Shining day with bromeliad, 3 May 2020

The colour of the sky today was brilliant ultramarine, a blue glowing but dark like an ocean, an unfathomable void above the land. It was an intense relief to have some restrictions lifted, and the beloved two year old visited. I set out all the paints outside and she sat with immense concentration and painted each colour in separate patches, washing the brush to keep the next colour clean, making a rainbow panoply. After watching her I saw the brilliant bromeliad flower freshly, with its astonishing intricacy and curved petals. The development of the form of the theatre over several hundred years in early Greece and then moving to Rome is like watching a flower unfurl into the absolutely right shape for a place and time. The architecture of a theatre, composed of a stage floor or orchestra with seats raked around in a rising arc, once discovered, is as persistent as blossom. I hope the child will always live with such pure colour.

Diana Wood Conroy 'Shining day with bromeliad' watercolour on Arches paper,15 x 21 cm, 3 May 2020