Tidy Up

A certain amount of messiness happens every year at this time, after the break for Christmas and New Year when my studio goes still and cold. Things get moved out of the house to make way for the Christmas tree, and in a normal year, all the Christmas visitors! My studio is a short walk up the garden and makes an ideal place to put the spare furniture, random clutter and empty Christmas bauble boxes. January feels like a hibernation month, a time to catch up with paperwork and overdue jobs that can be done at the kitchen table and in the cosyness of the house. I’ve filed away the in-tray, emptied the big wardrobe in the spare room, organised the kitchen pantry, and even tidied the tool shed, now it’s my turn to sort out my own space. I always feel a bit lost without a functioning studio, ‘rattled’ and irritable, directionless, and that’s not just with the whole world situation at the moment! But now the wood stove is lit and the birds are singing, catkins are coming out and it feels like the time to tackle it. It’s so very important to me to have a space that I can walk into and find everything I need to draw and paint the picture that’s in my mind each day How lovely to be going into February with a good clear space to work on all those spring paintings!