Colin Slater

Orchard Studio

April 05 – June 20

Orchard Studio Farewell

A white room
My footsteps echo
All has gone

Pause. Deep breath
Silent reflection……….
Time to leave

Nothing lasts forever and earlier this year I was given notice to vacate my lovely studio. It has now been sold, so for the last few weeks I’ve been packing everything up. It’s been a seriously big job. I wasn’t expecting the task to be easy but social distancing measures have made finding an alternative space more awkward. However, now I’m a proud ‘rentee’ of a large storage container, so at least everything has a place to go.

As for a new studio, let’s just say that it’s on my ‘To Do’ list. My next space, which will be studio number 6, will be my last. I don’t like having to face this sort of upheaval. It gets worse every time.

I’ve rented this space for 15 years and it’s felt like home. It was a very sad moment to walk out the door for the last time. Over the last few weeks I’ve found several reminders of the state I was in when I moved there, the place has meant so much to me and it’s saved my life.

Anyway, now I have another new beginning to make happen. It’s tough, it’s unsettling and it’s discomforting, but in the end it all boils down to determination. We all must try our best not to fear change or what the future might hold. Hokusai always looked forward, and that’s the big secret to learn from him. The past is simply the experience gained to assist the work yet to come. The more you look over your shoulder the less you see what’s ahead, and the more likely you are to trip up!!!!

Orchard Studio – Before……During……& After……

“From the age of six, I had a passion for copying the form of things and since the age of fifty I have published many drawings, yet of all I drew by my seventieth year there is nothing worth taking into account. At seventy-three years I partly understood the structure of animals, birds, insects and fishes, and the life of grasses and plants. And so, at eighty-six I shall progress further; at ninety I shall even further penetrate their secret meaning, and by one hundred I shall perhaps truly have reached the level of the marvellous and divine. When I am one hundred and ten, each dot, each line will possess a life of its own.”- Katsushika Hokusai, the old man mad about painting