Christine has been delighting and inspiring the Creative Art group with her brimming sketchbook for over a year now. Every week she comes in with one or two new entries. Advising the others how to make a start she mentioned how she began – simply painting a vivid blue Himalayan poppy which had captured her attention whilst watching the Chelsea Flower Show on television.

The first image features a rocking horse which Christine glimpsed in her hairdresser’s mirror – reflecting the shop window of an antique shop across the street. Christine was so taken by its appearance she visually memorized this treasured symbol of childhood, then captured its dynamic characteristics in her sketchbook when she returned home.

The second sketchbook page illustrates Christine’s multi-sensory response to a winter day. She laughs when she describes the simplicity her earliest artwork and recently wryly asked me ‘ Am I a real artist now?’

Christine observes ‘the bare twisting shapes of branches with the leaves gone, the way the light shines on trees and leaves and gives them a glint they haven’t usually got…I used to just walk past these things – as many other people just walk past – not noticing their beauty…perhaps we can see things they can’t and get joy out of it.’

Supporting the ongoing development of our sensory observations has been the subject of much discussion in the art groups. One of the text references which seems to resonate is:

‘Life in the present was suddenly vivid. I started listening as I cut vegetables and enjoying differing degrees of crunch. I hadn’t been aware of these sounds for a very long time. It was as if they could, at last, get through to my body. A layer of plastic between me and the world had dissolved.’

(Gwyneth Lewis, ‘Sunbathing in the Rain: a cheerful book about depression’)

Christine recently mentioned that she would like to start another sketchbook, ‘maybe not a book of things I have seen in the year, but things I have imagined.’