The Old Brick Workshop is home to Wellington's very own Contemporary Art Gallery

The Gallery was launched in October 2015 as venue No. 1 for Somerset Arts Weeks Festival.
It was host to 13 contemporary artists and attracted over 800 visitors to its inaugural event.

A full program of exhibitions have been hosted throughout the following nine years. Shows that were modern, thought provoking and diverse. We're looking forward to bringing artists and the community together for many more exhibitions and events in the coming year.

Lockdown Diary

By Artist Maisie Parker

7 - 15 March 2026

Open Daily 10am - 4pm

Horror

I live on my own. I have lived on my own for most of my married life and the years that followed. I live in my head. I am not lonely. People make me nervous. I have no friends. I see my children rarely. This is the state I am happy with. Some people call this state agoraphobia. This suggests an illness but I am not ill. I just don't like to leave my place. I am safe and occupied in my place. I draw. I draw most days, even if it's just to add a line or two to drawings already on the paper. This is my mission. Drawing in pencil, charcoal, Indian ink, soft pastels, oil pastels, coloured ink and acrylic paints. Mixing the media and seeing the results of this melange. Reds, blues, yellows, oranges, greens, purples, but never brown or beige. Brown and beige represent death to me. This is all I need. This keeps me sane.

When the world came to a stop, I read of people panicking and rushing to buy things to sustain them for months. Panic buying and hoarding everyday items as if they were all going to starve within days. I didn't panic. I could feed myself from my store cupboard and improvise anything else I needed. This was playing to my strengths. I didn't need anything. The days went on without much change, but my mission had changed. I decided to draw myself each day to record my feelings. I have made self-portraits all my life but this was a necessary action for me to take in these circumstances. I needed to see how my feelings would change over however long this nightmare lasted.

It was hard on the first day to limit myself to one A2 drawing; a pastel drawing in turquoise blue chalk with just three or four strokes in charcoal. It pleased me, but it was quite bland. It represented me accurately but with not much passion. The next day I used coloured inks; red, yellow, blue; small short strokes with a brush and drawn into with pen and Indian ink. I liked this better. It looked like me but wasn't me, not precise like the day before. The third day was the same as the second but with Indian ink applied with a brush, producing a more austere image. I continued for days, using hot colours, cold colours, green hair and red eyes, no eyes and sometimes no mouth, and as I continued, the backgrounds began to take on more significance. I noticed flames appearing from my head and then from all around me. These flames didn't stay where flames should be but traveled across the page at will. Writing started to appear as part of the picture, sometimes just short sentences, but then a whole page; a rant about my solitariness.

When I had reached thirty-eight self-portraits, I decided I should try and make one last defining picture. A picture that told the truth. A picture that said what it felt like to be alone. I would make it an A1 drawing using all the techniques I had used over the last few weeks. I started with oil pastel in turquoise and orange which I erased with white spirit, leaving a history on the page. I worked into it in pen and Indian ink, hatching and cross-hatching a large web of lines. Flames spread outwards from my hair and my hair became a nest for huge black spiders and my clothes a hiding place for small men, who crept out from sleeves and collar and marched across the page, not stopping for the edge of the paper, but creeping onto the cream mount board surrounding the drawing. The eyes were enormous and the lids shaded with bright blue pastel and the lips became a diagonal gash of vermillion spread across onto the cheeks. This mad woman looked back at me with horror, as I looked back at her with horror.

After five years of these drawings, sitting on my bench, all I need is for someone to look at them and tell me what I felt.

The Gallery is now available to hire for exhibitions and events. Please contact Alison on 07989 465427 or email alison@theoldbrickworkshop.com for details.