Curtain with winged horse, 26 April 2020

A neigbour down the street has made a fairy garden of brilliant rockery flowers clustering around figurines of animals, dwarves and elves, lights, chairs, strange rocks, and a wheelbarrow full of succulents.  I put out spare plants from the garden by the edge of the road, and she collects them. The printed curtain was made in the 1950s and has riotous vegetation with small monsters in roundels. When the morning sun shines through, it makes the bedroom a magical place.

The next stage of a disaster in the ancient Mediterranean, after war, earthquake  or plague had ravaged a place, was lack of work and then famine. In Greece on the island of Andros as a girl, there would be trips to the interior of the island to stone villages perched on rocky slopes. Out of fifty houses, sometimes only two would be inhabited after the disaster of the World War 11 and a bitter civil war. Visiting such a village on an inaccessible track, an old man once called out to us "Stop, drink a glass of water with me. I am all alone, everyone has died or emigrated." Built into the wall of his house was an ancient stone carved with a cherub, veil flying - as if only this vital image had kept him company and still alive.   

Diana Wood Conroy 'Curtain with a winged horse', Watercolour on Arches paper, 15 x 21 cm, 26 April 2020