Sydney lockdown

Posted by on Jul 9, 2021 in Art, Ceramic, collage, Drawing, new works

Here I am in beautiful Sydney enjoying what is, for the most part, a gloriously sunny winter although today is brrr… As usual,  I am staying with my dear friends in Vaucluse. I have finished my wonderful annual teaching gig at the National Art School (May and June) and I usually would have headed back to Munich by now except… I am still here.

I decided to postpone my return flight and stay another month so that I could celebrate my dad’s 80 birthday in Auckland on August 9th. With the travel bubble between NZ and Australia open, I could fly back to Auckland without quarantine, whereas travel to Auckland from Munich would be an expensive and complex option. (I already have 1st hand experience of this when we were trying to get from Germany to NZ for Christmas 2020.)

In any case, it looks like Covid-19 has put the kibosh on that option.. for now at least. Due to growing infection rates of the Delta variant, Sydney is in lockdown for 3 weeks and counting. Meanwhile, NZ has closed its travel bubble window to us. It’s early days yet but we could well spend the whole month in lockdown depending on case numbers and our community commitment to responsible behaviour.

At this point, I could either wait and see what happens or go back to Munich next week. I have been away from my Munich home for a whole 7 months now! That’s the longest that I have ever been away from Christian, and our cat, and my friends there. I am definitely feeling homesick.

I might give the situation another 10 days to decide on the best course of action. In the meantime I am at my Sydney “home’ being productive: tax preparation, email catch-up, drawing, ceramics, regular scrabble games with my hosts, calls with friends, language practice and, when the sun shines, walks to the park and beach. So long as it doesn’t go on for too long, I am one of the lucky ones who experiences lockdown as a happily focused and productive time.

Below are some recently completed little drawings/collages. (all on paper 12x 16 cm)

Oh and I should mention that I am going to have a new website soon. (Yet another lockdown project!) It will be claudeartist.com to match my Instagram handle. (@claudeartist). The old website address should redirect to the new one though.