Lockdown Doodles and Drawings 2020

N I C O L A A S

M A R I T Z

LOCKDOWN DOODLES & D R AW I N G S 2 0 2 0

NICOLAAS MARITZ

LOCKDOWN D O O D L E S & D R AW I N G S 2020

Nemesia*Press_online 2020

CONTENTS

Artist’s Preface L O C K D O W N D R AW I N G S : M a r c h - N o v e m b e r We b s i t e

A R T I S T ’ S P R E FA C E I have been doodling with ink and watercolour on paper all my life. It's my way of stirring up my imagination to see what I find hidden in my head. I call the results dream pictures, fantasy sketches, and even brain-sharpening exercises.

Maurice Sendak From the month of March 2020, when the Covid-19 lockdown was announced in South Africa, following so many other countries round the world, I suddenly found myself much more at home than before. Which is to say really VERY much more at home, since I am at home most days in any case. But just the thought of a strict curfew made going out seem more desirable. Thank god for the privilege of a piece of garden, and with the reduction in ambient noise, suddenly clearer birdsong.

There is a certain biblical horror to the realization of an international PLAGUE, but the way it manifested itself in my small village, is to say the least: discreetly. No big drama. No deaths. Many recoveries. The notion and experience of time during the lockdown is in any case so odd; time slipping by speedily and seeming endless at the same time. It can seem entirely unreal.

But to me, the viral drama’s novelty factor wore off after about a day, and I needed a suitable ‘lockdown’ artistic activity, a substitute for going down the village to paint in my studio. I was happy to simply resume an older habit of drawing with ball point pen on scrap paper. This had previously been done at night in front of the TV, my brittle attention span demanding a secondary activity. Now that I don’t have regular TV, I am more likely to sit at a desk in front of my PC, watching movies and documentaries, or to be streaming music. And the itch to ‘do something’ while watching/listening possesses me still. Somewhere on the ‘spectrum’ I am, if you haven’t noticed already, dear reader.

At the start of the lockdown I chanced upon a smartphone app called Radio Garden. Like to a neo-transistor radio, I can now listen to music and programmes from around the world. My new listening favourites are Springbok Radio, The UK 1940’s Radio Station, and Bollywood vintage stations. And so you might find me doodling away, listening this morning to a Japanese radio station, or one from Zanzibar this afternoon.

When looking at them as a group, there seems to be no detectable theme to the drawings. They are the sort of automatic drawings which hark back to the ones I made as a hormonally turbulent teenager; often narrative, a bit novelletish. Some are simply doodles, but who is to say that doodles aren’t drawings too. Though they piled up quickly, the great flood of drawing energy waned towards the end. I was drawn out a bit. And so I was.

Then, to my more or less ordered mind, it became necessary to put the doodles and drawings in a particular order; to somehow document the process. As a group, the bare ball point pen drawings seemed altogether too relentlessly ball point pen, so I added some semi-transparent colour blocks, during the making of the sketchbook. My spirits rose with each new colour.

This was followed by a nagging feeling that the sketchbook needed ‘text’ of some description. Since my oldfashioned desk diary has an inspirational quotation by a famous person for every day, I decided that appropriating these bits of text would increase the collaged effect of my sketchbook; give it a curious journal-like plausability. In the end, I divided the sketchbook into ‘months’. The serendipity of coupling a quotation with a doodle or drawing done on that day, became a fascinating game of chance; very much like dodging the virus…

Nicolaas Maritz DARLING 2020

MARCH

Peace begins with a smile. - Mother Theresa

Start by doing what’s necessary, then do what’s possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.

- Francis of Assisi

Everyone thinks of changing the world but no-one thinks of changing himself. - Leo Tolstoy

We love the things we love for what they are. - Robert Frost

Count your age by friends not by years. Count your life by smiles not tears. - John Lennon

Change what you can change, let go of the rest. - Faaris Naz

Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.

- William Shakespeare

Life’s under no obligation to give us what we expect.

- Margaret Mitchell

Do not go where the trail may lead, go instead to where there is no path and leave a trail.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Hard times don’t create heroes. It is during hard times when the hero within us is revealed.

