New paintings and regular art updates.
Landscape painted a couple of months ago. I may paint more in this style. I just need to get organised. Life has been hard over the last few weeks, but it must carry on (hopefully). I need to move this from one gallery to another so more people see it. X
You sit in a glass case
Short legged
Long bodied,
Tail raised
Dark and light brown stripes
Ceramic kitty
Strangely pretty!
Staring out in Saltaire
On display
To the world.
Iridescence caused by a single layer of oil spread out over water. I used to see this when I was a child on the school playground, I don’t know what had been spilt. I also remember seeing this sheen on the tarmac on roads when I was young. But now cars are less polluting the phenomenon has reduced. But obviously some cars still leak oil. Will this happen when all cars are electric? Doubtful, but who knows when that will be.
A grey day in Yorkshire. Salts Mill at Saltaire. Looking at this old mill with its huge chimney you wouldn’t think there was an amazing bookshop, a cafe and restaurant and gallery’s there with work by world famous artist David Hockney.
Saltaire is near Bradford and Leeds, it is an old area of Shipley and the mill is surrounded by small stone terraced houses that only have a main room, a kitchen and a small bedroom and bathroom. Saltaire featured in a recently updated version of the classic film the railway children.
The mill sits between the railway on one side and the canal and river on the other side if it lower down the hill. The small houses are a beautiful example of a historic area. Saltaire also holds a food festival in the summer which attracts international visitors.
I wish Stoke on Trent had the courage to create something like this from its own historic buildings. This would be a blueprint we could build on.
A painting from five years ago. I do like painting birds, particularly owls. I made a few in pottery class at school, I just like the circles of feathers round their faces that help direct sound to their ears (I might be wrong?) and do they have one ear higher than the other for the same reason. I need to find out.
Last night I went out to choir practice for the first time in several weeks. I wrote this gratitude about it when I got home. When I got there I couldn’t help crying, but a friend came over and calmed me down. We are now the mystery singers for the Christmas season so we were singing songs like Gaudete and Sweet Chiming Bells. Finally we sang While Shepherds watched their flocks by night to the tune of on Ilkley Moor Bah’tat, (although the Carol song might have come first?). By the end of the night I felt OK. So I am very glad I went.
It’s social media so I’m not sharing her whole face or naming her. But she had a good Farewell yesterday, kind words and thoughts. We seperated in late teenage hood as I left home to go to college. We went in different directions, I think she had a more romantic view of life and she had an almost fairy tale history (married with two children). I won’t talk much about her world, I don’t want to share too much personal information. We were seperated by many miles, but the bond was still there. I wish we had been closer and visited more. Bereavement is full of regret. I do regret, but I don’t feel guilty.
Some people will remember these, before huge flat screen TVs, before TV remote controls, even before colour TV. I give you the cathode ray tube, where an electron gun shot rays at a flourescing front screen in lines and the picture appeared on its surface. The ‘tube’ was a conical shape with a square flat front. It was a vacuum tube so if it broke it would implode as air got in….
People employed TV repairmen to come out if it stopped working (replacing valves or solid state electronics? I’m not sure.) Gradually things changed until TVs changed shape and now use liquid crystal displays.
When ours went on the blink we found hitting it just above the on off switch with a hairbrush got it to work. Apparently the electric connection in the switch burns away slowly so the contacts were seperated, hitting it knocked them back together. Probably not safe!
A long day, a funeral, a wake. Gentle celebration of a lost life. No awful grief, just a summing up of someone that touched many hearts. I am proud of her. I was moved and surprised by her life.
Seeing myself on the photos in tribute to her was a shock, I hadn’t been told they would be there. That touched me deeply. To know that half of me has now been seperated. I touched the coffin and said goodbye. A long day, a painful day, but a joyful day.
Leaves fall from the trees, they gradually break down and disintegrate, but their molecules are still there, they add to more life and energy, they are still part of the universe. They exist, existed, they have not exited this realm. A lot to think about. My gratitude continues as I remember sharing my life with her, my sister, my twin.
A mad idea, a curry dragon! I was just going to write about a nice curry we ate and I was looking for a photo but my finger slipped and I chose this photo instead. But a curry dragon, why not? There have been soup dragons that lived with the clangers that lived on a moon on TV in the sixties and seventies. Now I could imagine a hot fiery and spicy curry that could fly away and set fire to the table.
Mallaband-Brown