I was in two minds about whether or not to renew my WordPress subscription for another year as I’ve been so inactive this year, due to various ongoing health issues. In the end I decided to renew: my subscription package isn’t expensive, and I hope that knowing I have the blog might encourage me to post a little more frequently, albeit they will likely be shorter posts, but maybe that’s better anyway, we shall see!
I have several half-written blog posts that I never finished on my PC because some new disaster would come along and take over my life for weeks, sometimes months. I don’t want to keep going on about my boring health conditions, some of which I have been quite public about, others being on a ‘need to know’ basis, but it has been a really rough ride that all began in November 2023 with an intermittent pain in my side (most likely costochondritis, not particularly serious, but the chest x-ray I had as a result of investigations into what was going on began a series of very unfortunate events!)
I know my life will never be the same again, and that has been tough to come to terms with. Things that have kept me sane include, naturally, art. Not necessarily making art, which I’ve found very difficult, but art-related activities. When I first realised I had a problem with my nerves which resulted in very painful feet, I forced myself to go for long walks every day, even though it was very difficult and often quite scary as I often felt I was about to lose my balance and fall over. I used these walks to look for wild flowers to take home to press. During several of these walks I got in conversation with people who were interested in what I was collecting and why. Brief conversations with strangers that made my day.
The piece below, composed on a vintage book cover, is the hardest piece I’ve ever made. I worked on it when I was trying (and mostly failing) to come to terms with a diagnosis of peripheral neuropathy. I wondered how long I would even be able to make art. Everything felt too difficult, almost impossible, but I forced myself to keep going, because what other choice did I have? Ironically, or not, this is probably one of the most playful pieces I’ve made, combining the image of the woman on the vintage thread card with an illustration from a 1950s magazine; with a tip of the hat to the inventive Surrealist collages of Max Ernst.
Reading art books has also helped me so much, enriching my life at times when it all felt very bleak. I’m currently reading Joseph Cornell: Shadowplay Eterniday, which is gloriously illustrated, and the essays are both illuminating and thought-provoking.
I’ve decided to keep this blog as a means of concentrating on the many good things in my life, and my gratitude for what I have. I have spent long hours, and dark nights of the soul, mourning what I’ve lost and worrying about what the future might hold, but the future is unknown to all of us, after all.
In particular I’m very grateful for an enriching friendship that has developed from joining a Facebook group for people living with peripheral neuropathy. Dawn and I message each other every day, and although we are so different in many ways, we are very similar in the ways that matter. She has become very important to me, and I was delighted to be able to give her this piece, which she had admired, as a gift for her birthday:
I wasn’t sure how I would cope physically with going on holiday this year, but as it happens I had two fabulous holidays, the first in Stirling, Scotland and the second in Minehead (Somerset). Some of my happiest moments have been spent walking along a beach, looking for things that catch my eye – sea glass, animal bones, broken seashells. The salty sea breeze, the sound of the sea, the feel of the sand through my fingers, the sense of the eternal – whatever happens, the tides will continue to ebb and flow, careless of every human being who might stand on the beach, as insignificant as each small grain of sand.
On pebbly Bossington Beach in Somerset I managed to get myself in a pickle, caught out by the small pebbles near the shore that behaved like quicksand. I fell over so many times trying to find a path back to where I started. Even as I was panicking, wondering if I would have to end up calling Air-sea Rescue, I was so thrilled that I’d found sixteen mermaid’s purses amongst the stones that I almost didn’t care. In some ways I see this as a metaphor for my life right now. Sometimes I feel completely overwhelmed by the medical stuff I’m dealing with, then I remember what really matters, the things that make my heart sing, and the difficult things seem much less hard to negotiate. There is light, suddenly, at the end of a very long tunnel.
Helen Kitson 
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