Project 365 day 181: Klee, physio, compost

My big Klee book was a present from P, perhaps thirty years ago, around the same time as I was framing prints of his work for our walls in a previous house. It was a pleasure to get it out and browse. Klee was the subject of J's online Art Talk session this morning: she met in a Facebook room with four other members of her care centre, one other parent, and a tutor. The format is very simple: they screen share photos of selected works, talk informally about them, usually with some commentary from the person who chose that week's artist, and the tutor adds a bit of biographical and contextual information. I am there to support J with BSL interpretation and to operate the Facebook room for her, while she uses her switch to control her communication aid software. Today I fear my enthusiasm for Klee led me to talk more than I should have done. I particularly like his luminous watercolour landscapes, like the one on the cover, many of which date from his trip to Tunisia in 1914. Shapes drawn from the environment are simplified and patchworked in a space which is not organised by the familiar rules of dimensions and perspective. Much of the art I love most is at the borderline between landscape and abstraction, rooted in observation of our surroundings but allowing shape and colour to determine the composition. J enjoyed it, but not as much as I did.

After a hasty lunch we took her to Margate for her first physiotherapy appointment since early March 2020. It was a useful catching up and moving on session, though active intervention will be limited until her specialist appointment in London provides clear advice and a map of the way forward. I took the opportunity to pop to the hospital reception desk to replenish her supply of hearing aid batteries, and we stopped to buy compost in readiness for the huge number of tomato plants which are quickly outgrowing their intermediate pots. This was a significant step, my first time in a shop for sixteen months. We started to go out a bit, mainly for walks in relatively quiet places, early in June, and P has done a few bits of shopping and been uncomfortable to find widespread disregard for distancing; but Homebase was very quiet on this wet afternoon, and felt surprisingly normal. Small steps forward, but I'm concerned about the rapid rise in the number of Covid cases.

Yesterday's orchid, belatedly posted just a couple of hours ago, is more worth looking at if you have time.