The Arts Centre was empty, well virtually. I had had to book online to view the exhibition (presumably to keep the hoards from contravening the now wobbly social distancing laws) and yet there were just four of us in there (soon diminishing to just two). So I followed them around. It was awkward. And the awkwardness made my pen slow and my brain even slower. I will have to surmount this somehow, for there will be long periods of seemingly nothing happening in the galleries I aim to study too. I know this, I’ve been there (willingly) when they were both empty. This particular woman whom I followed appeared quite demanding, she asked things of the gallery adjudicator and then later of the waitresses serving in the café. She’d come in with her husband (he, sporting a very dapper red and white gingham shirt) but he had left her to it. She looked at every piece, slowly and deliberately, her hands clasped behind her back. Her grey linen coat/dress was amorphous and floaty and her hair wild and fluffed out, which made drawing her challenging, there being no defined lines. A tall, neatly-clipped man had been in there before her. He wore trainers too and spic and span jeans, ironed and crisp. He also gave the exhibit (an open-call to the public to submit art inspired or produced during lock-down) its due. I found it grey and depressing. I struggle to look at such a hotchpotch, though I celebrate the intention. And it was cold in there, it often is. I drew from the balcony afterwards, watching the people sitting at tables in the café. I saw at least three women wearing dungarees, two of whom were pregnant. Walking home it was as if my eyes had been opened-wider, I saw colours (such as an azure blue stripe on man-hole cover) with increased intensity.
I dreamt I was travelling and sitting down on a pavement I began talking to some people who asked where I was going. I told them I couldn’t decide which friends to visit – and that I had one in Zurich. And they told me that Zurich was just down the road. They watched me take out a small plastic bag with a tiny doll that I had made to give to my friends (though I knew that I’d already given them one). I saw their fascination and heard their praise. Then the alarm went off.
