New paintings and regular art updates.
At the opticians. Your head is too big for your frames. What? They no longer make frames in your size. So all the frames in my size you have on display are no longer available? Yes, your size is 71 or above so the centre of your lenses will line up with your pupils. But average heads are 70 or less. So we haven’t got any in your size. Why? Because of Brexit! They are only manufacturing average sizes at the moment!
I’m not happy. Got to go back in a week to see if they can source some frames.
Thank you to everyone who came to the exhibition. I think people enjoyed it. I will be putting up more photos if I get some. These are quick snaps but I’ve included all the paintings. The people at Centre Space gallery, Darren and Sarah, could not be more helpful. If there was a trip advisor for galleries (maybe there is) I would recommend them.
If you would like to see it it’s on till Sunday from 10.30am to 4.00pm at the Centre Space gallery, at Spode Site, Eleanora street, Stoke, Stoke-on-Trent, ST4 1QQ.
It struck me that my writing is as mixed up as my painting and art. I’m interested in poetry and short stories, documenting life and writing about esoteric stuff like why the earth isn’t flat.
I sometimes ramble on around similar subjects, then get bored and throw something else into the mix – like writing about bread making, or my cats and garden.
I have a lot of thoughts flowing round in my head. I didn’t ask for them to be there. I’m irritated when Sci-fi shows have sound in the vacuum of space, or someone tells a lie about something that is clearly not true.
I was talking to my hubby about this earlier. I do not want to be different, I was going to write “normal” but perhaps I am. Maybe writers are those people that stick to a specific narrative or genre? Or maybe not. I know I don’t do much research about things, most of my writing is imagined or recollected from books and TV programmes.
I started out thinking it would be purely an art blog, a way of selling my paintings, but it’s morphed. I write mors here than anywhere else and I hope it doesn’t get snatched away. I never check how much content I’m creating. It just flows….. And I was once asked why I don’t have adverts… I don’t like them! I keep seeing photos of lemons, or some green gunk that clears up skin problems…. No, sorry, I’m not happy to sell it….
Well, that was a day I stood in a local election. I didn’t win.
I walked around about half the ward today. I talked to lots of people. I had some good responses but I was not well known so I understand why I didn’t get the vote. I will have to try and help more there perhaps. At the moment my knees and ankles are aching so much I can’t move. I wanted to help. I hope the person they selected is able to help.
Must sleep
Wasp! I’ve stood on one and been stung before now. I don’t like them but I can live with them, except when they built a nest in between some bricks and started coming out into the kitchen when they emerged. I got up one morning and there were a few wasps flying round the kitchen. Two many to catch and I didn’t have any fly spray so I had to hoover them up in the vacuum cleaner. I felt guilty about it. Then over the next week we had more every morning. I had to book pest control in the end.
Now years later I just had a huge wasp fly into the living room. It must have come in from the garden when my partner went outside.
The cats ears pricked up and he started looking up and jumping onto cupboards to try and catch it. I don’t think chewed wasp would be good for him. Then it flew onto the window behind a net curtain.
I shouted my partner as I could not reach. A plastic tub and a magazine were used to trap it, now its free flying around outside.
Phew! Strange how insects can be so upsetting. Wasps are useful for eating pests and pollenation. And thankfully I didn’t have to vacuum it up!
X
I came downstairs about an hour ago and the sweet, loud, melodious song of birds was filling the air. At this time of year in the spring it seems louder and more beautiful than ever. Fizzing through the air like ripe electricity. A great pleasure to listen to.
Then cutting through it the insistent alarm call, not of a blackbird, but a ruddy car alarm! The bird song quietened for about five minutes, a car engine started up in the street, and traffic noise commenced. But soaring high above it the melodies of a Blackbird and its mate have resumed. Liquid notes rising and falling in complicated trills… And that ruddy car alarm again!
I took these photos within minutes of each other. This is my painting chair where I prop up my canvases while painting at home. I’m between paintings at the moment so the cats often sit on it. The house is full of “stuff” that Mey or may not be used as subject matter. Hence this poem!
Cats and clutter, clutter and cats.
Do the two go together
Like mittens and bats?
Like bread and butter
Like lamb and spring
Grapes and wine
Cheese and bread?
We all live differently
Each to his own
Cats and clutter are in my home!
There’s a lump of stuff like blancmange or jelly inside my head, your head, and anyone who has lived on the planet.
This soggy lump controls your life, your heart, your breathing, movement, and other functions.
It also helps control the world, either personally or by electing or following what other brains think. No telepathy exists, so we only know what a brain is thinking by communication on TV, with books, in newspapers, social media and miriad ways of talking.
My pink jelly brain is mostly water. It’s surrounded by layers of protection to stop it being damaged. The pia mater and dura mater are two of these layers. It’s split into a hind brain, the most primitive part, the mid brain and two halves split between the right and left hemispheres that make up the main part of the brain. It is supplied by a ring of arteries and veins and oxygen and fluid pass from these into the brain through the blood brain barrier. Veins take away waste products back to the heart and lungs and lymphatic system.
Your brain is a tangle of synapses and neurones, nerve cells that use electrical signals to make your body move, allow you to see, talk, feel, eat. Control subconscious activities, control your organs and muscles (although research has shown that the gastric system including the stomach has its own system of nerves equivalent to the brain capacity of a rabbit).
Brains are weird. The left side of your brain controls the right side of your head and body, and vice versa. By the time you notice something has happened, it’s too late to do anything so your brain has to be able to react or predict what is happening before you even realise it.
This pinkish yellowish lump has taken us under the sea or to the top of everest. It has allowed us to go to the Moon, send probes to Mars and the planets and explore the universe with immense telescopes. It has also let us build microscopes to see microbes and even Atoms. It has even given us the skills to build machines to see inside our own brains!
Pink blobs rule! Let us just hope that people start to use them to try and bring peace and sense to the world.
X
Apparently its 30 years since Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide Web. The Internet had pre existed the Web.
A light from the sky settled gently on to the field at the back of the housing estate. The sound was muted. No one would have heard it if they had been more than 50 metres away.
But on that night Sam had been looking up at the sky from a corner of the field on the local footpath. She had been struck by the beauty of the Milky Way and the clarity of the night on this chilly evening. She had been about to leave when she saw the light from the corner of her eye. A meteor? Too slow. A plane? The flashing lights were not there, just one spotlight. A helicopter? No sound …. She stood still as it landed. The classic ufo shape that she had seen on many old black and white films.
She was surprised at how calm she felt. She didn’t know whether to move toward the object or run away. Finally she noticed a yellow ramp with steps lowering down to the ground.
Why not be the first? Why not make contact? She walked slowly up the slope of the field and came to the base of the steps……
Mallaband-Brown