New paintings and regular art updates.
Cat next to a box of my minature paintings that I did a few years ago. He’s come in from the cold. He knocked the cat flap door off again (his tummy is too big for it sometimes). He’s not exactly fat, just big, huge, massive! You can see he’s at least as big as the box. He takes up most of a seat on our three seater settee. He is a handsome cat, with golden, yellow eyes. Such a cool character.
My hubby was brought up on farms and remembers the byres and barns of Yorkshire and Lancashire. His childhood was spent between going to school and working on farms in the summer holidays. When he was old enough he would even drive tractors. His father was a farm labourer and went from farm to farm following the seasonal work. Sometimes hubby fed cattle, other times he helped plough or harvest crops. They even raised day old chick’s in the attic of their house.
It sounds like a hard life, but an interesting one. He did this drawing of a tractor a few years ago. There are ducks, lambs and yes that’s meant to be a cow. X
I’m not sure what is going on, but I’ve had a lot of views on my account. No extra likes or comments than normal. It seems strange. I don’t mind but it’s just odd. Should I be bothered?
Well I think whoever is viewing my blog isn’t that interested in it if its just one person. So that makes me question its content. Maybe I should try and work out if there are any improvements I could make?
I don’t know if I should question things like this. Maybe I’m oversensitive. I know I think too much. What do you think?
A banner for one of our Penkhull Mystery Plays. We hold them most summers and the one this was painted for was about the pottery industry and its history. This banner was based on the willow pattern famous in the potteries. Spode was one of the factories that made plates and pots with this design, but if you Google ‘willow pattern’ you can find lots of images from many manufacturers.
Blue acrylic paint on a canvas cloth. It took me a while to paint. I also painted the local church and methodist Hall as they would have appeared in the late 19th and early 20th century.
In 2016, nine years after the Leopard murals, I was asked to do a series of illustrations for a leaflet about the Trent and Mersey canal and the Cauldon canal. This is of James Brindley taking measurements for the canal navigation. The image was painted in acrylics on water colour paper and was one of several paintings including Middleport pottery and the Kidsgrove canal tunnel. The leaflet was published. I don’t know if they did more than one set.
She stands in front of her cottage. Molly Leigh, the Burslem witch. Notorious and buried in the local churchyard at 90° to the other burials. The painting is based on a peasant woman painting by Theodore Gericault.
This was one of my murals in the Leopard Hotel in Burslem. The pub burnt down at the weekend. I am bereft. I am trying to pass on my memories to keep a feeling of what it was. I painted these on the walls. Emulsion on lining paper directly onto the wall. I’ve had a few comments that they could have been taken down. I don’t think people understand what a mural is.
Pandemic=lockdowns=not going out=buying online.
But if you wear a mask and social distance, you could go into local shops. You could spend money at places that are hitting brick walls when it comes to trading and selling. Local shops bring trade into towns and cities. Money spent there is shared round the local community and can be reinvested. You can spend online but that money just goes to massive industries and into the back pockets of billionaires.
Think first, buy local if you can or buy from independent makers. X
Rough,
Tired,
Aches and and pains,
Sleepy,
grabbed by gravity,
sunk,
coughing,
sneezing,
snotty,
did I say tired?
Just a cold,
nothing to see here.
Going to sleep.
Counting sheep.
I added my easle yesterday. Today I’m showing you my easle two years ago, I did a painting of Etruria Flint Mill. It’s also called Jessie Shirley’s Bone and Flint mill I think? It’s the only working Steam driven Flint mill in the country and the flints and bone were crushed and ground using the power of the steam driven beam engine there.
The buildings are part of Etruria Industrial Museum, a complex of cafe, the museum displays, and the Flint mill on the Trent and Mersey and Cauldon Canals at Etruria, Stoke on Trent. I’m not sure of its opening times. But once a month it used to be fired up and you could watch the fly wheel rotating round and the pans where the flints were ground rumbling as the engine turns them. Its amazing to see the industrial archeology of the potteries in action.
My hubby has caught my cold bug (not Covid) now he feels like I have been feeling all week. He’s been sneezing a lot and apart from coming downstairs for food etc he’s spent the day in bed reading books. I hope he throws it off quickly. He doesn’t usually get ill but because we have been dodging viruses for the last two years I guess our immunity to the common cold has diminished.
Meanwhile I’ve had messages on other social media blaming masks for Covid! I replied that I guessed I’d never agree with the person and pointed out that before the pandemic surgeons, doctors, nurses and dentists wore normal surgical masks. If they don’t stop viruses or bacteria why wear them. Plus the person said CO2 would build up and Oxygen can’t get through a mask! I think O2 is a smaller molecule than CO2 so it’s More likely to get through (and FAR SMALLER than a virus particle). But logic and science does not seem to satisfy these people.
Mallaband-Brown