- Bob Riley

The question isn’t who’s going to let me, it’s who’s going to stop me.

- Ayn Rand

It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are. - E. E. Cummings

Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. - C.S. Lewis

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.

- Lao Tzu

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

- Maya Angelou

We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.

- Anais Nin

Love is needing someone. Love is putting up with someone’s bad qualities because they somehow complete you. - Sarah Dessen

Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‘I’m possible’.

- Audrey Hepburn

APRIL

We are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided.

- J.K. Rowling

You can’t force love, I realized. It’s there or it isn’t. If it’s not there, you’ve got to be able to admit it. If it’s there, you’ve got to do whatever it takes to protect the ones you love.

- Richelle Mead

Whatever you are, be a good one.

- Abraham Lincoln

Destroying things is much easier than making them.

- Suzanne Collins

“I might be in love with you.” He smiles a little. “I’m waiting until I’m sure to tell you, though.”

- Veronica Roth

We loved with a love that was more than love.

- Edgar Allan Poe

Whatever you hold in your mind on a consistent basis is exactly what you will experience in your life.

- Troy Robbins

Here’s to books, the cheapest holiday you can buy.

- Charlaine Harris

Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.

- Mahatma Ghandi

Never laugh at live dragons.

- J.R.R. Tolkien

Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day without any mistakes in it yet?

- L.M. Montgomery

I am not young enough to know everything.

- Oscar Wilde

Give a girl the right shoes, and she can conquer the world.

- Bette Midler

Always do what you are afraid to do.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

- George Orwell

She was a girl who knew how to be happy even when she was sad. And that’s important - you know.

- Marilyn Monroe

Tell me, what is it that you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

- Mary Oliver

If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed.

- Sylvia Plath

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

- Anais Nin

The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times, and to get up eight times.

- Paulo Coelho

You have enemies? Good. It means you’ve stood up for something sometime in your life.

- Winston S. Churchill

Think of all the beauty still around you and be happy.

- Anne Frank

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Don’t be pushed around by the fears in your mind. Be led by the dreams in your heart.

- Roy T. Bennett

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.

- Maya Angelou

What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.

- Aristotle

The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.

- Coco Chanel

Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It is a way of understanding it.

- Lloyd Alexander

Books may be the only true magic.

- Alice Hoffman

M AY

I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.

- Sarah Williams

Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living. It’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of the telescope. - Dr. Seuss

But luxury has never appealed to me. I like simple things, books, being alone, or with somebody who understands. - Daphne Du Maurier

The very essence of romance is uncertainty.

- Oscar Wilde

Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet.

- Bob Marley

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.

- Albert Camus

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.

- Pablo Picasso

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends.

- Abraham Lincoln

If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.

- Emily Dickinson

Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.

- Charles R. Swindell

My tastes are simple: I am easily satisfied with he best.

- Winston S. Churchill

Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.

- Leonardo Da Vinci

None of us really changes over time. We only become more fully what we are.

- Anne Rice

One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.

- Sigmund Freud

Don’t put off your efforts because of any fear of failure. Remember your failures teach you much more useful lessons than your successes.

- Zubair Ahmed

Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.

- Mahatma Gandhi

People haven’t always been there for me, but music always has.

- Taylor Swift

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.

- George Burns

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with heart. - Helen Keller

Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

- Stephen King

Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship you haven’ learned anything. - Muhammad Ali

I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.

- Anne Tyler

We do not need magic to transform our world. We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already. - J.K. Rowling

Only in the darkness can you see the stars.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.

- Napoleon Hill

JUNE

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is war, love is growing up.

- James Baldwin

Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh the thinks you can think up if only you try!

- Dr. Suess

No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.

- Alice Walker

You know, one of the tragedies of real life is that there is no background music.

- Annie Proulx

Fortune always favours the brave, and does not help a man who does not help himself.

- P.T. Barnum

Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.

- Pablo Picasso

A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light.

- Leonardo da Vinci

I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.

