The kind of loneliness you can only feel on a Summer day

I made a postcard/drawing today based on an old diary entry and an ink sketch that I had made around that time. They weren't made to be shown to people; the writing existed in a word document on my computer amongst an infinite number of unorganised files and the drawing was shuffled between piles of other drawings until it was eventually put in a suitcase and stacked away.

I wanted to create a study of these past written and drawn moments and process them into an unsent card of image and text. I copied out the text in small capital letters and spent today drawing the image in fineliner pen using a shading technique that I used a lot a few years ago. This work will be sent over to America to be displayed at a friend's house show early next year.

I felt unsettled trying to recreate the original ink drawing; a reaction I was not expecting. I thought that re-creating this past work would be a peaceful and meditative process. I don't feel like I have been drawing enough lately so I thought that it would be opportunity to quietly work on something small and detailed. I didn't think I would feel emotionally involved as these are moments from the past. Instead, I have had waves of loneliness, regret, yearning, nostalgia, a sense of loss...No wonder I have been trying to avoid this work all day! I was aware that the drawing was causing me to feel this way (and the heatwave to some extent) but I couldn't help travelling through these emotions throughout the process. I am curious to take this emotional awareness with me into new works. Can you be in control of your emotions in artmaking? Should you only create things that make you feel good? Does re-creating a past work have the same meaning as it may have had when it was originally made? I wonder if in this instance I was picking up on feelings that I had when I made the original work or if I was reflecting on the time between that work and the present?