New paintings and regular art updates.
As the sun set the clouds rolled in
Underlit by red sunlight
Boiling like a pot of shrimp?
But really calmly moving.
The nights are lengthening
Sunset comes earlier
Darkness encompasses us
I yearn for spring.
When the sun starts to return.
My hanging baskets are surviving cold conditions. I thought I would play with a photo to make an interesting pattern. I didn’t realise it would end up so complex.
What’s something you would attempt if you were guaranteed not to fail.
I would have to be 40 years younger, have the education to be able to train for the length of time required. I guess it would also be good to come from a well off family. If those things had been my reality I might have liked to be a doctor. I enjoy helping people and trying to solve their problems. That’s why I like these prompts, it means I can think of alternative career paths, or different outcomes.
But to be honest I’m quite happy with my life as it has panned out. I’ve always been an artist, whatever job I’ve had. I’ve painted and created, used my imagination. I might not be famous but a lot of people have bought my work and also commissioned me to paint things for them. I’m just glad I’ve had the freedom to do that.
Summer photo, a couple of years old
The red and green spark off each other
Scarlet red shines in the garden
Drifts of arching flowers in the bed.
Sunlight needed to keep them growing
Shade stopped them in their tracks.
Gone now, the memory of them still cheers.
What was the hardest personal goal you’ve set for yourself?
When I was fitter I used to swim. I’m not fast but have stamina so I gradually built up the distance I could swim. My preferred goal was breast stroke.
I found out that a mile was about 40 lengths of the pool so I set a goal to see if I could do it. I slowly built up the numbers, I was limited by the time it was taking me to finish it but after about two or three months I managed it. I have to say I never swam that distance again!
These were my plants in summer, now they are starting to wilt. I will be sad when they are gone. I want to time travel to next summer till the next lot of flowers can be planted. I might get some winter flowering pansies to cheer the yard up in the meantime.
I’ve bought loads of bulbs to put in the big garden for winter/spring. Somehow I need to get them planted.
Playing, digital drawing, trying to add colour and using symmetrical mirrors images.
I’ve had to delete several images again as I don’t have enough memory to keep all of them. If you find some of my blogs without a picture, that’s why!
Tell us about a time when you felt out of place.
My hubby and I were on holiday in the South West but the weather was bad and so we decided to stay our last night at a local youth hostel.
We arrived and booked a double room. But were then asked if we could stay in dormortaries as a group of foreign students had arrived and the teachers wanted to sleep seperatly from their pupils.
We agreed and I politely tried to say I only spoke a little of their language.
Evening meal and then bedtime. The girls I was sharing the dorm with started talking and continued chatting and giggling late into the night. I had absolutely no idea what they were saying and spent two or three hours with the pillow over my head trying to block out the sound.
It was awful, I felt so out of place, I barely slept and had a long cycle ride ahead of me in the morning.
Would I do it again? Yes to be polite, but I might have to think about it first
Two big solar flares have recently flung energetic plasma out into space from the sun over the last couple of days. The radiation released arrived at earth quickly and blacked out some of our short wave radio signals, but matter can take days to arrive. So this weekend there may be another aurora show then. I’m getting my camera ready! I just hope it’s not cloudy..
Lucky to get my painting “mend him” into the Brampton open exhibition in the Brampton museum and art gallery, in Newcastle under Lyme. Staffordshire. It’s on from 14th October I think. The painting is a portrait of my hubby I started last year and finally finished a couple of months after he passed away. I miss him. This is my in memoriam tribute to him.
I had decided to enter it as “not for sale” but the gallery wanted all images to be up for sale so I put a large (very large) price on it to virtually guarantee it won’t be sold. It’s very personal to me, but I wanted people to see it.
It’s acrylic on canvas and I started it in my Studio in Spode Site, Stoke. I finished painting it there after I decided to leave due to not being able to afford the studio rent any longer. It means this is the last painting I completed there.
Mallaband-Brown