New paintings and regular art updates.
Digital drawing, done quickly after watching an art challenge programme on TV. I used ArtRage oils free app. Then I decided to write a poem to verbally illustrate it.
Sad Face
Eyes unfocused
Thinking of a sad place
Ready to weep,
Memories to keep
Warmly wrapped in love.
Sad face
Can you ever be
Happy again?
Lost in a reverie
Of memory
Sad face
Long face
Long may you seek
Peace.
If you go into Longport in the potteries (Stoke-on-Trent) and turn off the main road towards the station you will find a new artists led gallery.
The place only opened up this weekend but they have had lots of visitors and sales. There is art by a number of local fine artists for sale. I could not resist asking if I can place some work there and maybe hold an exhibition there.
The gallery is across the road from a shop called cherished chimneys which sells ornamental chimney pots, there was also a sign for a teapot exhibition on another building, and the station building at Longport is also being used as a gallery.
Despite losing City if Culture for 2021 I think artists in the area are proving just what a cultural, artistic city we are.
Well it’s a reasonable attempt at a portrait as he was moving for most of it. Bug I do think he looks like a tired Liam Neilson! We’ve been together for almost 40 years. A lifetime. We’ve both changed. Got older and creakier. I think I’m lucky being the younger one. But I do want him to stay healthy and enjoy his life. Today was his birthday so I took him out for lunch and to a garden centre. His choice of present? Compost and a brazier to burn garden rubbish in. We’ll practical at least. Tonight we might go out again, or a takeaway. Then we have a couple of other entertaining things to do later in the week.
I had the pleasure of being invited to a behind the scenes visit to our city archive today. I had been asked if I wanted to go along by a friend who is doing an art project about the pottery manufacturer.
We went up to the third floor of the city library and were shown round the back of the reception desk into the staff only section. There the city archivist showed us some of the fading pages in the ledgers. They were images of pots that various pot banks made in the history of Stoke-on-Trent.
There were pattern books for tableware and tiles ledgers with the cost of making the ware and details of workers. The old pottery firms did not collect a lot of details and a lot was thrown out when they closed down. But once we had been in the air conditioned archives we were allowed to sit and (very carefully) look at selected pattern books including prints of tiles to surround hearths, doorways and floors. Some were mundane but others were breathtaking. Art nouveau and art deco masterpieces.
I’m very pleased I was invited.
X
It’s mother’s day here on 31st of March but I won’t be celebrating it as both my mom and mother in law passed away a few years ago.
What I do have is these two paintings of them to remember them by.
They both had their troubles and difficulties but they were both strong women and I loved them both.
Instead of going to a mothers day lunch or tea I’m going to a theatrical event called Titchy theatre.
I’ve written a couple of small conversations for two or three voices and the people running the theatre event will be reading them out. The Titchy theatre started at Penkhull Mysteries but is expanding to two performances a year. People were asked to write something for the performance. If you are free on Sunday the 31st and want to come up to Penkhull Village Hall please do. Please get there for 2.30pm. The show starts at 3pm. Spaces are limited.
I just found this sketch of International Women’s Day from about a year ago. I had a stall with art for sale at Burslem school of Art. I think this was the first time I ever drew the main gallery and I also tried to draw the banner that was on display there.
The school of art is very crooked. Burslem is old and suffers from subsidence or is undermined by coal mines. The whole of the city is built on clay and coal and the coal field under the city has caused a lot of damage over the years. Parts of the city also have geologic faults running underneath them so it’s not surprising that the buildings are affected.
There is also a volcanic plug where I live, the very base of an ancient volcano that was worn away by erosion over thousands or millions of years. The hill that is left dominates the valley of the river Trent, but the ground rises in other places too. There are coal tips (slag heaps) where the spoil from the collieries was dumped as the coal was hewn from the ground.
The wonder of Pottery and artistic design was the result of the geology in Staffordshire.
I was at a meeting at the local town hall tonight and saw a huge painting (made up of four panels) by one of my favourite artists Rob Pointon.
Over the last few years he has become recognised as one of the best known artists in Stoke-on-Trent. His characteristic fish eye lens style adds animation to his colourful paintings.
Recently he has painted in towns all over the country and I think he has exhibited at the mall galleries in London.
Whatever your feelings about his art I think it adds energy and interest to the local arts scene.
X
My cat sculpture that I bought from a local blacksmith has moved since we had the shed put up. You can rest a plant pot on its tail. I love the glass eyes that she put in.
I would love to do a blacksmith workshop and learn how to do some basic twirls and twiddle.
I was so impressed by the skill of my friend. She has also got the ability to translate a 2d sketch that I did to a 3d sculpture.
Sometimes it’s nice just to take a close up abstract shot of something. Shapes become more important than detail. Tiny pink petals almost look like butterflies and the straggly money plant, which is cast in shadow, raised its bulbous leaves up to the sky. The thin pale leaves of the spider plant are almost translucent in the light.
Then again you can play about with silhouettes in nature or draw dark doodles to make a pleasing composition.
Always explore, always enjoy, always create if you can.
X
I’m really pleased I got Jupiter Blue into a local Open exhibition at the Brampton in Newcastle-under-Lyme. I’m chuffed as it’s quite a large painting and I was half expected to only get one of the other two smaller ones I had also entered but was not successful with these. They were a pastel of Sky and Land and an abstract picture entitled Druid. I think I may work further into the second of these and make it more three dimensional.
Open exhibitions are hard to get into. They are dependant on so many different things, not least whether your work fits in with the feel of an exhibition. I have more luck some days or years than others. They also depend on the number of entries. I’ve heard of some opens taking one picture from each entrant then adding additional ones if there is enough space.
Mallaband-Brown