ManicDDaily

As followers of this blog know, I lost my dear father last week.  He had been declining for some time, but his death has still been very sad, especially for my mother, his spouse for over sixty years.  The above is a collaborative drawing of my mother, myself, my husband and my iPad2 done during the preparation of the first dinner we’ve actually been able to cook since my dad’s death.  (Doing normal everyday things like cooking is difficult after a death.  In my case, this difficulty is compounded by the fact that my mom has an electric stove, and I’m an absolute devotee of cooking with gas.)

One activity that is quite wonderful after a death, however, or perhaps after any trauma, is the making of visual art–even not-such-great art like the painting above. There is something absolutely engaging about making images, one’s own world, a new world–a world that, if you don’t have complete control over your medium, is full of surprises, and yet still self-contained.   It is probably more fun to do the art with paper and brushes, but those may be more dicey to whip out in the midst of food preparation.

As always, I recommend the Brushes App for those working on iPads.