January 2022: How do I let go of my two beloved allotments?
My self-directed journey towards healing from OCD / PTSD is the one I’m most proud of: in the dungeon of my pain and despair has been found the golden nugget of my strength / gifts to the world regarding Incest Survivor’s Roar. Emerging in its own good time is the imagining that I’d like to work privately one-to-one as an all-round artist with adult survivors of incest abuse to explore the self, society’s attitudes to this still worryingly taboo topic, and individual artistic expression. I’m mindful of regularly needing to ask myself the question, “What’s the emotion fueling this project?” so that I continue to attend to my own needs as well to those of others.
Lauren Ostrowski Fenton’s sleep meditations have been the one thing that have helped me to cope with chronic upper body pain, and engaging with UPLIFT TV instead of BBC News and social media have helped to return me to myself so that I’m more awake to what’s actually around me. In the midst of such uncertainty that I can’t get my arms around, I now feel at least grounded enough to take each day / decision as it comes.
Dudical!!! on Youtube commented about my piano composition, Frustration; “This is actually a genius work of art!” Words of encouragement and appreciation for my art are always very gratefully recieved.
With my original mixed media art piece, Power Leaves, I tried out drawing with felt-tip pen through tissue ~ Nothing is repeated in nature; a fact that the diversity of my art portfolio demonstrates: I’m ALIVE and want to be dabbling in the joys of newness every day. I believe that there are still elements of my work that help it hang together as a whole, though.
‘Windowsill’ by Gemma Boyd
I created the digital artwork, Windowsill (above) while listening to the Netflix documentary, Feminists: What Were They Thinking? featuring the beguiling artists, Meredith Monk, Laurie Anderson, Lily Tomlin and Anne Waldman ~ I taught myself how to resize images on Procreate and upload files correctly onto printed.com templates so as to produce my first set of 10 A5 Hearts and Roses postcards on recycled silk paper for Valentine’s Day. Inside I know there will be no takers, but I’m proud and happy to have accomplished this ~ I updated my digital art piece, Shapes of Love by surrounding it with a buttery yellow border which contrasts starkly with the deep magenta pink of hearts.
Step two in the direction of my desire to live tiny and off-grid in either rural France, Norway or America has been to read an exciting book that I’m utterly in love with; The Hand-Sculpted House - A Philosophical and Practical Guide to Building a Cob Cottage by Ianto Evans, Michael G. Smith and Linda Smiley. Within its pages could well be the key to making a reality “the firm foundation of my own building” I long so much for in my 2020 collection of poetry, Severed: the stars are aligning, but I must release what’s keeping me tethered to Hainault, England…
How do I let go of all the plants / flowers / cats / wildlife / trees and buildings I’ve nurtured for six years on my allotments and honour my desire to grow as a gardener and natural builder? In loss there is intense loving, I know, and for the sake of my health I need to distance myself from the stresses of working in close proximity to toxic allotment committee members: to be able to continue experimenting with permaculture principles in my own garden is an invigorating thought. Doing this will also free up more time to find paid work elsewhere. My allotments have inspired so much and the anticipation of abandoning them to be potentially trashed by the next plot holder(s) is heartbreaking. Alternatively a like-minded person who will continue to love and enjoy my allotments could take them over. Either way I’ll never know and I guess that’s the gamble one takes on an allotment site. Ultimately, however, the council own the land and the plants and trees I must leave behind know that I’ve done my best for them. This is such a hard choice I hope to make by the end of February.
“Art, at root, means “to fit together.””
‘Allotment Greenhouse’ by Gemma Boyd