At Least Someone Is Getting Some Painting Done...

....but it certainly is not me!  I'm having the most awful artists' block which has gone on for weeks now.  I'm trying to analyse what the problem is, and I think it comes down to something I have always said over the years - I paint when I am happy.  I am definitely not happy at the moment - my house is in disarray, with the porch still not finished a month after it was started, and the contents spread out in great piles throughout my home.  Our porch is the storage area for tools, paints, coats, boots, dog-walking acoutrements, vegetables, packaging, garden chairs, buckets, umbrellas...the list goes on.  So you can imagine just how much 'stuff' is spread about in every available space - we are having to shuffle round it in the hallways alone.  It has an effect on everything - I can't clean properly, I can't tidy up properly, I can't find anything, my bedroom is housing drills, toolboxes,cardboard boxes, I can't even get the patio looking nice because of the pile out there too.  Add to that the piles of brand new shelving I bought in which to store all this stuff.....I am not happy!  The front garden is a trampled mess from all the builders, the path covered in dirt which gets brought into the house.  I cannot even begin to think about re-doing the front garden until they have gone.

To add insult to injury, the inner porch has been painted.....magnolia. I wonder why council houses have to have that ghastly abomination of a colour everywhere - it doesn't even resemble magnolias, which if I recall are quite a lovely pale cream, not the turgid beige of my porch!

However, my daughter has not been affected by any of this, and is quite happily churning out paintings having discovered my acrylic paints and a book entitled How to Paint a Masterpiece.  This is her 'Cezanne' - rather good I thought.  I sketched out a basic outline for her and she has done all the rest by herself.

This is the current Van Gogh - again, I sketched out a very light outline of the chair, she is mixing the paint and applying it with no help whatsoever. I don't know about you, but I think for a young lady with Down's Syndrome, it's quite impressive!