This is going to be a bijoux blog, because I don't have the time to do otherwise.  Put your phone on silent, and concentrate.  I am going to be happy, of course, but brief.  You will need to focus, so that you get the best from it and feel properly informed.

What have I been doing?  Indeed!  What have I been doing!  Let us race through it in bullet points below.

• Every morning for the last two weeks, I have been rising at about 6am, and going for a cycle ride.  Goodness knows where the impulse to do this has come from.  But, some menopausal hormone has been released into my brain and I am compelled, with joy, to spend between half an hour and an hour cycling around the Bognor area as the sun rises.  Oh I cannot tell you the pleasure the lovely country lanes and byways give me.  And so, because I am hurrying, I won't.  But they do.  Even when it rains and the gears get stuck at number five and I need a wee.
• Mike and Julia have Motor Neuron Disease.  Both are taking part in the AGD exhibitions, and I was taking taken far too long to complete their portraits.  And so, I took to the studio, toothbrush and overnight bag at my feet, to finish painting. Boy Giant was left a map of the kitchen, some clues about food hiegene, and a new squeezy mop to wash up after himself. "I cannot be disturbed," I declared, and "You are disturbed enough already", was his reply.  Julia's health is declining fast and I needed to show to her the painting as promised, and to go back to see her.  Both portraits are now finished, and I drove, paint in my hair and bags under my eyes, to the New Forest last week to show them.  It went well, and both families were pleased with the results. But Julia does not look like her portrait any more, she has lost weight and has a neck brace on.  She has a feeding tube directly into her stomach, as her throat does not enable her to swallow properly now. The lady I painted was at another, earlier, stage of the journey, and I was a little sad to see that she had moved on so fast.  She can only say a few words now, and managed to say that soon, when she can't speak or move at all, she will communicate only with her eyebrows.  We all thought that was funny but really, it isn't.  It is awful.  And that is precisely what Julia will have to do.  I asked her what I should write on her portrait, and after many tries, she managed to say, "All I have left is time."  So I have put that in the painting.  
• Mike is nuts, and what I have put on his painting is, "I had a dry sense of humour and told outrageous lies but now I am a gibbering wreck."  These are among the first words that Mike tapped out to me on his computer when I first met him.  Payback time.
• Monday 13 May to Wednesday 15 May, A Graceful Death is showing at St Catherine's Hospice, Crawley, for Dying Matters Awareness Week.  Open Evening is Monday 13 May 4.30 - 6.30, I will be talking about the work I do, and introducing the exhibition.  Tuesday 14 May is for the Hospice and the staff, and Wednesday 15 May is open to the public from 9am to 7pm.  Come, it is a wonderful Hospice, and you are so welcome.
• If you come later in the day on the Wednesday, remember that I will have been there since 9am, and it is your duty to bring me biscuits. If you want a sensible conversation, some chocolate will do the trick.  Just mentioning it.
• September!   I am going to show AGD, and talk to the students at Brighton University about the paintings  that I am doing with MND sufferers.  For this project, Eileen and I are going to film an interview with Julia and her husband Barry, as soon as we can.  We need to move fast, so that the interview is not just conducted with eyebrows. Mike, and his wife Michelle, are going to come and take part in the talk.  This is so exciting.  Mike is clever and amusing, and good at communicating, he will be wonderful.  He will prepare a power point presentation, and I will interview him on his computer keypad.  It is all go, and I have found another man I want to paint for the exhibition.  Having said I won't do any more after the four I am doing this year, I am ignoring myself and planning another.  
• Eileen has just gone home, she came for the weekend.  
• I had a huge dinner
• I am going to bed now.

And, we still have no boiler, no hot water, no heating, and I don't care.  I am pretending to be Medieval and  I am sticking to it.  Oh, and before I forget,

Next Saturday 18 May,  A Graceful Death mini exhibition and fundraising event.  Chichester, 2 - 4 pm.  Wonderful new range of Graceful Gifts for sale.  Thoughtful, beautiful and unique condolence gifts, keepsakes and memorial items for yourself or as a gift for someone who needs your thoughts and love. Poster for the event below -
 

A Graceful Death Exhibition

Paintings from the End of Life by Artist and Soul Midwife Antonia Rolls

~ Fascinating, Moving, Loving and Inspiring ~

This mini version of the A Graceful Death exhibition consists of portraits by local artist Antonia Rolls, of people at the end of their lives. The paintings are full of life, love, colour and truth. Alongside each portrait is an interview, which tells us who we are looking at, and who we are visiting. The exhibition aims to help start a conversation about what it means to face our mortality, and how normal the process is. And how, until we die, we are very much alive.

Antonia will speak about the work she does with people at the end of life through art. She will be speaking about the sitters in the portraits and the stories behind them. Soul Midwife, Mandy Preece, will also speak about the work she does as a compassionate companion to the dying and on the art of sitting in vigil with someone at the end their life’s journey. Antonia works with Mandy and other Soul Midwives and is delighted to have the help and experience of Soul Midwives within the exhibition.

A Graceful Death travels around the country and has had wonderful reactions from the public:

‘Thank you for inspiring and providing help through painful experiences for me and so many others. Never hold back because it is the truth in this art that makes it so beautiful.’

