Yellow cup with dark forest, 17 May 2020

Looking out at dawn, a flock of cockatoos perform above the the still dim and slumbering forest. The geography of hills and sea is their theatre. For humans our performance areas have diminished lately, and it's not so necessary to dress carefully and be fastidious about how one might appear. I have found some idiosyncratic garments that give me pleasure, a jacket of rough handwoven silk about thirty years old, some red trousers a gift from India, hand knitted rainbow socks, an ancient mohair cardigan knitted by my mother ten years ago. Colour is good for grandchildren to see you on Facetime. It reminds me of the pleasure of wearing the oldest assemblages when digging on a site, everyone clothed in their own choice of covered -up comfort, or delighting in the oddest T-shirts from Op shops. The heat and dust end up making every garment encrusted and related one to the other in a typology of shabbiness, all in the same style like costumes from a period drama. Perhaps in decades to come we will dentify a Covid 19 style, as distinctive as shoulder pads or big hair.

Diana Wood Conroy 'Yellow cup with dark forest', watercolour on Arches paper, 15 x 21 cm, 17 May 2020