New paintings and regular art updates.
Almost a year
Time has moved on
From when I heard
That you were gone
The Earth around the Sun
That shone
Has turned full circle
And flown on
Around the galaxy
So that now
We cannot ever
Return anon.
Still raw my thoughts
Reach back in time.
I miss you so
Hence this Bad rhyme
I hope that if you were to glance
At this mad poem
You’d laugh and prance
And tell me ‘chill!’
Take no heed
We must survive
Old life’s sad dance!
Describe your ideal week.
I would spend time at my studio at Spode, painting, or drawing. My plan is to try and go back to it. I spent a few years there, then covid happened and I lost my nerve a bit. I started to go back, but health issues cropped up. If I don’t return soon I never will, but I’ve built a wall round things in my mind. If I can’t do things properly I seem to freeze up.
My ideal week will be less stressful, full of real art, not just quick digital drawings. I would then build on it, even if I was only in my studio a couple of days a week. I would try and produce more small paintings for craft fairs, but it’s about time I started doing some ‘proper’ paintings real fine art, not craft based. I just need to get my confidence back. I have good intentions but I keep prevaricating. Maybe I can have that ideal week. It needs to be soon….
Are you holding a grudge? About?
I don’t hold a grudge, it’s too painful, and it makes no sense. If you hold a grudge who are you harming? Yourself. Painful thoughts about someone else don’t harm them, they don’t know about it, but the worm of a grudge bores inside you and makes poison in your thoughts and harms your moods.
Oh I have held grudges before now, and for a long time, but I have it up as a bad idea. Don’t hold grudges, it’s not worth it.
A real castle in Wales we visited last year. There are so many in the principality that we have visited over the years, this might be Carnarvon. This is in North West Wales but I’m not absolutely sure.
I posted this because it’s a substantial castle, mostly in ruins, a lot of them were built by English King’s to control Wales. This is why the English monarchy has a Prince of Wales who is usually the monarchs son. I’d love to go back.
Bees and hover flies pollenating the flowers, I don’t get out to deadhead them so they are going over (dying back) sooner than usual, but they are still joyously beautiful.
I didn’t realise how much the back yard meant to me ubtil this period of isolation. But I just have to look out of the back door and I see this glorious view. I haven’t taken any recent photos so I must get some before it’s too late. Have a lovely September.
Share a story about the furthest you’ve ever traveled from home.
I went on a wine tasting weekend once. I was on a coach trip and we visited some wineries in the Rhine region. I bought a few bottles of the lovely ‘qualitats wine mit pradicat’ I think that’s how it’s written.
We visited during a holiday weekend so some shops were shut, but everyone we met was friendly. I tried to ask for aspirin for my cold (which made wine tasting difficult). But I said ‘haben du asperin bitte’ and was told I should have said ‘ haben sie’ because ‘du’ is too familiar and only used with close family and friends?
We saw the Rhine and I think a statue of the Rhine maidens from a bridge over the river gorge. We visited a cuckoo clock shop. It was early autumn and the mornings were frosty. Tiny villages clung to the sides of steep hills above the river. It was lovely.
Acrylic on canvas. Devon beach and rocks on an overcast day. I think its near Plymouth, but the painting is probably 20 years old.
The rocks on this part of the coast are dark and craggy. The water makes them darker, with a slight glint to them. They form layers that slope down into the water and there are plenty of rock pools with barnacles and limpets. There might be small crabs lurking under seaweed in them. Between the rocks the sand is sandy coloured (goldish grey). With flat flakes of rock and stones and pebbles in discreet lines rolled into place by the tides. There are also strands of seaweed left at high tide where sand flies and sand hoppers dwell.
All this rembered because I painted the view.
I took this photo of an old door at Spode pottery five years ago. I guess you could call it shabby. I would not have seen it but there was some work going on at the main entrance to Spode studios so we had to use a side entrance.
I only found this again because of the marvellous Facebook memories. I don’t know how many hundreds or thousands of photos I’ve taken since this, but not that many get put online, so this one must have felt special to me.
I think this might have been a pottery mould store, there was a collection of several thousand old pottery moulds that were a historical record of the shapes of the ceramics Spode used to make. Unfortunately I think they were destroyed a couple of years ago because they were not going to be used again. I think that sort of destruction is unforgivable.
Little bridge over a rocky chasm, (a small split in the rocks), another feature at Biddulph Grange. I’d forgotten this photo. I think we walked over the bridge, but to be honest I can’t remember. It seems to teeter over the gap, and I get vertigo, so maybe not! The approach up to it isn’t fenced in, so I’d be nervous just walking up to it…
What brings a tear of joy to your eye?
Christmas carols bring tears to my eyes. I can’t explain why. Some affect me more than others. Hark the Herald Angels sing, oh come all ye faithful and oh little town of Bethlehem particularly. Choral music especially when it’s in close harmony is wonderful.
I think its from hearing them in childhood, their sentiment stuck with me. That gentle music touched me. Sung at school and church. The music raises my spirits.
I know that when I hear the Christmas service of nine lessons and carols on the radio I have to stop and listen to the beautiful sweet voices singing wonderfully. I love going Carol singing with friends and that can make me feel teary. I can’t really say any more than that.
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