Author: artbychristinemallabandbrown

I'm an artist based at the Spode factory site in Stoke on Trent. I paint, draw and create digital art. Contact me at mallabandbrown@aol.com

Question

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Is the cost of living crisis affecting whether you buy or collect art?

As a small time seller of art I’m interested in how the rises in inflation and reduction in pay rises is affecting the Art economy. I’m sure decisions are being made that people either put off buying, or don’t buy art at all.

Art is everywhere, in designs of clothes, furniture, architecture, advertising, maps, car design, and even the Art in people’s walls. The Art economy is worth Billions to the economy as a whole, but I think it is under recognised. We like to be surrounded by visual and auditory stimulation, but do people even notice it’s there. Do you notice a painting on a restaurant wall? Or classical music played in a supermarket. I wonder how things will work out?

Four horses

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I am feeling a bit uncreative so I decided to collage my horse drawing from a few days ago. If you can create digitally it allows you the freedom to make something new.

Recently a photographer entered a competition with a piece called something like ‘the electrician’? It was a black and white photo of two women, one behind the other, one had hands on the others shoulders. The photo looked old fashioned and a little bit weird. The photographer refused the prize because the image had been created by an AI, the faces were not real people but had been built up from features by the AI a bit like an identikit photo. It’s called machine learning.

On a similar vein an image of ex president Trump appeared recently apparently marching at the head of a massive crowd of people in New York but if you zoom in the people behind are ‘constructed’ by an AI and their faces are very distorted.

What I’m trying to say is that digital art created by humans is not the same as AI. The difference is hard to pin down. But if a person has control of it does that count as art. I’m sure there is much controversy to come? In the meantime I will continue to digitally draw and manipulate with human control.

Pond yatch?

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This arrived today! It’s almost the length and width of our settee. My hubbys brother has sent it in the post. Why? It’s meant to be a pond yatch. But our pond is smaller than the box!

I don’t need more stuff in the house. I don’t know how much wrapping is inside the box, I just told my hubby I’ve now got something to put him in when he has passed away.

Hubby and brother used to make toy boats as children, they had a small lake near their childhood home where they built ships and then reinacted naval battles and set fire to the ships (I don’t have to say what I want to do with it do I?)

Oh well, another start to another weird day. Household peace may resume. But I’m not sure when! I just wish he’d open the box, but he seems happy just to look at it!

Most of it!

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What place in the world do you never want to visit? Why?

OK, but why?

The Earth is quite a large planet to humans, but it is also a finite place. It doesn’t go on for ever and it has limited resources.

I know there are wonderful places to visit and also terrible places, it depends mainly on human activity. We may preserve a place or tear it apart. Every time a person travels though they have a carbon footprint, the amount of carbon dioxide that is produced by the vehicle you travel in, what energy it takes to make it and what is used to fuel the vehicle.

But with satellites, television and the Internet I can visit almost every corner of the world without actually going there. So why should I? I visit places in the UK because it doesn’t cause too much pollution. If I could, I would cycle to where I want to visit. If I want to go abroad I would prefer to use a sailboat or at the most a ferry. I don’t want to fly unless there are solar powered planes.

Another reason not to travel is the fear of disease. There have been films about escaped viruses and diseases, but I never thought I would experience a real pandemic. I guess it’s a case of once bitten, twice shy. I don’t know what I might catch ‘out there’. I am not xenophobic, I’m happy for anyone to come here. I just want people to think first. Do you need to visit, do you want to increase your carbon footprint? It’s a different situation if you are fleeing violence or oppression, then in my opinion you are very welcome. The world is a strange place. I’m lucky to be here.

Singing and yoga

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Two of my favourite pastimes,

First chair yoga. I can’t get down (or up) off the floor, but I’m trying to do the yoga positions as well as I can to improve my mobility. I can’t lift both my arms above my head, and I do go very wobbly if I try to do a balance, but I do my best. Yoga gradually helps you stretch and move and I hope will build my core strength. I would never do ‘hot’ yoga, I’m trying to find a bit of enlightenment not strong exercise.

After a break I joined in singing with Loud Mouth Women choir. We are learning music from the 1950’s, a sea shanty, a Samoan call and response and a new song for the coronation, so it was very varied. Good also to see three new choir members, I hope they enjoyed it. We may be doing a gig soon, watch this space. X

Art college

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Describe a positive thing a family member has done for you.

I will always be grateful for my mother’s encouragement for me to go to art college. She had to work to support us all and when I finished school she might have insisted that I work full time.

Instead she let me go to college (though I had a couple of part time jobs). I initially went on a preparatory course, then left home to do my degree.

I was aware that my cousin who was also artistic had to go to work in a factory and forget her dreams. I don’t know what happened to her after I moved away. But in my case I was always welcomed home in the holidays.

I’m glad my mom gave me the freedom to do art. Learning has always been something that I enjoyed, and to do a subject that I love? I will always be eternally grateful to her.

Going home over the years I realised how proud she was of me. She was always encouraging us all to do the best we could.

Pompom dahlia

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Dad used to grow these. You can see why they are called pompom dahlias. He had a whole patch of them in the back garden. I found some in the local garden centre so I have bought a packet of tubers just to see if I can grow them.

The best place to see dahlias in the area is the dahlia walk at the Biddulph Grange garden in Biddulph, Staffordshire. The National Trust owns the house and gardens. The building is only accessible in a few rooms, but the gardens are magnificent. Part classic gardening, part themed garden it is worth visiting and you have to see the Dahlia Walk in late summer. Sections separated by hedges on either side of a central pathway are filled with all sorts of Dahlia plants in all sorts of colours, for example red Bishop of Llandaff ones. Other sections in the garden have various themes, a Swiss cottage next to an Egyptian tomb, grottos and stepping stones and a Chinese temple and giant stone frog and golden calf!

Worth a visit if you are in the area.

Mass trespass

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Generic photo of a moorland view.

On 24th April 1931, 500 ramblers climbed over a wall and walked up Kinder Scout, a hill in the Derbyshire peak district. That mass trespass was onto countryside that was exclusively used for hunting and shooting. For those people it was the start of a fight to allow the right to roam.

The trespass led eventually to the first National park in the Derbyshire peak district which was opened on 17th April 1951 almost twenty years later.

There are many more National parks in Britain now, and people have many more freedoms than they had in the past, but there are still restrictions on what you can do. A recent court ruling stopped wild camping on Dartmoor. Worryingly people are using portable barbecues which have set fire to grassland and heathland in recent years. The right to roam has also caused erosion of pathways and peat bogs in places like Kinder Scout and the pathways up the hill had to be restored and widened.

The situation needs to be managed, to allow us to move about more freely, but to also protect the environment. However a large proportion of the land in Britain is owned by the military and or the royal family, so some places like parts of Salisbury plain will continue to be out of bounds.

Variations, ‘flower power’

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I started exploring the symmetry tool on one of my new drawing apps. I had just watched a programme about Saxon art and illumination illustrated in bibles and books, and also the style you sometimes see in stained glass windows. It’s interesting how different filters change the way they look. I feel like the face ended up looking like the Hollywood film star Bette Davis for some reason….