New paintings and regular art updates.
Humid but no rain sadly. The air is sticky with moisture. The storms we have been promised haven’t materialised. We got out and walked round Trentham lake because our neighbours are doing building work and digging up the land next to our garden. This was despite my back hurting as I got in the car. But I think the walk has helped. We managed to get round slowly and the breeze off the lake has helped. It’s still humid but I do feel better.
Chatting with hubby after watching a programme about how the solar system formed and that Jupiter might have migrated inwards towards the sun only to be stopped by Saturn’s gravity causing it to take a grand tack like in sailing back out to its current position. They also talked a out Neptune and Uranus being formed closer to the Sun but being pushed out by Jupiter and maybe another unknown gas or ice giant being flung out of the Solar system entirely. Hubby said this if course discounts the fact that the Solar system could have been created in the current state by God! The thought that he thinks this surprised me! If the Universe is random how can we think (or prove) anything like that? I’m was a bit nonplussed. I think about infinity a lot. If there is a God and it is infinite would it be outside the universe or would it be the Universe with the objects in it being like how atoms relate to us? Some very strange ideas. One for a philosopher not me!
My mind was occupied by various things today. Mostly pain from Sciatica or something similar. I tried doing yoga in bed a few nights ago and pulled something in my lower back so I’ve been trying to rest it and it has got a little bit better. I did go to choir but wasn’t happy standing up to sing. Very annoying. Any art on the way? No just trying to delete some photos as my phone is 90% full!
It might rain today, but most of England is parched. The south east, south midlands, and eastern counties look dry and brown from satellite images. We are in the same heatwave that has affected the rest of western Europe. Forecasts say the weather is due to break soon. But with thundery showers due there is not the persistent rain for many days that would replenish the ground water and because the soil is so hard and dry it is compacted and heavy rain could cause flash flooding…. Oh well, Brits always discuss the weather!
The Leopardess at the Leopard Hotel in Burslem. She was supposed to be a mixed race woman that married the owner of the hotel and came to England to run it. I was told several tales by the landlords of the Leopard while I was painting murals there and I really wish I had written them down. But you know what it’s like. You are standing on top of a set of stepladders and chatting while you paint. You have ideas for each mural and have to fit in with what the owners want you to paint. Sometimes I was in the Arnold Bennett suite on my own for hours (I’d go up after work), listening to old creaking timbers and odd noises. It could be spooky in there. My memory isn’t what it was.
Sitting around being bored. Shops shut, nowhere to go. Listening to the radio, parents doing the washing in a boiler and a spin drier in the kitchen. Steam coming up and then patterns in the water as the spindryer vibrated the bowl that caught the water. No fridge, just a cold pantry, food was usually bacon and eggs for breakfast and tinned peaches and evaporated milk with sliced bread and butter at teatime. It was always the same. Things did change, life got more interesting, but only when my parents got transport, which was two small motorbikes. Memories are strange, they suddenly appear, then what do you do.
Today’s #bandofsketchers prompt was skyline. I’ve been trying to see the perseid meteor shower that is currently happening but the moon has been too bright and has drowned things out with its light. I was hoping to see something because it’s been warm enough to stand outside late at night.. Felt pen drawing filtered in Photodirector.
Pressures dropping
Rain may be due
Summer heat
Might just be through?
For now at least
We may be released
From burning temperatures
That decline,
and overtures
Of sudden storms
Or cloudy skies
Showers at last
May soon come fast!
Lightening and thunder
And watery wonder.
Till parched and dry
Is green and spry
Again…
Still proud of this mural that I painted in the Leopard Hotel in Burslem in about 2006 or 2007. The hotel burnt down earlier this year ans all my murals were destroyed. Someone asked if the murals had been removed from the building? No they were painted directly onto the wall with emulsion paint. These were some of my favourite works and I was devastated when they went up in smoke. The root crowd included local people and staff of the Leopard Hotel plus my hubby. A lady called Margaret Moxom used an image of it for her book. The riot was in 1842 and a man was shit dead during it.
I’m in another group of artists who come u with challenges to post to every week. The pictures don’t have to be recent (thankfully). This was for #safari, I painted it about four years ago and it went to the local ‘Lions’ club which is a local charity. What else can I say? It’s acrylic on canvas, about A4 size. I don’t paint every single hair or piece of fur, but I try and get an impression of how the animal looks. I generally do cat and dog portraits but am not too bad at most animals x
Mallaband-Brown