Early Autumn

The trees are starting to get brown. It’s August, it’s mid summer but it’s too hot. In some places there has been no rain for two months. We have had temperatures over 30°C for most of June, July and now August. Feilds are yellow, crops are failing. Cattle don’t have enough feed. Milk production is down.

There have been lots of grass fires and some forest fires, but today several houses in different towns were burnt to the ground. Even in the North of this city.

So Autumn of Climate change? Big business wants us to drill but it’s more like burn baby burn…..

There’s a meme going round which is something like “is this the coolest summer you will ever remember?” perhaps we will look back and wish we had listened to scientists and tried to do something about it?

Wildfires

At the moment there are 19 active wildfires in the UK. They have been caused by three successive heatwaves in the UK since May.

Moorland near Glossop in Derbyshire is on fire. There is another caused by kids setting off fireworks I think. Their friend had drowned in a lake after getting into difficulties, and the idea was to remember him?

Also a forest fire in Conwy, Wales. A fire on Saddleworth Moor near Rochdale. Another on the Hampshire-Surrey border.

There are more massive fires in Southern Spain where several people have been killed or injured, and also in France and Greece.

So those climate change deniers have a lot to answer for.

Fire

Today I painted a fire for the play Who is Molly Leigh…. Not the fire surround or the hearth, or the objects around it, but a piece of cardboard with a brick chimney backing  painted on it and a coal fire burning strongly in the grate.

I asked another maker what she thought and she felt the flames should be more yellow and red, but the photo I worked from showed bright white flames surrounded by glowing yellow, orange, and red. It’s funny how people’s imaginations have stereotypical ideas of how things should look. I really enjoyed adding bright colours in between the coals to make it look really hot.

Air

Blurry photo of my painting Air, part of four images including Earth, Water and Fire. I imagined the spirit of Air, rather like the faces of cherubs with puffed out cheeks blowing storms across ancient mariners maps the yellow and orange at the top is the sun being hidden behind clouds. I like the cheeky and mischievous face that stares out of the painting. It’s probably a little anachronistic, almost Victorian in style, but it’s a semi abstract acrylic on canvas. I just wish I’d taken a better photo. It is for sale.

Air

A painting from a few years ago, a bit burry with camera shake. It’s one of four I did to represent Earth, Air, Fire and Water. It was a series I really enjoyed. Working with the flow of paint, allowing my imagination free rein. It’s acrylic on canvas. Two of the set had already been sold and I was thinking of painting replacement images. I wish I had, I’m not sure I ever will. X