So the new knee is now 6 weeks old, and beginning to be used for its true purpose. My other half (OH) is patiently waiting for permission to walk more than a few minutes a day.

It is a slow game, with many anxieties along the way. The days merge into a routine of exercises, physiotherapy, resting and icing. Meanwhile I have been doing more household tasks than usual. as OH is normally very good at shopping and cooking, and the grass has started growing.

Today we managed a short trip to London, by train, to hear the artist Beatrice Forshall speak at Eames Fine Art Studio.

Beatrice has been passionate about animal conservation since her childhood in rural France. As a child she made papier mache models of endangered species to raise money for the WWF. After studying illustration at Falmouth she now specialises in drypoint etchings of endangered species, whether large mammals or tiny insects. She is an eloquent and inspiring speaker.

Did you know that the dung beetle is endangered because it navigates by the Milky Way, and light pollution is interfering with its ability to roll its balls of dung in a straight line to where it needs to go?

Or that there are only 10 asiatic cheetahs reamining in the world, all in Iran?

Sobering facts.

Which got me thinking about the point of art. Does it need to have a message?

As I struggle to get back into writing and to find a focus for my photographic work I  frequently comtemplate this question.

Having also, like Beatrice, made art about man's impact on our planet, I now find myself experimenting endlessly as the only way forward after exhausting my personal well of enthusiasm for making work about litter and pollution.

And my answer is a resounding 'NO'!

Art is primarily for the benefit of its creator. A way of expressing oneself in ways other than speech can allow.

I like to think of my art self as my alter ego.

Free to act in ways that my past self did not feel able.

To dance in the sunshine.

To play.

To try new things. 

And it is in this frame of mind that I prepare for a trip to Santa Fe photographic centre, to work with the desert landscape in new ways under the supervision of Anna Rotty.

Desert landscapes have always excited me. Almost as much as mountains and forests. The vast expanses of sky and wide vistas. A feeling of freedom that I do not feel in a forest.

A feeling of insignificance on this vast planet. of awe for the plants and creatures that live in these inhospitable places.

I don't yet know how I will respond to the landscape of New Mexico, but I am looking forward to finding new ways to express my feelings about future  places that I visit.

The workshop will involve making new photographs in the landscape and then printing them and incorporating them back into the landscape as new imagined landscapes.

I am struck by the similar ways that I have captured these two deserts (shown above and below) on different continents with their islands of vegetation on very different soils. I hope to come back from this workshop with something completely different. Perhaps it will say something about the connections between deserts around the world. Perhaps it will better express how being in these environments makes me feel.

Georgia O'Keeffe had her home near Santa Fe. Here she is pictured with her cat.

I like to think that I will be as inspired by her locality as she was.

O'Keeffe said 'I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at – not copy it.'

Her drawing below shows the landscape that I will be visiting soon.

The drawing inspired me to write some words as I remembered previous trips to desert landcapes.

Just passing through


Abiquiu.
Scrub spotted dusty desert hills. 
Land of the Tewa people.
Abiquiu means ‘wild chokecherry place’. 
I know not the people, the fruit
or the place.

I  am reminded of another desert,
a different continent. 

The blinding white of las Salinas Grandes;
a sea of caking salt beneath an intense cloudless sky.
Surfaces indeterminate, crusting, inhospitable.

We drowned in the overwhelming silence of this limitless landscape
where infrequent adventurers pass through from distant hills to unspecified destinations.

Bleached dunes and exotic formations carved by the wind. 
Giant blocks of pumice.
Soft curves and sharp edges carved and drawn as if from another galaxy.

A perfect cone arising from the plain where once magma spewed. 
Gritty boulders all that remain.
 Drawing us closer. 
Hypnotic.

Later, rolling rusty hills brushed with soft yellow grasses and the occasional cluster of slender legged inquisitive vicuna. 
Watching us as we did them.  

The heat: dry and unforgiving.
Desiccating skin and soil alike.

In that place I felt wonder
as we too 
passed through.

Below, in Georgia's more typical style, is her abstraction of a stream, as if seen from above.

Expressing one's feelings and learning more about oneself seem to me to be the best reasons to make art.

'If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint,' said the painter Edward Hopper.

'
Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.' – wrote poet and artist Thomas Merton.

I came across this video of Ian McKellen talking passsionately about why we should all make art.

Any sort of art. With or without an obvious message behind it. it doesn't matter.

His words resonate deeply. He advises his audience to 'practice art to make your soul grow'.

I will be heading to the desert for that very reason. 

What about you?

We have a new knee in the home.

New knees, I am learning are not quite as demanding as a new baby or a new puppy, but they get very close.

Fortunately the new knee is not mine. I am just the slave to the new knee and its owner. A new role for yours truly; one that has been a long time coming. And now the time is here.

I have not been looking forward to this event, but am glad we are safely through the hospital bit, and hopefully on a road to easier walking and getting back out into the woods and fields, dunes and beach, and even just walking into town together.

Fingers are crossed.

