Remember

Remember, 15x15cm/5.9x5.9" mixed media on canvas 2025 Megan Chapman
£45 & free UK 2nd class shipping

I am talking to strangers on the street, at the bus stops, in shops, and on the pavements as they clean out their cars. I am talking to them like they are long lost friends and they are letting me. We are laughing, sharing, and relating - we talk about music, politics, and despair. We share favourite bands - an obscure Interpol song radiates out of a car window. We smile, we nod, and we bond. 

A woman takes a photo of something I'm wearing - a shared political belief. The artist on the corner tells me about his paintings and challenges my history. We laugh, we know, we have lived similar lives.

The worker in the tea shop enjoys our banter and gives me my matcha for free. I'm touched, I'm thankful, my day made. 

I find more things I need and some things I don't on the street. A friend helps and supports me with a task and then we eat strawberries in the sun. 

Old things remind me of who I am and new things flesh it out even more. My hair grows longer and a bit wild. Glances shared through windows, laughter of later stories. Daisy bouquets and sunshine. 

I am okay. 

I am okay. 

I am okay. 

The strangers tell me so. 

This gift remains

Little Edie Flag Dance, Grey Gardens, Maysles Brothers' Film 1976

It's the 4th of July and while not patriotic, it is still an atmosphere that I can easily recall: a hot, sticky, Arkansas summer. Picnic tables at the park, Mom's amazing BBQ baked beans, hot dogs, and watching the country club's fireworks from a distance at the picnic table on the side of Mt. Sequoyah, and then later the fireworks at the Northwest Arkansas Mall. Bottle Rockets (and getting hit in the neck with a bottle rocket - thanks, Sean). The smell of burning snakes (not real snakes) as they undulated on the pavement. A feeling of a bit more freedom and extra wildness, walking the hot streets in the neighborhood to the pool with my friend, Annie. Vivid summer memories of childhood. 

But today, my brain has other plans—today it feels like the hashbrowns at the Waffle House (another American institution). Today, I am scattered, smothered, and covered... if you know, you know. This 4th of July I am anxious, angry, and fretful.

Today, the sky is grey and featureless as little Edie from Grey Gardens does her perpetual flag dance, frozen in time on my computer screen. Rain starts to fall on the pane of the tilted open window and I am a bit cold and far from home and the people I love. 

The US government did a bad, bad thing yesterday, and it all feels a bit much. I soothe myself by looking at and crying over Bruegel paintings. Yes, really. It's all right there. The paintings of Bruegel and Bosch were my version of Where's Waldo. Certain paintings become touchstones for grounding. These paintings serve as kinship and provide strength and a knowing. Like holding up a mirror passed through the family for decades—all your people have gazed in the same glass, and they are still there with you now.

The Triumph of Death, oil on panel c. 1562
117 cm × 162 cm (46 in × 63.8 in) Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Museo del Prado, Madrid

In these hard and strange times, I am so grateful to have this type of relationship with art. To be able to slow down and just go into a painting, to know a painting, to feel the support of a painting, to marvel and dream over a painting. To feel seen and known by a painting and to know it in return. It's a rare gift that I credit my parents for making  available to me through the prints on the walls and the books on the shelves in our little home in Arkansas.

No matter where I am or what happens, this gift remains.