I’ve heard quite a few people say, over the last year, that they’ve lost track with what day it is. Without the office or workplace to go into during the week, without the kids going off to school, and the social outings that punctuate weekends, the days all run into one. I’ve felt it too, even though I work from home and my routine has not been as disrupted as for many.

For some, after getting accustomed to this new way of being, they found they rather enjoyed it. They would work when the felt like it, eat, sleep and do recreational stuff when it felt right, even if this was at completely different times than they had usually done particular activities. But for others they felt rather discombobulated by it; cut adrift, without the anchor of their usual weekly structures to keep them grounded. I’ve gone through periods when I felt I was coping just fine, keeping busy, quite content with life being different for a while. And at other times my mood has sunk, and I yearned for my life to coalesce into a clearer, more defined shape.

But, all the while, the natural world around us is getting on with it regardless. Migrating birds come and go, flowers bud, bloom and set seed, seasonal fruit and veg appear in the shops. This has also stirred mixed feelings for me. On the one hand, it’s been good to be reminded that we are part of a much, much bigger world that will continue to keep turning, despite the difficulties of the pandemic. On the other, it reminds me of how much world there is out there and how little of it i’ve been seeing; I want to hitch a ride with the migrating birds!

This lovely spring poem by Emily Dickinson touches on some of these feelings; the passing of time, the transience of moments, and how each one of us, and each other thing in the world, is travelling along its one, unique journey, with a schedule all its own. Sometimes we move in step with others for a while, an hour, a day, a decade. But just as often we diverge from other’s trajectories and don’t meet again for a while, or ever. How precious the moments are when we touch somebody, or something else, beyond ourselves, before our orbits go spinning off again along different paths.

Making more very small images this week, less than the size of a postcard, but i’m finding it quite satisfying for some reason. This is partly because the sheet of acrylic I’m using to make monoprints is quite small itself, so that is a bit limiting. But, despite the size, i’m enjoying it. I’ve always like very small images, like miniatures, and tiny rich landscapes such as Samuel Palmer’s early work and William Blake’s etchings illustrating his poems. I saw an exhibition a few years ago of Samuel Palmer’s paintings at the British Museum and they blew me away, absolutely stunning, intense little objects. I like large scale too, although I really don’t like most of the huge public art that is starting to appear more and more often in cities and across the landscape. I have to come out and confess i’m not a fan of the Angel of the North, sorry!

Our worlds have become quite a bit smaller over the last year and, this week, my work has got smaller too. I’ve been making tiny monoprint collages, the size of a postcard or smaller. I never really make large scale work, but these are little, even for me. I do like big, immersive images that sweep you away into their own universe, but I’m just as fond of very small paintings; they can have a richness and power of their own, different, but equally as satisfying.

I wanted to do something different this week, to keep my making fresh, so I limited the images to three or four collage elements, trying to allow the monoprint textures to do their own thing as much as possible, adding a minimal amount of direct painting to suggest a door or window. The patterns and textures that emerge from the monoprints lend themselves to seas, skies and rocks, so I made a series of mini-landscapes, each with a tower or folly of some sort.

I think of the towers as sanctuaries or refuges, places of safety and shelter, or possibly as beacons, with braziers on the roof to send signals across the landscape.

When I was a child my parents would often drive to Lincoln, about 18 miles north of the village where we lived. The A15 to Lincoln follows an old Roman road, dead straight across Lincoln Heath, and about half way, a strange landmark called Dunstan Pillar appears. Dunston Pillar is a tall stone tower, build in 1751, and, originally, with a large octagonal lantern on top. It was, in effect, an inland lighthouse, guiding travellers through the darkness, helping them keep to the right road. It was built because, at that time, the country round about was dangerous, with treacherous bogs to the east and robbers and highwaymen stalking the drier ground. The light, glowing in the darkness must have been a heartening sight to those travelling that lonely road back in the day.

With the advent of GPS, structures of this sort have long been obsolete, but they do make wonderful landmarks, especially out in wilder country. They draw our eye, and touch some other, deeper, older sense, a yearning for sanctuary at the end of the day perhaps, a refuge to cling to in an uncertain world.