- Maya Angelou

Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible. - Frank Zappa

The only person you are destined to become, is the person you decide to be. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Everyone has talent. What’s rare is the courage to follow it to the dark place where it leads.

- Erica Jong

If you do what interests you, at least one person is pleased.

- Katherine Hepburn

We know what we are, but not what we may be. - William Shakespeare

Life is to be enjoyed, not endured.

- Gordon B. Hinckley

Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness.

- Allen Ginsberg

The more I see, the less I know for sure. - John Lennon

Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.

- Friedrich Nietzche

I don’t believe in the kind of magic in my books. But something very magical can happen when you read a good book.

- J.K. Rowling

You can’t be happy unless you’re unhappy sometimes.

- Lauren Oliver -

The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.

- Ernest Hemingway

We all have our time machines, don’t we. Those that take us back are memories,‌ And those that carry us forward are dreams. - H.G. Wells

Usually I’m remarkably good natured. Try me on a day that doesn’t end in y.

- Cassandra Clare

LEFT: Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.

- Maya Angelou

RIGHT: Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.

- Henry James

When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.

- Jimi Hendrix

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

- Bertrand Russell

The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.

- G.K. Chesterton

Hate the sin, love the sinner.

- Mahatma Gandhi

Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds.

- Albert Einstein

If you have two friends in your lifetime, you’re lucky. If you have one good friend you’re more than lucky.

- S.E. Hinton

But for my own part, if a book is well written, I always find it too short.

- Jane Austen

Sometimes it seems safer to hold it all in, where the only person who can judge is yourself.

- Sarah Dessen

LEFT: After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.

- Phillip Pullman

ABOVE: All we demanded was our right to sparkle.

- Marilyn Monroe

J U LY

Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.

- Sylvia Plath

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

- Margaret Fuller

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

- Winston S. Churchill

It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own.

- Sir Arthur Canon Doyle

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that what is worth knowing can be tough. - Oscar Wilde

How vain it would be to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. - Henry David Thoreau

I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet. - Mahatma Gandhi

Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.

- Leonardo da Vinci

Setting goals is the first step into turning the invisible into the visible.

- Tony Robbins

Forever is composed of now.

- Emily DIckinson

Remember that where your heart is, there you will find your treasure.

- Paulo Coelho

Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers. - Voltaire

There are far better things ahead than any we leave behind. - C.S. Lewis

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.

- Ernest Hemingway

Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love. - Albert Enstein

If you’re losing your soul and you know it, then you still got a soul to lose.

- Charles Bukowski

Nobody ever figures out what life is about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is interesting if you go into it deep enough.

- Richard Feynman

There are no facts, only interpretations.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Wherever you go becomes part of you somehow.

- Anita Desai

A book is really like a lover. It arranges itself in your life in a way that is beautiful.

- Maurice Sendak

RIGHT: You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.

- Colette

LEFT: Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don’t.

- Bill Nye

No woman really wants a man to carry her off; she only wants him to want to do it. - Elizabeth Peters

Only those who dare to fall greatly can ever achieve greatly. - Robert F. Kennedy

The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places.

- Ernest Hemingway

Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained. - C.S. Lewis

Being powerful is like being a lady.

If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t. - Margaret Thatcher

Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it. - George Orwell

Solitude is fine but you need someone to tell that solitude is fine. - HonorĂŠ de Balzac

Behind every stack of books is a flood of knowledge.

- Eddie Conlon

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the things you did.

- Mark Twain

Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

- Mark Twain

Live in the sunshine, swim in the sea, drink the wild air.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I can shake off everything as I write, my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.

- Anne Frank

AUGUST

I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary. - Margaret Atwood

Your time is limited so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. - Steve Jobs

Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.

- Vincent van Gogh

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out. - Ray Bradbury

Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.

- Maya Angelou

That it will never come again is what makes love so sweet. - Emily Dickinson

But he who does not grasp the thorn should never crave the rose. - Anne BrontĂŠ

In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate. - Isaac Asimov

The one thing we can never get enough of is love And the one thing we never give enough of is love.

- Henry Miller

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end.

- Gilda Radner

What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

All you have to do is write one true sentence.