‘Extremely moving; extremely honest. This show must be seen by many people. Death and cancer are with us. It's unpleasant and frightening but this series of paintings helps us deal with those emotions in a positive and wholly honest way.’

‘Thank you - I have his picture permanently open on my computer and keep looking at it every two minutes. You have just caught his expression so well. I am overwhelmed.’

The Graceful Gifts range of cards and gifts will also be available for sale.

2–4pm, 18 May 2013

The Studio, New Park Community Centre, New Park Road, Chichester PO19 7XY

£5 entrance fee. All proceeds will go towards funding the A Graceful Death project.

It will be lovely to see you.  Bring chocolate.

On sitting in the garden and waving workmen into the house.

Today I sat in the glorious Bognor sunshine, in my garden that has suddenly produced glorious bright green grass with daisies and dandelions in it,  with Lizzie Hornby, Musician Extraordinaire and composer for A Graceful Death.  We sat in garden chairs with our lunch on a tray on the large trampoline which we used as a table, and from there, we waved carpet layers, delivery men and boiler repair men in and out of the house as if they were our dearest friends.  I looked out into the sunny garden from the studio at one point, having had to pop in there to answer a phone call, to see Lizzie preceding a ginger haired and tousled fellow into the garden and then into house through the garden doors, and I wondered what he had said to her to gain entry into the house.  What ho, I thought, I wonder who that fellow is?  And then I forgot about it to continue my phone call.  I felt very mellow, what with the garden looking so green and fresh, and the sun shining hot and bright around me.  He must be one of the blokes coming to do something or other to the house, I thought, briefly, and Lizzie knows how to defend herself if he isn't, and wants only to do a bit of murdering, or something.

Nothing fazed us today.  The carpet man arrived early at my studio door and looked delighted to be talking to an artist.  Before I could say, walk this way my jolly carpet laying friend, and lay me a carpet to make my friends and neighbours gasp, he began to talk about the paintings he was doing at home.  I could see that he wanted to come into the studio and see what was going on, as I was looking the part, covered in paint and wearing very old clothes, but I have learned that you need time to come into the studio and have the paintings of dead and dying people resting against the walls, explained to you.  He was very curious, but Lizzie was due any minute, there were other men due to do stuff in the house, and I needed a new carpet laid.  So I closed the studio door behind me, by stuffing a sock in the door to keep it closed since the lock and handle fell off, and led him into the house.

Soon, a little while later, Lizzie and I were sitting in the sunshine together, talking of the way the world works, and of how the creative process cannot be put into words, and how much we liked eating.  As we were on our second pot of tea, the carpet man severed an electric cable of some sort, and a faint alarm went off in a cupboard under the stairs.  "Don't worry", he called through the window, "I have called a man in Croydon and he is on his way.  He will fix it.  But as he is in Croydon it will probably be later rather than sooner."  "Will that be today?"  I asked.  "Yes", he replied.  "That's OK then," I said, "carry on and I will close the door on the faint alarm under the stairs, and if I can't hear it, it does not exist.  Life is too short and the sun is too hot, to worry about the severed cable."

More men arrived to work on the boiler, to check on the carpets and to deliver items.  Lizzie and I continued to laugh and sunbathe in the garden, and I thought - how amazing that I sit here outside with a friend, while inside the house, men bash and hammer and tweak and fiddle, so that when they are gone, I have a better home.  This is important.  Since Monday, my phone has broken, my laptop has died, my boiler has exploded and there are ominous cracks in the ceiling on the landing.  So far, I have a nice new carpet.  The men are still working on all of the other things.  I shall let them get on with it, and will have hot water again, I am told, by the tousled haired red head that Lizzie took into the house through the garden today in the sunshine.  I shall have hot water again, he said, next week, when I decide what to do over the bank holiday weekend and tell him of my decision.  "Fine," I said.  "Switch on my immersion heater, that will heat some water in the mean time.  Life is still too short and the sun is still too bright to worry about hot water".

And so.  I sit here tonight in my house, the men all gone, and the doors all shut.  Lizzie left a good while ago and the immersion heater has heated enough water for me to have a teeny bath.  I have a lovely new carpet, the severed cable has been mended by a man called Dave, or Bob, or something, and the carpet man boss turned up this evening to check on the work.  "Come in!"  I cried, "the house has been filled with working men all day, and you are welcome.  Come into the kitchen to talk carpets while I cook."

My laptop is at the menders, my phone is due an upgrade next week so I am holding out for that, and the cracks on the ceiling can only be seen if you look upwards while standing on the landing.  So I shall look straight ahead of me, or downwards, and sort it out that way until I find the next man to come and do something about it.

Oh, and the phone call I took in the studio was from Brighton University, where I am to deliver a talk on my work with the dying through A Graceful Death, with emphasis on the Motor Neuron Disease portraits of Mike and Julia.  And the exhibition will be shown there too. Life is good, eh?

How to be busy, loopy and uninteresting all at the same time.

May is a good month.  Thanks to a dear friend, who is a colleague, Palliative Care Nurse and Soul Midwife all rolled into one, I shall be taking AGD to St Catherine's Hospice where for the first time, it will be shown in a Hospice.  This is to coincide with Dying Matters Awareness Week.  Not all of the paintings will be showing, I will leave behind the very challenging ones as I can understand that they will be too difficult for Hospice patients to see.  Please come and take part in the opening event, where I will be giving a small but exciting speech about the exhibition, and the details are below -

13 May, 4.30 - 6.30 at St Catherine's Hospice, Malthouse Road, Crawley RH10 6BH

The exhibition runs from 13 to 15 May, and the public are invited on the 15 May. 

