Yes, I know… the title is shamelessly borrowed from Leonard Cohen, but as his music is my faithful companion these days, there’s no way around it. I have been stuck with the idea of painting for some time now. Nothing seems important enough to justify using one of my few remaining canvases. There is nothing eternal I  seem to be able to express on a single square of canvas. There have been ideas, indeed, yet on a second glance they always reveal themselves to be cliche, boring, trivial, already done by someone else. And so the painting materials  have just sat there … until yesterday.

I checked Illustration Friday for their this week’s topic. It was “Tape”. Tape. Unusual, considering that usually they have something more in the lines of “Aquatic”, “Exploration”, “Summer”, etc etc. But the oddity of the topic moved something in the mind, some of my own old works surfaced, some works by some others… I had tape. Different kinds, in fact. A quick rough sketch of an old couple – an old man sitting, bent over, with an old woman next to him, with her hand on his shoulder. Perhaps my grandparents, perhaps some others. A piece of cardboard, black tape, paper tape, ripping, pasting, occasional swearing… the old couple was there no more, two old women had taken their place. My grandmothers, of course, they always are when I draw old women.

And it was good, as it came from the heart. Neither forced, nor  called for, it had simply been waiting for the right medium. This must be a form of freedom – simply letting go.

Here is another, older one about my grandmothers.