Walls of Art

(Aug 3, 2023)

Since arriving on St Helena I have had lots of time to do more of the hobbies I enjoy, such as drawing and painting. I have decorated our house with paintings that both Scott and I have done throughout our time on the island and before arriving here.

I like to draw animals, and landscapes/city scapes. I also enjoy doodling and creating abstract patterns and shapes when I don’t have anything in particular to draw but still want to make something. The living room wall has become the space where the animals and abstract art live, while the wall going up the stairs is there the cities go.

A few months ago I was feeling a bit homesick of the places where we have traveled to or have lived in and so I decided to create a series of skylines of these places. These skylines include New York, London, Bangkok and Barcelona. And among the skylines there is also the art we did while in those places, traveling around to different countries. For New York I created a city street with some of my favorite spots to go to and under Bangkok is a charcoal drawing Scott did of a city street in Hanoi, Vietnam (the beginning of our Southeast Asia adventures).

Being surrounded by art helps to create a space of home for me. And being able to draw a place that I am missing helps with the homesickness when it comes, because the artwork and photographs remind me of all the awesome things that happened when we were there, and being on the island and doing art here is a way of keeping a visual collection of our time here.

The first two drawings are of St Helena, the first being a map I made of the different scuba diving spots and the second is the view from our house which Scott did. The third painting is of Harriman State park which is near where I grew up in New York.