sonia Boyce workshop at the Glasgow School of Art many years ago. She told me something was trying to get out. We worked in one of the magnificent studios designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh in that iconic building. We were asked to draw a personal possession we had with us that had significance. I chose my silver Indian earrings. Sonia had given us a talk about her work and practice  along with other artists holding workshops on the day. We had to chose the workshop that resonated with us. I was fascinated by Sonia’s work and the way she spoke about intervening in public spaces where people meet with her pieces. I also liked the way she used the written word and explored it’s significance in certain ambiguous situations. I explored using text in my own drawing. This one says ‘Write anything you like in this box and cover it up’ It was really about us giving ourselves permission  to be totally uninhibited in what we say, or what marks we make, in our own world of artistic creations, then we can always hide it or offer up some sort of code for others to decipher.

This is the final drawing in the trilogy that I made on Monday and was the most difficult for me in many ways. I meditated before doing it to protect and ground myself as I knew I would be dealing with the darkest aspect of Medea’s revenge, namely her decision to kill the children. The words she uses ,’have to’ suggest some outside authority not herself deciding to do this as an imperative. The moment of choice is a cold dispassionate one, but the decision once made as a thought inexorably manifests itself into the act. There seemed to be no going back once she had thought it. This is where she departs from the rest of us. Is she insane, she surely loved her children more than anything else? Not more than her need to punish Jason for his betrayal.