Winterlude

Today I photographed the pot of snowdrops that sits outside my back door.  There’s not a lot growing in my back yard at present but these keep going year after year.  They always give me a boost when the year is at its lowest ebb and I like to see them through the kitchen window when I’m washing up.  They seem such fragile little things but they emerge into the coldest darkest days and thrive somehow.  It makes me feel it’s worth persevering for another year despite my various aches and pains and the perennial madness of the wider world.

Seeing them reminded me of a photo I took last year when they sprouted through snow and into a bitter winter that felt like it would never thaw.  The surprising mildness of this year feels like a much needed respite even if the wider implications for the global climate are a bit terrifying.

In turn, this triggers a phrase in my mind that I’ve been toying with just lately, - ‘The Current Climate’.  Some of the loaded words or phrases in my recent paintings have come from the mouths of politicians, pundits and journalists and via B.B.C. radio news programmes.  This one seems to be a favourite sound bite at the moment and I like the implication that the current fears for the economy feel like struggling through a long period of hostile weather.  Weather is a standard metaphor for any all-encompassing situation beyond the control of the individual of course.

I fear the phrase is even more portentous when it stops being a metaphor and just refers to the actual climate.  It makes me reflect on what that comparison reveals about our own priorities.  It’s pretty ironic that the standard economic model calls for growth as an urgent remedy when that very growth could be the thing that brings environmental collapse even closer.  More than anything, I’d love to think the Twenty-First Century might see some viable alternatives to our standard model(s) emerging.  Anyway, I’m always drawn to terms or phrases that can have more than one interpretation or be ‘spun’ in different directions.  I think ‘The Current Climate’ might be appearing in a new painting fairly soon.

Sorry, - that last part is nowhere near as cheerful as the first bit.  For now, we’d better just enjoy the snowdrops…