John Loker

Restless

"Isolate they said. Lockdown they said. Since this all began there has been a constant flow of news and information that has created a fear of isolation in many. There has been a pressure to fill that empty space that social distancing has formed by creating, exercising and occupying the mind. I’ve become an expert pacer, up and down the studio, occasionally scribbling or maybe it’s doodling with intent. Give me a blank sheet of paper and I’ll torment it with observations and half formed ideas. I somehow find myself restless in a situation that is activating ideas. 

I often need and enjoy, even thrive in, isolation because I think I bring something to it. I usually need that time to realise and make ‘art’ but now find myself acutely aware of a blank white canvas flat on the floor, not huge but comfortably large, with a plank laid across it. In my pacing I circumnavigate this canvas like it's an out of bounds island, only occasionally crossing the plank like a bridge. In the past I have spent many hours on this bridge with its ever changing view; my working platform from which I make the big paintings. Now it remains stubbornly empty, like the world outside my lockdown."