New paintings and regular art updates.
And then I paint planets too!
Acrylic on canvas, I’m interested in astronomy and this view of the Earth was taken from a photo. It shows parts of Africa, Greenland, Europe and the Americas. I think you can see the wind directions indicated by the clouds.
I’ve also painted views of the Moon, Jupiter and Mars, together with nebulae and galaxies. It may be something I do again.
In 2016, nine years after the Leopard murals, I was asked to do a series of illustrations for a leaflet about the Trent and Mersey canal and the Cauldon canal. This is of James Brindley taking measurements for the canal navigation. The image was painted in acrylics on water colour paper and was one of several paintings including Middleport pottery and the Kidsgrove canal tunnel. The leaflet was published. I don’t know if they did more than one set.
Another of my murals, four gentlemen meet to discuss the building of the Trent and Mersey canal. They included Josiah Wedgwood and James Brindley. They were said to have met in the back room of the Leopard Hotel in Burslem.
This image was found on a ghost hunter website. I didn’t give my permission for him to use it, but I guess I can’t complain because it means I now have a record of it. I will keep looking for more.
She stands in front of her cottage. Molly Leigh, the Burslem witch. Notorious and buried in the local churchyard at 90° to the other burials. The painting is based on a peasant woman painting by Theodore Gericault.
This was one of my murals in the Leopard Hotel in Burslem. The pub burnt down at the weekend. I am bereft. I am trying to pass on my memories to keep a feeling of what it was. I painted these on the walls. Emulsion on lining paper directly onto the wall. I’ve had a few comments that they could have been taken down. I don’t think people understand what a mural is.
As I get older I realise I can’t go back in time. Entropy, the movement of things from order to disorder. Things break down. Chaos increases. Things burn down. Look at the dinosaurs, they dissappeared. The Burslem Leopard Hotel is now extinct. My time there is lost.
Stop feeling sorry for myself.
Accept its happened.
Have time to mourn.
Try and recover.
It’s only a building,
Sadness,
X
In 2006 to 2007 I painted a series of twelve murals at the Leopard Hotel in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent. Recently the pub has been closed down after the previous owner left.
I was asked by the owners Neil Crisp and Neil Cox to do a series of Murals based on the history of Burslem. I painted the Burslem riot scene whose characters included local residents and pub staff, a murder scene of a woman said to have been killed there, a pottery worker at the end or start of her shift. I also painted ‘the Leopardess’ one of the original owners, a picture of Molly Leigh, the Burslem witch, pottery owner Josiah Wedgwood, and three of his friends discussing the building of the Trent and Mersey canal. Also Arthur Berry, famous artist and my tutor at college. Walter a pub regular who had drunk there since his youth. A Clarice Cliff design called Umbrellas, and a painting of the Burslem Angel that stands in top of the old town Hall. I also designed and painted a design for a coat of arms for the hotel.
I always wanted some decent photos of the murals but only have a few pictures. The lighting was not very good in the Arnold Bennett suite. They at least are some memories I have.
The pub was renowned for being haunted and regular ghost tours of the empty hotel rooms attracted a lot of attention. It was even featured in ‘Britains most haunted’ a TV show.
It was a couple of years ago that it closed. Covid didn’t help. I was sad to see it shut but it sounded like they had someone interested in getting it going again.
Over the last few days a report came out that it had been broken into and someone had been arrested ror growing cannabis in there.
Now? Who knows. Apparently three people have been arrested for setting fire to it? Whatever happens its so sad. I guess it will be unrecoverable, destroyed. Part of my life has gone with it.
I added my easle yesterday. Today I’m showing you my easle two years ago, I did a painting of Etruria Flint Mill. It’s also called Jessie Shirley’s Bone and Flint mill I think? It’s the only working Steam driven Flint mill in the country and the flints and bone were crushed and ground using the power of the steam driven beam engine there.
The buildings are part of Etruria Industrial Museum, a complex of cafe, the museum displays, and the Flint mill on the Trent and Mersey and Cauldon Canals at Etruria, Stoke on Trent. I’m not sure of its opening times. But once a month it used to be fired up and you could watch the fly wheel rotating round and the pans where the flints were ground rumbling as the engine turns them. Its amazing to see the industrial archeology of the potteries in action.
They ask
‘what’s on the easle?’.
I say
‘a lot of stuff’
Tissues and a coffee cup
And other sorts of muck
A drawing of a dragon
A pallette and a brush
A green painted canvas
If you really want to look….
I ought to be painting
But there’s been a delay
My minds gone off the boil now
It’s not coming out to play…
One day I’ll get my mojo back
I’ll start to paint again
But till that day my easle
Is a place to rest my brain!
I once swam with a wild dolphin, we’d been driving round Devon and came back to the seaside to find a crowd of people on the beach and a group in wetsuits about fifty yards out. They were all excited and we saw a pod of dolphins swimming away. But one stayed in the bay. I decided I would swim out a bit and got in the sea fully clothed minus my shoes and glasses. My hubby stayed on the beach. The dolphin swam backwards and forwards between the two groups of people. Because I was in the middle he ket swimming close to me. It was fascinating. He kept coming past me and I noticed large wounds on his sides. It was after half an hour of being near him that I saw he was male! I can only say that it was quite alarming and not at all spiritual!. The next day there was a sign up about him at the camp site. He was called Georges and he was an adolescent male. His scars were because he would get too close to boat propelers. It also said not to breathe near them as they can transmit airborne diseases from their blowholes.
When I got home I did an imagined portrait of him but unfortunately the painting is at my sisters otherwise I would share a photo of him leaping through the waves. X
I saw this film late last night and was enthralled by it. Each individual frame is hand painted in Van Gogh’s style. The son of the postmaster where Van Gogh used to live goes off to try and deliver a letter from Vincent to his brother Theo, after his death. When he finds the brother is also dead he decides to take the letter to the Doctor who was treating Van Gogh before his apparent suicide.
The film covers the year after Van Gogh’s death and shows in black and white flash backs incidents that might have happened between Vincent and the people around him. This is told through a series of conversations between the postmaster son and various characters.
This is a visually sumptuous film in Van Gogh’s style. The Polish/British co-production is stunning and intriguing. The gradual understanding of what happened makes for a satisfying investigation of the circumstances surrounding his death.
Release date: 2017 (United Kingdom)Directors: Dorota Kobiela, Hugh WelchmanMusic by: Clint MansellBox office: 42.1 million USDAwards: European Film Award for Best Animated Feature Film,
Mallaband-Brown