Flowers with incense burner, 10 April, 2020

A windy day which began with a blanket of clouds drooping over the hills. I picked pineapple sage, salvia and zinnias from the garden, all grown from cuttings or seeds given to me by friends.  Spinebills love the trumpet shaped salvia flowers. In the distant sweep of the coast I can just see the suburbs of miners' cottages, reminders of harsh lives. An Indigenous friend rang up today, quite indifferent to the virus crisis. Her Wodi-Wodi family had lived in Port Kembla  long before the settlers, and when they came, her family experienced plagues of measles and other diseases, which decimated the population. Nobody helped. She obeys the rules, but shrugs at Covid 19.

I love the poetry and paintings of the Welsh artist David Jones (1895-1974). He wrote "I find it impossible to define what I want to do in painting, but it has to do with  a certain affection for the intimate creatureliness of things... with a pervading sense of metamorphosis and mutability."

Diana Wood Conroy, 'Flowers with incense burner' watercolour on Arches paper, 15 x21 cm, 10 April 2020