So how have I been preparing myself for slave duties? To slave with love and a smile on my face whilst wishing I were in my studio or on the beach? I have two weeks blocked out in my diary for slaving. And after a day I am already more tired than I expected. Slaving is hard work. Up and down stairs. Preparing all the meals, washing up , making drinks, managing tablets, filling the ice machine several times a day. The list is longish. The patient is hoping for meat, and is not getting much..... he is hoping for cards, but the postman brings bills. There is much to be disappointed about. Tomorrow I must provide sausages.

I think of all those caring long term for those who need help, and am grateful that this is a temporary episode.

So, as I said, how have I been preparing?

I have been learning to meditate. I mentioned this in my last blog post. I promised to feed back on my progress, so here goes;

The answer?

Better than expected. Much better. 

Previously I have tried a variety of apps and podcasts. On holiday I tried sound therapy. Lying on the floor listening to gongs and crystal bowls was relaxing, but as usual my mind filled with a multitude of thoughts that crowded my head. I didn't know how to stop them.

I became  angry at the suggestion in one meditation tape that I could manifest any life that I choose. I honestly believe that just saying what you wish for is not going to make it happen. What I do believe is that setting goals and working out steps to achieve them is much more likely to get me where I wish to be. 

For a long time I have been unable to focus 'mindfully' for more than 5 minutes. So many times I have given up before the end of a session. 

So what has transformed my feelings about meditation after years of failure?

Well, it all started when I signed up for a course in the newspaper to help me spend less time on my phone. This was a good decision. I wanted to stop checking my apps and spending time reading the news when I could be doing something more productive. Learning Spanish for one. Reading a book with a mind that is not whirling and distracted for another.

The 4 week course has helped a lot. I have removed news apps from my phone and swapped them for Spanish education. The course also recommended the Healthy Minds Program which comes as. a free app for learning to meditate with the aim of becoming less stressed and more connected with the world outside your head.

In the Healthy Minds Program there are meditations and short talks about the mindfulness process available with a choice of presenters, that can be done whilst sitting or when active. I have tried both and find them excellent. For the first time in my life I find myself looking forward to my daily meditation and brief education session. I am up to 20 minutes daily, and wanting to try 30 minutes this week. No one is more surprised than I am!

I have been 'batting away dirty cloths' of habitual thoughts, thinking of small things to appreciate in my daily life, considering my values and learning about the 'executive network' in my brain.  The variety of methods for observing the inner voices are really interesting, and I find myself practising my new skills as I walk, drive, communicate and rest. If one method doesn't work, then there are other things to try. I enjoy a full body scan in which I focus on parts of my body from top to bottom, or just focussing on the sounds that I can hear around me without making any judgments about them.

.I feel like a meditation evangalist. I want to tell everyone about this program.

Some beautiful things have come out of it. 

I walked into our local shopping centre after one session during which I was invited to connect with strangers; to be open to the lives of others without judgement. I met a frail looking elderly man about to head out into pouring rain, all alone. I caught his eye and said 'you don't want to go out there....' as a way of briefly connecting. He stopped and told me how he had to catch a bus home. His phone had locked him out, and he had had to go to the phone shop to get it sorted. This was a long journey by bus. Then he explained that he needed to get it fixed urgently as he was waiting for a phone call to find out whether he had lung cancer. He thanked me for talking and went on his way. I felt so moved by this exchange. I probably wouldn't have made if I hadn't been for my session that day.

Two days ago I was on the train to London to visit the new knee.

It was busy, and a beautiful young woman was on the phone to her (presumed) partner as she stood in the aisle beside my seat. Her small, wide eyed daughter held her hand. She was explaining how she had locked herself out of the house that morning, and had't been able to get back in. How her daughter was sick and she hoped to get an appointment at Harley Street, and how she was planning steak and pommes dauphinoise for dinner. My immediate reaction was to think of her as a very privileged, and wondering how she had time to cook pommes dauphinoise with everything else that was going on. Perhaps she has live in help.

But she looked stressed, so as we got off the train I plucked up the courage to say to her 'dinner sounds good, even if the rest of the day isn't'. She replied 'it always is!' followed by an outpouring of all the disasters of her day as we walked together across the station concourse. There were more problems; she had had to take her daughter to three work meetings, her partner was completely tied up with the launch of a new product, and there was pus pouring out of her daughter's ear. She thanked me for listening, saying that being able to talk was  'sometimes all that was needed'. We parted ways, and once again I was moved by the exchange. She may have been privileged, but she was human, and was having a really difficult day. She, like knee man, also seems to put food high on her list of priorities.

Slowly but surely I am learning to be 'open' to my thoughts. I find this a difficult concept to understand or explain, but I am confident that this course is leading me in the right direction. It lasts for several weeks.

I already feel calmer, less anxious and more able to see things in a positive light. 

Meanwhile 'the knee' will slowly mend, and I will be back in my studio before long.

Now I must go and buy sausages, or there will be a riot.  And then I will start work on a book about leaves, my current fixation and next project. One of the upsides of being stuck at home is that I have discovered two fixes for computer frustrations in the last 24 hours.

Every cloud.....

Thank you for reading.