From island to garden…

I must apologise for the long gap between entries, but I’d like to tell you a story which will explain my absence:

Once upon a time there was an artist, and she worked on her sitting room floor.  After two years of this her osteopath lectured her almightily and told her to get herself a studio so she could sit at a desk and stop ruining her back.

So she did…

She was lucky enough to find an amazing studio space in a rickety building on an island.  It was quirky, inspiring, peaceful and very beautiful.  She absolutely loved it.

The artist worked in her studio for a year, but at the end of that year things changed at home, and following her father’s death she decided that she would like to spend more time closer to the home which she now shared solely with her mother.  It was a hard decision to make, but she thought long and hard and eventually decided to give up her island retreat and build a studio in her garden instead.

The garden had become a little neglected due to the sad events at home and was in desperate need of a revamp:

She worked hard for a month, putting in as much time as she could to get the garden, and her new studio, ready.  It was hard both physically and emotionally because the garden had been very much her father’s for the past couple of years, as the artist’s work had kept her too busy to care for it herself.  The old shed had been put up by her father, and the whole garden held many memories.  But grief is a strange thing, and people manage it in their own way.  The artist found that redesigning the garden and taking down the shed and pergola which her father had so lovingly built did not diminish the memories.  On the contrary, she found that everything she did took on a greater meaning as she wondered what her father would say if he were there.

It took a month, a lot of hard work (some of which was helped along by her partner, Matt), and at times a lot of swearing too (!) but the garden is finally almost ready.

It’s not quite finished.  There is still work to be done in the garden, and more things to move into the studio – but it’s almost there and it seemed like a good time to show and tell.

The End.

For more information on Johnsons Island, please visit http://www.brentfordgallery.co.uk/

To see more photographs of Johnsons Island, as taken by the fabulous Katherine Palmer, please click here.

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