New paintings and regular art updates.
Which animal would you compare yourself to and why?
If I could I’d be a cat
Eight meals a day
But still not fat
Treats on demand
From my owners hand
A bed in each room
For me to groom
And fall asleep
Warm and comfortable
Under the table
Or on the windowledge
Watching nature
Then outside
To chase leaves
And hide.
What is one question you hate to be asked? Explain.
I hate marmite. I ate it once when I was a child and I never ate it again. Its a minor hate, it wouldn’t hurt me to eat it, but that’s how I feel about it. So if you asked me if I’d like Marmite on something I would not thank you.
This is why I took so long to answer this prompt. I don’t think I have a real question that I would hate to be asked? I guess there will be something but I haven’t come across it yet. I must lead a sheltered life.
Thinking of a question I would hate to be asked made me realise how lucky I am not to be in a situation where I would need to answer it. I think I will leave this here as I’m starting to waffle!
🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶
After a couple of weeks off I went back to choir practice tonight. I still have a tickly cough and every time I tried to sing with any volume it set it off. It’s annoying because it’s hard to harmonise with a growly voice! It was throwing it down with rain, but there was a good attendance there. The first thing that happened though was I shook my hands because they were wet from the rain running down them from my coat, and the three rings on my right little finger shot off my hand and into a dark corner. I wouldn’t have realised that it had happened but they twinkled as they fell. Luckily the choir leader had a torch so I found them with a couple of other choir members help. I’ve lost weight and my fingers have got a bit thinner. Anyway, despite the problem with losing my rings, and the croaky voice, I’m glad I went out. It’s such a nice atmosphere there.
When we had our bookshelves put in I could reach most of the books, now, twenty years later its much more complicated to reach the higher shelves. I can’t stand on the footstool because in not very balanced anymore. There are folding stepladders, but I need to turn them sideways and balance issues and holding on to them is the problem. My left arm shakes which makes it hard to hold on. Hubby makes it worse by not putting them back! Sometimes I can squeeze books on the lower shelves, but often they end up stacked on the floor and are then a trip hazard. There is also stuff in front of the bookcases because I can’t move it upstairs or to my studio. Life can be difficult. But I’m too attached to them to get rid of them!
Write a letter to your 100-year-old self.
Dear me
I never expected to get to 100, although I really wanted to. I enjoy being creative and learning new things. When I was young I always got bored, so I found things to do. The more I did that, the more I tried to do. Art, science, astronomy, pottery, reading. Lots of nonsensical things too.
I think using my mind is important, I hope I still have all my marbles when I reach 100. I once met a woman who was in her mid seventies and said she had no room in her brain to learn more! Why? It doesn’t make sense. Finding out new things renews me. It gives me the opportunity to understand more. I hope that me at 100 can still take in information and keep up to date with what is going on in the world.
I really wanted to see Halleys comet return. I hope future me saw it? Its on my bucket list. X
Seven years ago I created this. I can’t remember exactly how. But it just popped up on my Facebook memories. It’s definitely my style, pattern and colours. I do love the idea of creating something like this, completely abstract using some elements from nature. I don’t know if there are enough pixels to make it work as a print. I’m not sure how many dpi it is.
Small ‘Mill’ painting sold.
It was very good to hear that my small painting of Etruria Flint Mill had sold to a friend yesterday. It was another in a new style I am experimenting with. I’m using more lines and textures to emphasise the patterns in the bricks and sky and trees. The image is based on a photo of the Mill and Industrial Museum, but I added more white to give a feeling of when it was in use, and the site was dusted with the crushed bones and flints that went into Stoke-on-Trents bone China, their attempt to replicate Porcelain. The canal is brown with rusty water. If you visit Kidsgrove which is to the North of Stoke you can see the canal there is often very orange. The Trent and Mersey canal runs through the Harecastle Tunnel which is another interesting part of our industrial heritage.
I have other work for sale at Arts and Minds Gallery at Harper Street in Middleport opposite Middleport Pottery, Middleport, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire.
I’m currently watching ‘My Fair Lady’ a musical based on the story Pigmalion by George Bernard Shaw.
The story is about a flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, who is trying to improve her cockney accented voice by taking lessons from Professor Higgins. She is taken in by the Professor who says he will turn her into someone who sounds like a duchess in six months. However his methods are unfeeling and really push Eliza. The film seems to sympathise with the professor rather than Eliza.
Songs like ‘all I want is a room somewhere’, ‘the rain in spain’ and ‘I could have danced all night’.
Audrey Hepburn stars as Eliza. She was able to sing the songs but they were dubbed by a singer called Marni Nixon, whose voice is in about fifty films!
If you’ve never watched it, you may feel the ideas in it are old fashioned, but it is set in Victorian/Edwardian times. The music is amazing and energetic. Worth watching.
Where would you go on a shopping spree?
Down to the Arts and Book shop. I’d buy lots of acrylic paints, some watercolours, gouache, oil paints, felt pens, pastels, charcoal, conte crayons, pencils. Then I’d get canvases, large and small in white and black. Cartridge paper, watercolour paper, sketch pads. Glitter, metallic paper, ink, lino to cut for printing.
Science and technology books, sci-fi books, novels, biographies, autobiographical books, historic books, books about galleries, about the renaissance, about astronomy.
Then I would donate half of it to a local school or college, because I would not have space for it all, or time to use it.
A symmetrical photo created by flipping a photo upside down. The main mass of leaves is a holly bush we have grown in the garden. It’s a bit like a parasol as we have cut off a lot of the lower branches. I like how the resulting photo looks like an insect on its side. I have a brain that likes pareidolia (when you see creatures or faces in shapes). If I was to turn the photo through 90° it might look like a moth?
Mallaband-Brown