New paintings and regular art updates.
I’ve been using the free image option here, but I think you have to be very specific about what you put in the search bar! I typed in “sore throat” and got this blue and yellow parrot! Whether it’s because they are loud are shout or squalk a lot? I don’t know!
Anyway I’m a bit under the weather, I have suddenly developed a sore throat and I’m aching. I hope it won’t last. I’ve been asleep for most of the day. Anyway that’s all I’ve got to say. Croak! My voice is very growly…
I was discussing the population explosion fears in the 1970’s with my friend Martha Kennedy here earlier on. She had written a really interesting post about her memories in the 1960’s. I’ll post a link to her post if I can.
But talking about it I remembered doing a collage with ripped up magazine pages. The Earth is at the bottom, a ribbon comes up off the Earth and has a queue or line of people moving up away into space. I can’t remember if they were heading towards the sun or the moon. I think the collage was in landscape mode but my digital canvas is orientated in portrait mode. I’m not sure whether the population had hit 4 or 6 billion… Now it’s over 8 billion. We are like a virus taking over the world….
I tried to post a link to Martha’s blog but it didn’t work sadly.
Tuesdays #bandofsketchers prompt was hold. So I did digital finger painting! I added clasped hands to an abstract background that I had already drawn in a digital app called sketchbook.
After a month of having no email I managed to restore it on my PC at the weekend. I had over 3000 emails to delete (mainly WordPress notifications!) I had also taken my phone to the phone shop again last week and the technician said he had fixed it. When it didn’t display any emails whilst I was in the shop he said not to worry, it would take 24 hours to show up? This seemed to me like I was being fobbed off, but I gave it 24, then 48 hours, and as it was a bank holiday on Monday I knew the shop would be closed it was 72 hours, and no sign of the emails!
So I decided to try and sort it out for myself. If the email wasn’t coming through the server for the phone perhaps I could get it on an app? I decided to download my email providers app and install it. Then I typed in my password and verified it through the system… And…. It worked! Now it’s working I’m trying to understand why the shop technician hadn’t done that? I will be having a word with him!
A photo of a lion at Saltaire by my friend Timothy Hargreaves.
I think I remember him telling me that the lions at Trafalgar square in London were made by the same sculptor. There are on the hill going down to the entrance of Salts Mill in Saltaire, Yorkshire, and they look extremely magnificent in the Spring sunshine. I wish we had sculptures like this nearby. It’s very impressive and I think Victorian?
Do you practice religion?
I was bought up as a Christian, and I still believe in some of the ideas behind it, kindness, helping others, charity.
But I’m not exactly religious, I think that we should love one another, turn the other cheek, try and show compassion and consideration. What missing in my world view is the need for a reward either on earth or in whatever heaven people believe in. I feel like needing that means that you are being bribed, in a way, to be good? I think people should care about everyone else. Maybe accepting a bit less if it means others can be looked after or ‘saved’. Life is hard enough without selfishness….
So my answer is that I don’t practice religion, but I try to live by some of its rules. I am as hypocritical as the next person though as I don’t follow all the ideals of Christianity. For instance there are commandments like not eating shellfish. Perhaps in the past that was more important because they might be tainted and dangerous to eat in hot weather? There are lots of other rules I don’t follow, like not eating meat on Friday. But in the end surely we must not be tied up in strange rules but consider others and show we care?
I would say I am an agnostic, not sure what I believe in, not an atheist and totally irreligious. The universe is such a vast place that something might exist. But whatever it is would be so large that I would be like a gnat to be swatted by it. But if ‘it’ is infinite, perhaps it has infinite knowledge and understanding too?
Something in my brain ‘dings’
I remember how the song ‘sings’
Music has a way of sticking
Notes together, metronome ticking.
Sound comes back as mouth opens
Words come out, with the vocals
Songs from months or years ago
We remember how they go!
From some dark corner of my mind..
My vocal chords my brain reminds
The timing, tempo, notes and all..
Into a pattern they all fall
My joy as memory keeps going
And music, memories it keeps sowing…
Do you remember life before the internet?
I do remember, but it’s a long time ago. I even remember the time before PC’s. I can remember seeing them at school just before I left. Obviously there were computers before that but they were massive things with rotating discs of tape, or before that mechanical calculators that could be used to work out enemy codes for combating attacks in war.
I think the “Internet” was invented by Sir Tim Berners-Lee. I’m not sure exactly when, but he came up with the idea of the “World Wide Net”. The idea of a Web of knowledge was often talked about in science fiction stories as I was growing up. Computers had strange names like “multivac”? They would become sentient over time and would decide to take over how humans ran the world, realising the damage we were doing. Often only being foiled in their plans by some ingenious human.
I guess what they were talking about fifty or sixty years ago is what could come from ChatGPT now. And the Internet, which could be seen as a huge web of synapses, might allow that spark of genius to ignite.
Would the Internet have emotions? Or would it rather be senseless as it has no way really to experience them. So many questions that have been investigated in the old style of science fiction stories. Not the “cowboys in space” sort, but old fashioned storytelling by people like Issac Asimov, or Arthur C. Clarke, or others of their era. Literature may have some answers for us.
I remember the time before the Internet. It was good to do adventurous things, and we had to learn things from books. Sometimes it was very boring. But I do remember the moon landings. So exciting!
Blow wind, loose seeds
Fly high over grass
Dandy lion
Mane of fluff
Lifting up
Gossamer parachute
Land and grow.
Spiky leaves
Golden flowers,
For bees to drink…
Deep tap root
Ties it down
Weed or plant?
Who cares…
New seeds
Afloat….
What are you good at?
Paintings on display yesterday.
If I had to say what I was good at number one would be painting and art. Fourth years ago I went to college to do Fine Art, then I recently completed a course in illustration.
Art makes me happy. I love to paint acrylics on canvas and also watercolours. To me art is manipulating liquids or solids on a flat or shaped surfaces. I am good at using paint, pastels, ink, wax, pencils, felt pens. I also enjoy creating images digitally. I’m lucky to have good hand eye coordination. So I can copy most things, I’m also fairly good at creating abstract images. I am very lucky to have art training. There are lots of skills that I have been privileged to learn.
Whatever I do I will always create art. It is part of my DNA I think!
Mallaband-Brown