Since retiring from working in children's publishing I've been wondering what to do with myself now that I'm no longer a professional artist. I tried linocutting, art for the environment, and doing gouache studies of BC animals. Then earlier this year I joined a group to paint urban landscapes which, to my surprise, has given me bursts of rare unalloyed joy. The group meetings allow me to feel safe being outside in nature while doing the other thing I love, which is putting paint on paper. Doing these two things together have made me a happier person. So I was interested to read recently that I'm not the only one who finds
being in nature improves my mental health.
Nowadays, instead of working on large stretched pieces of the best watercolour paper, I work in a cheap A5 sketchbook, painting on both sides of the paper because I just want to
be, rather than always thinking about whether what I'm doing is good enough to sell.
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