 And there is more!  See below for the poster advertising a fund raising event for the exhibition in Chichester.  I am delighted to have the help of Mandy Preece, a very experienced and loving Soul Midwife, to come and talk about her work.  At this do, I am introducing the range of cards and thoughtful gifts called, now, Graceful Gifts.  I have moved on from last week's name of Graceful Goods, and with expert advice have rebranded the enterprise Graceful Gifts. I have been blessed with the support of Giant Boy who looked up some with sympathy quotes and came up with the following -

Losing a cat can be tough. Feel free to borrow my pain in the butt any time you want.

He has been sacked.

 ********************************************************************

 

A Graceful Death Exhibition

Paintings from the End of Life by Artist and Soul Midwife Antonia Rolls

~ Fascinating, Moving, Loving and Inspiring ~

 This mini version of the A Graceful Death exhibition consists of portraits by local artist Antonia Rolls, of people at the end of their lives. The paintings are full of life, love, colour and truth. Alongside each portrait is an interview, which tells us who we are looking at, and who we are visiting. The exhibition aims to help start a conversation about what it means to face our mortality, and how normal the process is. And how, until we die, we are very much alive.

*****************************************

Antonia will speak about the work she does with people at the end of life through art. She will be speaking about the sitters in the portraits and the stories behind them. Soul Midwife, Mandy Preece, will also speak about the work she does as a compassionate companion to the dying and on the art of sitting in vigil with someone at the end their life’s journey. Antonia works with Mandy and other Soul Midwives and is delighted to have the help and experience of Soul Midwives within the exhibition.

A Graceful Death travels around the country and has had wonderful reactions from the public:

‘Thank you for inspiring and providing help through painful experiences for me and so many others. Never hold back because it is the truth in this art that makes it so beautiful.’

‘Extremely moving; extremely honest. This show must be seen by many people. Death and cancer are with us. It's unpleasant and frightening but this series of paintings helps us deal with those emotions in a positive and wholly honest way.’

‘Thank you - I have his picture permanently open on my computer and keep looking at it every two minutes. You have just caught his expression so well. I am overwhelmed.’

*********************************

The Graceful Gifts range of cards and gifts will also be available for sale.

                                              2–4pm, 18 May 2013

The Studio, New Park Community Centre, New Park Road, Chichester PO19 7XY

£5 entrance fee. All proceeds will go towards funding the A Graceful Death project

 ************************************************************************************

 I have been working hard this week.  I am aiming to finish Julia's portrait within the next few days, and Mike's portrait by next week.  I am singularly uninteresting at the moment because I have been sitting for hours, and hours, and hours, in the studio breathing in white spirit, muttering to myself and feeling a bit loopy.  Most of the time I have been squinting at the canvas and worrying that Julia's arms look too much like those of an Aberdonian fisherman.  One of her arms was about twice as long as the other, with a huge hand at the end of it. I didn't see until I stood back and appraised it.  Thank Heavens I did.  Julia has enough to deal with, with her MND, without having one of her arms long enough to drag on the ground, if it fell off the cushion on which it rests.  One of the things I want to show with Julia is how her arms and hands rest on cushions, she is no longer able to move them.  The muscles have wasted and their shape has altered very subtly.  I want to get that right.  Julia has a lovely face and smile, and cannot move her upper body at all.  I want to capture how when you see Julia, you know that her arms won't move.  It is very poignant and very important.

Perhaps the most exciting thing this week is the selling of items from my garage on eBay.  Good Lord, I had no idea how exciting this is.  Someone called Mahmood came and bought my hose pipe, in a van, and I felt ridiculously grateful.  And I sold some copper pipes to a man called Mike, so actually, even though I have very little to say at the moment, life is as diverse as ever.  I am selling a bed to someone on Sunday, and am beginning to see everything in my house with a little price tag on it.  And I do not need to speak much for any of these transactions.  I can continue to be uninteresting.  I sold a large hedge trimmer to a very pregnant lady who when she came to collect it, told me that she was due to give birth in two days time.  "I am nesting!" she said with a jolly giggle, and I wondered what kind of nest she was building.  Do not, I remembered from my own experience of being pregnant, mess with a lady just about to go into labour who wants to own a big, sharp, electric hedge trimmer.  I wish her and all those around her, luck.  

And now.  My days of going into labour with a hedge trimmer are over, my hosepipe has gone to another more needy family, my copper pipes have probably been sold on for a small fortune and so, probably, has my hose pipe.  Julia's arm and hand has been repainted to match the other one, and I shall go to sleep now dreaming of selling whole chunks of the house to people in vans, who do not need me to speak or to be interesting.  Good night my dears.  Do come to St Catherines, and do also come to the exciting AGD event in Chichester.  I will be unbelievably interesting by then, and you won't regret it.  Oh, and you can come with a measuring tape and measure Julia's arms in her portrait, to make sure they are no longer a cross between Popeye and Mr Tickle.

Fund Raising, AGD and a spot of Florentine Renaissance.

