20/04/2020
Painting during Lock down
During this strange time, as we have all been asked to stay home to protect our NHS and fellow citizens, I have begun a series of paintings of the windows around my home. During these quiet moments, as I follow the light around the house, I’ve been meditating on what home means. A word that carries such a lot of significance, especially right now.
The word ‘home’ can apply to so many things, a property where you live, a place you grew up, somewhere you feel you belong, a country you call your own… the planet you live on. But I have been thinking about what home becomes when the world around us feels overwhelmingly uncertain. Home is a place of safety, a refuge. Home is the one space you can feel you have control over, however small it might be, it’s a place to ground oneself, a place to heal.
A home should be a basic human right, and it is so wrong that we live in a world where anyone should find themselves homeless. But even those of us who are lucky enough to have a place we can call home, have to face the truth that it still can not offer us what we crave most: certainty.