Nasturtiums with Corinthian pot, 29 May 2020

The nasturtiums are  popping up with green circular leaves and little explosions of colour all over the garden, an invasive plant really, but with associations from childhood. I have drawings of nasturtiums that my grandmother made at Glasgow Art School in the early 1900s. I was feeling shattered by the blowing up of very ancient sacred sites in WA by the mining company Rio Tinto, an inexcusable  destruction, such as one might expect from the Taliban. And then I picked the brilliant flowers.  On the tiny replica of a Corinthian perfume vessel the two weavers are standing next to a vertical loom. Weaving is an act of building horizontal weft through vertical warp, a way of binding together diverse threads to make a fabric, almost an act of repair. To explode something is quick, but to learn to make thread and weave cloth may take ten thousand hours.

Diana Wood Conroy, 'Nasturtiums with Corinthian pot' watercolour and pastel on grey paper, 15 x 21cm 29 May 2020