I am very sorry that I missed last week's blog. I thought of you all and sent a cheery wave and a little guilty grin to you via your Guardian Angels.  I went on a small holiday to Florence with my daughter, Fancy Girl, and my life went on hold. I love Florence, and adore Italian Renaissance paintings, so to take Fancy Girl around and tell her what I had learned years ago, was bliss.  I studied in Florence when I was at university, back in the early 1980s, and have always longed to be a Renaissance artist.  With my name, Antonia, I could have got at least part of the way there.  Antonia!  Artist-a! You one of us-a, you only seven hundred years-a too late-a but we dona minda!

Loving the door outside church in Florence

Here is a photo of me outside my favourite church, Santa Maria Novella.  I like this one because I posed for my daughter to take it, thinking I looked like I was hugging the door and loving the church.  Instead it looks as if I have been fired from a canon and have splatted against the door.  

Inspired by the Renaissance patronage and sponsorship system, the next step for Antonia! Renaissance artist-a seven hundred years-a too late-a! is -

Fund Raising for A Graceful Death.

All that I do from now on, will raise funds to create and maintain the A Graceful Death exhibition and project.  Thanks to the kindness of friends and supporters, I have raised enough money to paint Mike, the first of my four AGD paintings.  I have still to raise funds to paint the other three, and that will be my priority.  I am organising fund raising events in which I will be showing some of the paintings, giving talks on the work that I do and the stories behind the people in the paintings, selling the earrings that I make, selling the witty Every Day Angels and Fairies paintings, and if I can do so, selling cakes and tea. A great idea from Claire, who is helping so much and being painted for the exhibition, is to have a vintage jewellery, clothes, shoes and bags sale.  If you, dear reader, have any vintage things you don't want, please may I have them for the sale?  Turn out your drawers, look in your attics, go through your garages, ask your Aunty Norma, and contact me and, within reason, I will come and collect. Claire and I will sort it all out and let you know when we will do the sale.  If you live in the Carribbean and want us to come and collect your vintage stuff, you will have to pay for our plane fares and allow at least two weeks while we are with you, for us to make up our minds what to take. 

IN THE MEANTIME -

The 11 May will see a Life Board workshop here in West Sussex, in the Rose Green Centre of Art and Craft, 22-24 Rose Green Road, Bognor Regis PO21 3ET.  From 9.30 to 12.30, all materials provided, £30 per person.  Life Boards are a wonderful way to express yourself when words cannot be found.  It is a way to reconnect with yourself during times of loss or grief.  This is a quote from the Life Board literature -

"To create a LIFE BOARD, you sit at a table full of different papers, images, glitter, words, stick on jewels, butterflies, paint, hearts and so on.  You start to create, on the board, despite feeling that you have no idea where to start and what to do, a visual representation of who you are and what you are feeling right now"

You are all very welcome, come along and see what you can do. I have taken advice from the men who have done the workshops and have included Man Images too.  I was reminded that men generally don't want to stick pink hearts on their boards and cover it in glitter.  So I have some nice tough, strong stuff for the men in the workshops.  Quite right too, Life Boards are for everyone.  
 
From the 13 May to 15 May, I will be taking AGD to St Catherine's Hospice, Malthouse Road, Crawley, West Sussex RH10 6BH.  The open day for the public is the 15 May, and you are all so welcome to come and visit this wonderful Hospice.  I am here at St Catherine's through the goodness of a dear friend and fellow Soul Midwife, and palliative care nurse.  This will be a very special event, it is the first time the exhibition has gone to a Hospice.

On the 18 May I will be holding a fund raising talk and sale, in the New Park Community Centre, New Park Rd, Chichester, West Sussex PO19 7XY.   From 2pm to 4pm.  A dear friend and Soul Midwife Mandy Preece will be joining me to talk about the work she does and we are tying this event in with Dying Matters Awareness Week, which runs from the 13 - 19 May.  Mandy sits with those who are dying at the very end of their lives, and helps the families to vigil and stay present.  Her work is beautiful and profound.  I will entertain you with what I do and how I do it and I will sell you wonderful things that you will long to buy not only because they are wonderful, but you will be supporting the A Graceful Death project, and so will go to Heaven when you die. 

I will be selling beautiful handmade earrings, bright fun and colourful paintings of Angels and Fairies, and cards from my studio.  I also will be selling a new range of items that are created specifically to go with the end of life theme.  I am making such things as arm bands, memorial jewellery and items, condolence cards, and beautiful angelic gifts both for yourself and for those who need something thoughtful and special as they remember someone who has died.  I have chosen the name Graceful Goods for this range of goods, as it ties in with the exhibition and the theme of the end of life.

Around the 1 June, and yet to be confirmed, I am holding a day's fund raising and information on the A Graceful Death project, here in Bognor.  I am hoping to do this in the Regis Centre, in the centre of Bognor by the sea.  I aim to exhibit some of the AGD paintings and to talk again on the work that I am doing.  I would love to have some of my Soul Midwife friends come and talk on the work they do too for the end of life.  My Graceful Goods range of thoughtful and beautiful items will be on sale, alongside the Angels, Fairies, cards and handmade earrings.  