Write the truest sentence that you know.

- Ernest Hemingway

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.

- Alice Walker

Whatever you’re meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible. - Doris Lessing

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. - Anais Nin

Be clearly aware of the stars and infinity up high. Then life seems almost enchanted after all.

- Vincent van Gogh

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence. - Robert Frost

I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Books are the carriers of civilization...They are companions, teachers, bankers of the treasures of the mind.

Books are humanity in print. - Barbara W. Tuchman

I’ve found that there is always some beauty left - in nature, sunshine, freedom, in yourself, these can all help you. - Anne Frank

What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make. - Jane Goodall

Everything you can imagine is real. - Pablo Picasso

Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save, they just stand there shining. - Anne Lamott

The library is inhabited by spirits that come out of the paper at night. - Isabel Allende

SEPTEMBER

Once you had put the pieces back together, even though you may look intact, you were never quite the same as you’d been before the fall. - Jodi Picoult

The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty. - Winston S. Churchill

We take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.

- Cynthia Ozick

The creative adult is the child who has survived.

- Ursula K. Le Guin

My best friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read. - Abraham Lincoln

Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.

- Mother Teresa

A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.

- John Lennon

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. - Plato

The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect, and beginning the work of becoming yourself. - Anna Quindlen

I was wise enough never to grow up, while fooling people into believing I had.

- Margaret Mead

The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.

- Søren Kierkegaard

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me), it’s always our self we find in the sea. - E.E. Cummings

What is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life. - Walt Whitman

Love is the absence of judgment. - Dalai Lama XIV

Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other.

- Mark Twain

OC TOBER

If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re misinformed.

- Mark Twain

The past has no power over the present moment. - Eckhart Tolle

And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on.

- George Gordon Byron

We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

- Joseph Campbell

Because you can’t argue with all the fools in the world. It’s easier to let them have their way, then trick them when they’re not paying attention. - Christopher Paolini

You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.

- Sharon Salzberg

Creativity is intelligence having fun. - Albert Einstein

Letting go means to come to the realization that some people are a part of your history, but not a part of your destiny. - Steve Maraboli

Try a little harder to be a little better.

- Gordon B. Hinckley

The pleasure of reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.

- Katherine Mansfield

You will never find time for anything; if you want time you must make it. - Charles Buxton

It’s not just others that you need to forgive; learn to be kind and forgiving towards your own self. - Latiko Teotia

If you’re lonely when you are alone, you’re in bad company. - Jean-Paul Sartre

Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue, and the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true. - E.Y. Harburg

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.

- Thomas Merton

The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it. - Albert Einstein

Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.

- Euripedes

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them, that only causes sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.

- Lao Tzu

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth. - Alan W. Watts

Reputation is what other people know about you. Honour is what you know about yourself.

- Lois McMaster Bujold

No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn’t know it. - Paulo Coelho

A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving. - Lao Tzu

Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.

- Mother Teresa

NOVEMBER

Every time you are tempted to react in the same old way, ask if you want to be a prisoner of the past or a pioneer of the future. - Deepak Chopra

Time is the coin of your life. You spend it. Do not allow others to spend it for you.

- Carl Sandberg

The trouble is not in dying for a friend, but in finding a friend worth dying for. - Mark Twain

Life is about making an impact, not making an income. - Kevin Kruse

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.

- Confucius

Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another. - Carl Sagan

Do your little bit of good where you are. It’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelms the world.

- Desmond Tutu

It’s easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend. - William Blake

The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you. - Stephanie Perkins

Remember, darkness does not always equate to evil, just as light does not always bring good.

- P.C. Cast

In a time of destruction, create something.

- Maxine Hong Kingston

Nothing in the world is ever completely wrong. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

- Paulo Coelho

Title: ©LOCKDOWN DOODLES & DRAWINGS 2020 Text: ©Nicolaas Maritz Illustrations: ©Nicolaas Maritz Publisher: Nemesia*Press_online 2020 Other online catalogues / publications by the same publisher at https://issuu.com/nicolaasmaritz

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