Joint challenge.

During lock down last year, members of the Orme Art Group collaborated in recreating this Cezanne still life. We took a square each and copied what we saw in whatever medium we liked. Some of the images were smaller or larger than others so when the picture was put together not everything lined up. Also the colours vary because each artist was working to their own image colour settings. I think the resulting collage is rather good. We did several separate challenges like this over covid.

Town

Today’s #bandofsketchers prompt was town. Well, as I haven’t been out much I decided to imagine a town scape. It’s on a river and is hilly, so the main buildings are on a high street backing on to the river and the smaller buildings and houses are on the sides of the tree lined hills. Fine line pen with felt pen drawing over the top.

Clearing memories

WordPress keeps telling me my phone is full. I know! I keep trying to delete photos but it’s almost impossible. There are thousands of them. There’s lots of other things, I am not sure of half of what’s on here….

So I think I will have to buy more memory. Its funny how real memories are subsumed into a digital memory. If you don’t have a photo of it, it didn’t happen? Case in point, the recent death and funeral of the Queen. People have always recorded their lives throughout the ages, for example look at cave paintings. Then art throughout the ages, paintings for people who could pay, or sketches by people who had the means or ability to draw or paint. Then deguerreotypes (not sure of the spelling) became popular, painted portraits turned into slow motion photos that took time to take and heads had to be clamped in place to get a clear image. Box brownies, single lens reflex, eventually digital cameras, then phones which took a few photos. Now, the mobile phone is a hand held computer… But it still gets full.

The human mind can hold more information, but it’s not stored in a logical order. Links from the past suddenly reach out and grab your attention. Clearing a human brain of memory is not a good thing, and unless it happens through illness, age or injury, causing degradation of the brain structure, it is to be hoped that people can build memories (good or bad?), not lose them.

Wall at Harper St

On Saturday 24th September 2022, Art and Minds, a new gallery at unit 3 Harper Street, Middleport, will be opening to the public. It is also going to offer support to service men and women.

I was pleased to be offered some wall space there and have five small paintings that will be on display there including paintings of poppies (for remembrance) and two relating to industrial archaeology.

The gallery is in amongst a group of shop units and the Harper Street entrance is directly opposite the entrance of the Middleport pottery in Middleport, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire. If you are visiting there why not pop across the road and come and look at the new shops there. X