Back to today.  Back to life in my Bognor house.  I will leave you with a vignette of life here in Casa Antonia.  I sit in the gathering darkness of the evening tapping away at my laptop.  No one has been able to go to the door to turn on the lights, and as the light fades, our faces are lit in a ghostly white light from our screens, our bodies in total darkness.  Opposite me, Boy Giant chats to all of his friends on Facebook on his laptop.  Next to him, Other Son has left his laptop on standby as he has popped out for a while.  We cannot remove our eyes from our computers and as the darkness slowly surrounds us, all that can be heard is the tapping of keyboards and the occasional giggle as someone messages Giant Boy something outrageous.  Unless I assert myself soon, we will be here in a computer warp all night and lose our minds and never be normal again.  They didn't have this problem in the Renaissance.  Fie! My sons, off with your computers!  I have a notion to fresco the sitting room!  Mix me my paints and let us begin!

Downing the Hoover, and Painting the Dying

This week, I have successfully downed my hoover, my mops and washing up cloths, and gone across the ricketty bridge (see last week's blog) to the studio.  I have firmly closed the door behind me, keeping it in place now with a sock instead of the old folded bit of newspaper.  The handle and the lock fell off a long time ago and the door will only stay closed with something to keep it wedged in place.  The newspaper had disintegrated in rain and so I have found an old sock to take its place.  I feel efficient.  I have four large canvases on which to paint my four people for this year's final intake of portraits for the A Graceful Death exhibition, and I have my easel up and ready.  Go, Boudicca, I said to myself, go and do that thing.  I have heard that in some circles one can channel a hero, or a god or goddess of some kind, and so when Boudicca popped into my mind I thought, well, perhaps that is a good idea to get me started. That is nice, let's channel some Boudicca.  She was not afraid of a challenge, but perhaps as she was a little bloodthirsty and argumentative, I'll stop after a few moments.  I don't want my A Graceful Death paintings to become aggressive.  I'll just channel, if I can, never having done this kind of thing before, her good points, such as her assertiveness and her ability to get a job done.  I'll stop if I feel I want to set fire to something.

I have begun to paint Mike.  Mike is one of my Motor Neuron Disease sitters.  I want to show Mike exactly as he is, unable to move, in his wheelchair.  I want to show how his body sits in his chair, how his feet cross over themselves a little, how it makes him tired to lift his head, and how his keyboard is placed just in front of his hands so that he can tap out his words with one finger.  I want to show Mike's energy, and his intelligence, which is all there in the mix, even though he cannot move.  Mike seems to me to be a challenge.  Here he is, in his chair, I can walk into and out of a room, Mike can't.  I can cross my legs and scratch my nose, Mike can't.  But you know Mike is no pushover, is in control of his mind, and doesn't miss a trick.  I want to capture some of this within Mike's paralysed body as it sits in his very fancy wheelchair.  Oh! The wheelchair!  I cannot for the life of me, see this wheelchair properly.  In order to paint something, I have to understand it.  I have to see it, work out how it is connected to all of its bits, how it all joins up together - this includes people - and then I can begin to paint it.  Mike's wheelchair is a marvel of engineering.  It has pipes and knobs and black metal bits obscuring other black metal bits, it has buttons, wheels (thank goodness) and wires.  I cannot for the life of me work it out. And so I have had to study some wheelchair designs to see if I can understand it.  I had a feeling this would happen, I wonder if I can paint Mike as realistically as I can and make his wheelchair entirely impressionistic.  I can hope that the mind, that can play tricks, will see a very detailed and fancy wheelchair from a mass of thick whirling brushstokes that suggest it, and it is only when someone points out that he, Mike, is sitting on some kind of whirling painty porridge, with wheels, that the minds snaps back into order and says, boy.  She (or Boudicca) had real trouble with that, didn't she?  Couldn't for the life of her work out that fancy wheelchair.  Or I can do a kind of Heath Robinson contraption and hope that no one notices that either.

I am starting to paint Julia too.  Julia also has MND and has deteriorated in a year almost to the point where Mike is after ten years.  Julia's energy is gentle and compassionate.  What I want to capture with Julia is, as with Mike, that her limbs that no longer move and how, for example, her arm looks as if it can't move.  How her muscles no longer give her arms and hands the same form as, for example, mine.  Julia has large eyes and she has a look in them that says something of who she is.  When I work on her eyes, I will try to understand what that is.  Since we last spoke, Julia has had a PEG, a feeding tube fitted, and I know she was not looking forward to that.  Her MND is swift and unrelenting.

Both Mike and Julia's families are intimately involved with their care. Mike's wife, Michelle, is very much involved with his care, and is, according to Mike, wonderful.  And Julia's husband Barry, is also, according to Julia, wonderful too.  Having met both Michelle and Barry, and not really knowing them, I raise my hat to them both for their dedication, patience and love.  

