The Leopard

Posted on January 8, 2025January 8, 2025 Posted in Fine Art, Memories, UncategorizedTagged Burslem, Gone, Memory, Murals, Public house, Sadness, Staffordshire, Stoke-on trent, The Leopard HotelLeave a comment

My friend sent me this photo (I don’t have an attribution for it). This was a few year’s ago when it was open and the Leopard Hotel was running ghost tours and serving lovely food.

Then one of the owners died and it was taken over by a family member. I don’t know what happened but I think Covid didn’t help. In the end it closed and the owner moved elsewhere. Although the frontage looked OK it needed a tremendous amount of money spending on it as it was partly derelict in the back upper floors.

The hotel stood empty for months, it was bought by an entrepreneur who may have been going to turn it into flats. Unfortunately someone got in and apparently set up a cannabis farm in it (what I heard). Then it simply burnt down. Some of the frontage may remain but the place is boarded up.

I was involved for a while because I painted the murals in the back room, the Arnold Bennett Suite. I never got decent photos in there. I do hope it can be restored.

Distracted

Posted on January 5, 2025 Posted in Fine Art, Memories, UncategorizedTagged Art, bills, Chair, Darkness, Life, Mug, Painting, Teapot, Thinking, TV remotes, WinterLeave a comment

Things have got in the way and I have hit a block with my painting of a teapot. I mean both physically and mentally.

You can see some of what is obstructing it. I need to move things, it’s just that I am mentally stuck. I think its the low light levels as this seems to get me every year. One day soon I hope have this finished.

Butterflied

Posted on December 30, 2024 Posted in Fine Art, UncategorizedTagged Art, Black, Blue, Butterfly, Design, Fine Art, incollage, Photodirector, Photography, White3 Comments

Playing with collage and filters.

It started out as a photo taken through my bedroom window, as I shake I got interesting trails of light. Then by putting the photo through the same filter 3 times I got this laminated effect.

I like the simple colours, black, white and blue. I think the pattern I created looks like a butterfly. I also think it looks a bit like an xray..

Sketchbook

Posted on December 28, 2024 Posted in Fine Art, Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, coherent, Drawing, Life, Parkinsons, Sketching, Time, tremors, understanding myself6 Comments

I need to draw again, but with my Parkinsons it’s so hit and miss. I need to be still enough to stop the tremors transfering onto the pages. Either my drawing hand shakes or the hand holding the Sketchbook shakes, it’s like being a human seismograph! If I had the gumption I would use it to my artistic advantage. I’ve never wanted so much to colour outside the lines but in a coherent, not random way. My life needs to settle down so my mind can too.

Cadmium colours

Posted on December 28, 2024December 28, 2024 Posted in Fine Art, Memories, UncategorizedTagged 1980's, Cadmium, Colours, Fine Art, heavy metals, Orange, Pallette, purifying colours, Red, Yellow4 Comments

In the 1980’s My hubby worked for a few years in a cadmium colour factory, they processed the raw pigments to get colours from pale yellow, through orange to red and deep matoon red. He bought me jars and jars (empty coffee jars) of the colours home, but as they are made of a heavy metal I decided to give them to a friend who knew how to use them and grind her own oil paint.

I don’t know if he was allowed to bring them but I think he knew I would love the colours and I did. They were the purest colours I had ever seen. To quote Rudolphs song “you could almost say they glowed”. As Cadmium is similar to Lead though, I decided not to use them.

Cat sculpture

Posted on December 26, 2024 Posted in Cat, Fine Art, UncategorizedTagged Cat, Christmas present, Fine Art, friend made, Handmade, twisted wire, wire sculptureLeave a comment

It’s a bit of a dark photo because it’s so grey at the moment, but this is a twisted wire cat my friend Steph made recently. I treated myself to it as an early Christmas present. I need to have a clear out so I can display it properly. I’m thinking it needs to go on a windowledge. Got to ponder these things. Happy Boxing Day folks X

Canada geese mural

Posted on December 15, 2024 Posted in Fine Art, Memories, UncategorizedTagged Art, Canada geese, Design, Five years ago, Lake, Life, Memories, mural painting, Reeds, Water, Water fowlLeave a comment

From about 5 years ago, a mural I painted in a friends downstairs cloakroom. I remember it took me several days and I was driving home quite a distance each evening. I wish I could still do this sort of thing. I’d previously done murals for my friends in their old house. They included the words life, love, laugh in their living room, Mr incredible, batman, superman and spiderman in their sons bedroom and a Laura Ashley floral pattern blown up and painted in pale green on their bathroom wall. I’m glad the geese turned up on my Facebook memories, it reminded me of all the lovely things I painted for my friends.

Spark plug machine

Posted on December 7, 2024 Posted in Fine Art, Memories, UncategorizedTagged Am dram, amateur dramatics, flats, Oliver Lodge, Painting, penkhull mystery plays, Scenery, sets, spark plugLeave a comment

Memory of a prop for the Penkhull Mystery Plays, I think this was a couple of years before covid?

The inventor of the spark plug, Oliver Lodge, lived in Penkhull and there are two local streets named after him, Oliver and Lodge Roads.

I can’t remember exactly what happened in the show but we had to try and make this pretend engine start with a starting handle and inserting a spark plug into the top of the engine.

I do think the prop and scenery people were fantastic. I got to paint some of it and make some of it but there was a great team of volunteers including making things from willow and papier mache, seamstress and stitches and making towers and buildings from bits of two by four and 8ft x 4ft flats of hardboard.

Hopefully the Mystery Plays will return in the summer of 2025.

Lands end

Posted on December 6, 2024 Posted in Fine Art, Memories, UncategorizedTagged Coast, Cornwall, Fine Art, Lands End, Oil painting, Postcard, southwest, st Ives, Visiting, WestLeave a comment

I still like this old oil painting I did of lands end twenty or more years ago. I actually painted it from a postcard. Lands End is at the furthest west part of Cornwall which is in turn the furthest west county of England.

We tried to go to Lands End on day trip while on a holiday once, but we couldn’t afford the entrance fee (I have no idea how much it costs now). So we ended up going down into Sennen cove slightly North of it. That was lovely, we found a great gift shop that was seriously tempting.

I think we were stopping at St Ives for a week, and visited the Tate gallery there. We also drove round to Penzance which was on the southern coast. I wish I could remember more about it. That’s the trouble when you only go somewhere once, long ago, memory fades.

View from Cheddleton

Posted on December 5, 2024 Posted in Fine Art, Memories, UncategorizedTagged Cheddleton, Churnet valley railway, Froghall wharf, Internet, Leek, Life, Restoration, Station, Train2 Comments

Watercolour I did several years ago at the end of Cheddleton Station platform looking towards (eventually) Froghall wharf.

In the other direction the train line extends half a mile or so before ending abruptly neat the Cheddleton to Leek main road. The train line itself used to continue to Leek before travelling on to Stoke-on-Trent.

The line is starting to be rebuilt towards Leek! It’s exciting news that has been long awaited.

To find out more look up the Churnet Valley railway on the Internet.

Mallaband-Brown

Category: Fine Art