Sunday, January 31, 2010

Body

Well as usual, I am just under the wire to participate in the Creative Every Day Challenge. This month the theme is Body. I had a number of ideas to play with. As a nurse, the obvious subject would be to look at illness and working to help the person cope within the realm of that challenge; especially if the illness changes one’s daily routine, health or way of being. When I first started nursing I was struck by one patient who was sitting dejectedly in a geriatric chair and tried to imagine what she was like as a young person. The outcome was a poem titled “Grains of Sand”.

Grains of Sand

O youthful beauty, do you think back on younger days in your sedated stupor?
In your gracefulness, as you languished
daring, cigarette dangling
from your fingertips
do you relive those times?

As you sit in your chair,
rasping, rumbling in your chest
now others feed and dress you
you fight for air,
living on oxygen,
yet continue to crave your nicotine.
What do you see, coke in hand?

Blonde hair flying, laughing sparkling eyes were they blue?
Dancing feet, slender, beguiling and
daring to take on the world where
did those days go?


What I decided on was a quick life-drawing sketch of the female form. I just wanted to display simple, clean lines, nothing complicated.



5 comments:

Cathy Olliffe-Webster said...

Hey Eleanor! Haven't seen you posting for a while... good to see you back, and this time with a double threat. Your poem is so tender and sad (and a not-so-subtle treatise on the dangers of smoking!!! Good for you!)
Your sketch is beautiful. Clean, as you say, and simple but really pure and graphically pleasing.
Yay for you!

Leah said...

what a gorgeous drawing!

Unknown said...

Hi Cathy,
Yes, thanks! I have been a little burned out from work, etc. I was a little worried about how the poem would sit with people, it was a gut response to a lady I looked after years ago.
Thanks for your kind words about the sketch. I tend to worry about what I post sometimes which is why I probably say less than I'd like at times.

Unknown said...

Thank you Leah,
I was amazed at how quickly I produced it. It was an intuitive thing I believe, just poured out of me.

Amanda said...

your amazing!!! wow,,love your drawings!!!
Cheers
Mandy