Kate Granger is also one of my portraits.  Kate is a very successful doctor who at 31 is dying of cancer, and making her dying as public as she can to educate and help the medical profession, and all of us, the public, understand how it feels.  Kate is not paralysed, and looks really healthy and pretty.  I will enjoy painting Kate, and I think what I want to capture with Kate is her deep intelligence and her girl next door looks.  There is nothing visible at all to link her with her terminal cancer.  Kate's portrait will be very important, it will show that not all dying is visible.  It will show that dying can look like a person who is dressed, smiling, sitting on her sofa and planning another day's work at the hospital tomorrow. Kate is still working hard as a doctor and still helping to change policy within NHS to enable the process of dying to be more understood.  She is a huge fan of, and will be on when her time comes, the Liverpool Care Pathway.  Kate has written two books of her experiences, and is a powerful communicator now within the media, to educate, explain and help to make better, the process of dying.  You will see her on the television, in the newspapers, and hear her on the radio.  She is modest, unassuming and deeply committed to medicine and helping people.  Kate's books are The Other Side, and The Bright Side.  Please buy them and read them.  All proceeds from Kate's books and other fund raising works, go to the Yorkshire Cancer Centre.  She has already raised thousands and thousands of pounds for them.  Kate also blogs - follow her here drkategranger.wordpress.com

And finally, Claire.  Claire is so important. Claire recovered from her cancer, against the odds, and can speak with such insight and compassion about how it is to receive Hospice treatment, and how it is to be so ill, that she wanted to die.  And then, how she didn't die.  I am painting Claire's vulnerability and her strength.  All in one go.  And she is very beautiful, I am painting that.  Clair has hair now, she has make up, she can live again, and has been to a place that not many of us have been to, and come back.  She is so grateful for each day as it comes, and we can learn much from how she is dealing with her new life. Her body is not the same as it was, there are real scars from her cancer and the treatment she needed to have.  Claire lives just round the corner to me too.  I first met Claire in the Hospice where I volunteer.  Neither of us could ever have imagined that she would go home, get better, or even that we lived so near to each other in Bognor.  And because the AGD exhibition is entirely separate from and never mentioned in any Hospice of end of life work that I do, Claire had no idea at all, that I have this exhibition.  Life really is a funny old thing.

I want to introduce to you now, the new A Graceful Death Channel, on Youtube.  This has been set up to hold the interviews that Eileen Rafferty films.  Eileen, as you all know, is the AGD photographer and film maker extraordinaire, and is one of my dearest, oldest friends.  She has begun to record interviews with people I am painting, and we aim to bring the films, the paintings, and the writings together for the exhibition.  So far, we have three separate and fascinating interviews that Eileen filmed, with Claire, and her friend Jacky, on the AGD Channel.  By the end of the month, we should have Kate's interview, and so we shall add interviews as we do them.  Please look now at Claire and Jackie.

 http://www.youtube.com/AGDChannel


Time now to channel a hero that gets out of bed, and gets on with the day.  I am, of course, writing this from my lovely bed full of duvets and cushions, and Boudicca is saved for the studio.  I shall just lie here until I can think of a suitable hero to connect with, and in the meantime, to help me think, I will just lie down and close my eyes.  I may be here for some time.  I hope that a morning off will not enrage Boudicca in the studio, I hope that she does not go and find a hero/god/goddess herself, for me to channel, to get me out of bed.  I can imagine I won't have an easy time of it if that happens, and I will be cowering under my lovely duvets trying to convince Thor that I am not here, I am somewhere else working hard and that someone else probably needs to channel him a lot more than I do.  Until then, I will just lie back down and have a think.

Creativity and the True Fairy. And some spiders.

In my garden, is my studio.  I can see it from the house, and I get to it from across my garden.  As the garden floods easily, everything in Bognor floods easily, Alan has constructed two long thin planks of wood, single file, as a bridge over the waters from the house to the studio door.  Even if there are no floods, visitors coming from the house into the studio often think that they ought to balance their way across the garden upon this bridge like thing, as if it is a test.  You cannot enter the studio by normal means, it seems, I want you to prove your courage and true heart by tottering along some fiendish construction sent to test your ability to understand art.  If you can cross it, you can enter the studio and you will be one of us.  If you fall off it, you will land in mud, or if there is no rain, you will just fall off and feel you need to go back and try again.  There are those that ignore the bridge, and wade across the garden in wellies, or cross the garden in fine weather without noticing it; they have no tests to pass, in their hearts, they are just fine as they are.  I am mentioning this because the studio is, to some, a thing apart.  A place where art happens.  A place where creativity happens.  A place where otherness takes place.

Even to me, as I look over the garden to the studio, even to me and it is my studio, I feel a little bit of alarm.  In there, I paint.  What if I can't paint any more?  Will the bridge break and the studio melt away?  It is a place I have used over the years for creativity, for thinking, for being broken and mending again through art - that is where the A Graceful Death exhibition evolved - I have used it the play, to organise, to be entirely in the creative zone.  There is no housework in the studio, there is no cooking, there is no making the family work, as there is in my house.  In the house, I can be called away to all manner of things to do with having children, keeping a home going, being available to the outside world.  Sometimes, I look over the garden at the studio as a place I shall never enter again.  Sometimes I feel that life has taken over and that I have fallen into every day life as if into a bowl of blancmange, and I shall never climb out again.  That passes though; I gird up my loins, and with a bellow of intent, I leave the house to either cross the rickety bridge over the floods to the studio door, or stride across the garden in my slippers, scattering daisies as I go.  With a look of grim determination on my face, I pull out the newspaper wedged into the door which doesn't close without it because the lock and the handle fell off years ago, and I enter my studio.  Even though it often is so messy I get the hoover out and clean it up before starting any work.  Even though it is often so cold I can see my breath on the air as I breathe it.  Even though my paints may have congealed because they have been untouched for a while on the old chipped plates that I use as a palette.  Even though all of this and more, it is where I have left my real self, it is where I am enabled and challenged, it is where I can do things. 

Sometimes, as I sit down at the desk in the tiny office part of the studio, a single spider descends on a web in front of my face, silently, slowly, as if to check that I belong here, and I won't disturb the quiet, the equilibrium of the place, before continuing on to the floor and scuttling off to report the rest of the wild life in the studio. Once I put my old painting apron on, and a very large spider jumped out the pocket and ran away.  Oi!  it said, less of the rushing in and disturbing me!  Shriek!  I said, I will never wear this apron again!  So now, I check with my I love all God's little creatures hat on, but I do it with gritted teeth.  So far, no more big spiders have been living in the pockets of my painting aprons and old thermal painting coat, so far, there have been only tiny ones, and I don't mind them.  They can stay.  I feel we can do business.  The big ones need to go before I come in, and not live in my painting clothes nor die quietly in the drawers of my desk, amongst my printer paper, their eight legs all drawn into their middles, looking huge, pathetic and ridiculous all at the same time. I used to dress up like a Scene Of Crime officer, in a white all in one body suit showing only a bit of my face, with rubber gloves and a dustpan and brush to get rid of them. 

 
 Now I just sigh and, still with my rubber gloves on, shake the drawer into the bushes outside.

I am an artist, and I freely accept that.  But how I do anything that I do, is beyond me.  I have this studio, I have done time in there, and produced work, I have done art in it.  But I cannot for the life of me explain to you how it happens or why it happens.  I was wildly artistic when I was very young.  Those were the years in which I discovered that I was a true fairy.  I was bullied at school when I was little, the girls telling me that only those born in 1959 or 1961 were real fairies.  Since I was born in 1960, I was just a pretender.  After much painful discussion with a tree in which the fairy queen, Esmerelda, lived, I had a moment of cosmic revelation.  I, Antonia Rolls, was the True Fairy, and the others were just fibbing.  I never looked back.  My middle years were spent raising children (possibly the ultimate creative act, having babies) and doubt and worry set in.  Being an artist became too unreal.  The world got in the way, life got in the way, and I tumbled into making ends meet and trying to be a mother.  I lost sight of myself, and the True Fairy that I am, went into hibernation. 

Now that I am in my fifties, my babies are grown and I am able to think a bit more clearly.  And I still cannot work out what it is that makes me do what I do but now, I respect it more, accept it more, and firmly believe that though this creating lark is me, it is not mine to control.  It comes from somewhere outside of me, it is bigger than me, and is beamed into me when I ask for it to come.  This creativity never lessens, never increases, it is divine, wonderful, beautiful, glorious, and always there.  I can tap into it and tap out of it.  I can feel it has left me, I can feel it has overwhelmed me, I can feel any number of things, but it is never about this ocean of creativity leaving nor overwhelming me, it is about me diving into it myself, and walking away from it by choice.  I have never found painting easy, it is too serious and amazing to be easy, for me.  But I have found it totally fulfilling.  When I am painting, creating, writing, thinking, I am really who I was meant to be.  And of course, the studio will not melt, the bridge won't break.  I will always be able to paint, always be able to create, always be able to do things, because the ocean of creativity is not about a building, not about a single person, it is available for ever, for the asking, wherever and whatever we are, it is just there, waiting to be summoned. 

The True Fairy is in her element, and all is right with the world.  Except for the goddam spiders. 

The studio.  No spiders.  Just art.  Phew.

Quiche, Soul Midwifery and A Graceful Death.

It is Friday and I am writing my blog.  This means I am on track and all is well in the heavens and on earth. Friday is my blog day and here I am doing it on Friday.  Recently, due to wobbles in the fabric of my life and times, I have ended up doing them on Saturdays, or Sundays.  I have even considered not doing them at all, or writing Heeeelp Meeeee as an entire blog entry.

I am lying on my sofa downstairs, fully dressed (in control) and wrapped up in a pink and white spotty blanket.  The sun is shining in through the window and I have had quiche for breakfast. I like quiche, I have made enough to keep me going for seven years.

 My two boys are here, the giant one is ill and the other one is still asleep after being enigmatic and popular at a party somewhere last night.  My daughter is ill in her house, and does not need to come home because her friends are bringing her honey toast, and that is making a big difference.  Quick! said a text from my daughter while I was at a meeting yesterday, urgent!  I phoned her back in a panic, tell me, I said, are you going to die?  No, she said, I need the recipe for pancakes.  I cannot eat honey toast any more, and I must have pancakes.  Quick, what is the recipe? 

I had a Soul Midwife meeting here on Monday.  This will have been the fourth such meeting, open to all Soul Midwives, and is a friendly, thoughtful gathering of people who have trained as Soul Midwives, and who work in many different areas within end of life care.  It was as usual, full of passion and discussion.  It seems to me, and always has, that we Soul Midwives need each other.  We need to meet and talk, we need to see what other Soul Midwives look like and how they are using soul midwifery in their working lives.  Left alone, a single Soul Midwife may wither and fade, as it takes time to assimilate our training into a form we can use.  Together, we are full of information, experience, thoughts and advice.  I need the input from the others, I can't do it alone.  At the meeting, we had nurses, community and palliative care, a nursing home manager, a sound therapist with a law background, an artist (me!), and a lady with nursing and care home experience who is dedicated to setting up a community for birth, life and death. 

I am still, though, stepping back from Soul Midwifery to concentrate on my art.  I will continue to host these meetings because I love it, and there is much inspiration from listening to the people who come to share their stories, thoughts and opinions.  I am a great hostess, I look forward to a good gathering, and I love to get people together to connect and inspire.  But my journey is through my art, and any Soul Midwifery I do will be within A Graceful Death.  So if, for example, someone staggers up to me at a train station, and gasps, Quick! I haven't got long, I want you and only you to stay with me till I die, which could be any time within the next ten minutes to four days, I won't say Be off with you!  I will only do it if I can paint you and interview you and Eileen records it. 

I will always do what I can to help people at the end of life, and their families, and I am looking forward to our next Soul Midwife gathering here, but I am taking a step back. So I won't pursue Soul Midwifery, but if it comes to me, I will do it gladly.

Yesterday I spent time with Julia, who I have mentioned before.  Julia has Motor Neuron Disease, and has become immobile and housebound within a year of her diagnosis.  Today, in fact, is the anniversary of that diagnosis.  I am painting Julia for the A Graceful Death exhibition and so I went back to see her, and Barry her husband, to update them on what I am doing.  It is lovely to see her.  I don't know Julia really, I have only met her with her MND, and always through the work I do for the exhibition.  But I am struck by how articulate and honest she and Barry are.  My interest in their story is the day to day reality of it.  Doctors and researchers can fill me in on the way the disease works, and how it affects the muscles.  There can be any amount of facts to learn about it, and that is invaluable.  What I want is to know what is it like at 3am?  How is it on a Tuesday when Julia needs an oxygen mask during the day when she has not needed one before?  What is it like for Barry to feel tired and worried about running his business from home, and caring for Julia, and the two children?  Barry summed it up for me in mentioning their front garden wall.  A bus went into it a while ago, says Barry, and he wanted to repair it.  He can lay bricks, it is not something he can't do.  But he has never got round to it, Julia has needed so much care.  I feel people are passing by outside, he says, and wondering why that family hasn't mended their wall yet.  What is keeping them?  But behind the front door, says Barry, they have no idea of what we are coping with.  When everyone carries on with their lives, we are having to change and adapt and do the best we can with Julia deteriorating fast. No one can tell that from looking at the wall and at our front door. 

Julia said that she needs patience from others.  It takes her a long time to say what she wants to say, and it is hard for her when her listener doesn't let her finish.  Her listener may finish her sentence for her, or walk away before she has finished, and think that they know what she is saying but they don't.  Often, Julia says, they get it wrong.  And, she says, she can move her legs.  She takes a long time, but she does not need them moved for her.  This made me aware of how we as a society, do not like silences, pauses, and slowness.  Julia can't join in a conversation as it is whizzing by her, but she still has her opinions and much to say.  It just sounds different to stop, and wait for her to articulate. How many of us do that to those who are slower in speech than we are?  Mike, who I am painting for A Graceful Death too, another MND sufferer, communicates through an ipad.  It takes time and silence for Mike to write down his sentence, but there is nothing wrong with Mike's mind.  In order to talk to both Julia and Mike, we have to go through silences and long waits.  The dynamics of interaction change, and we are not used to it, nor comfortable with it, nor do we often even notice it.  It will take practice to stop and allow a long time to have a conversation. Mike has said that there is a running conversation going round in his mind.  Same with Julia.  I am very keen to use these interviews with Mike and Julia in the exhibition.  These talks with Julia, Barry, Mike and his wife Michelle, are golden opportunities for us who are not ill, who take for granted our speech, movement, long life and strength, to stop and hear what it is like when we don't have these things any more.  And on top of that, there is nothing wrong with our minds.  We are still the same person we were, in our hearts, before our diagnosis.  Both Julia and Mike dream at night that they are running and walking.

Tomorrow, I am going to Leeds with Eileen.  We are looking forward to visiting Dr Kate Granger to film an interview, to photograph her and to chat to her as she will be joining the A Graceful Death exhibition too.  Kate is 31, and a medical doctor.  She has terminal cancer, and has chosen to return to work as a doctor.  Kate has also written about her experiences, which are ongoing, of being both a medic and a patient, a wife, a daughter, a friend and a terminally ill young woman.  Kate's blog is worth reading -

http://drkategranger.wordpress.com/

I find her observations from both sides of the hospital experience fascinating.  I met Kate in Edinburgh at the Good Life, Good Death, Good Grief annual event, and liked her very much indeed.

And next week, I start to paint!  I have all that I need to start on my four paintings for this year.  I know what I will do, I will set up four large surfaces and work on all four of them simultaneously.  It may take me a long time, but I feel they are linked in many ways.  And of course this way, I can get thoroughly messy.  I will lock myself away and become a little potty, and I feel I may end up in the studio like this -

And now.  I must pack.  I am staying in London with Eileen tonight so that we can get to Leeds nice and early tomorrow. I have less than a week, then, before I go into the studio and come out some time later, a little eccentric, but with four new paintings for AGD.

And in the meantime, some more quiche.