New paintings and regular art updates.
Someone was blowing big bubbles at the festival, he let me have a go. I liked when they get really big and become unbalanced and long and thin. The method was to use a long peice of string dipped in bubble solution on two thin poles. Use the breeze to blow the bubble and open the poles apart to make a wider bubble. So much fun.
From bubbles and paradise gardens to bubbles and canal boats. Etruria festival whuch started today and continues tomorrow was abuzz with fun and frolics. There were human fruit machines and storytellers, lions and bonzai. The place was having fun.
You can go and see the flint mill in steam, buy candyfloss and look at the Sculpted Steel blacksmith. I’ve taken photos but not too many. Just enough to give an idea. Good to see Etruria artists and their stall. I’m a member but things have been a bit busy lately.
Anyway it’s on again tomorrow.
X
Here are a few more photos of the exhibition courtesy of Sarah. They are all wide shots. I’m going to get some digital photos done of each one.
Only two more days and it will be down.
X
If cats had wings would they chase birds in the sky? Would pigeons be safe? Would they swoop down like owls and catch voles from on high?
Horses have Pegasus, cats could be mythological, why not. They were worshipped as gods in Egypt, imagine them flying up to tree tops. Mioawing a Dawn chorus.
With genetic modification they could grow huge wings to allow them to hover like drones, waiting to see when their owners come home, spiralling down to perch on feeding stations.
Their coats could be patterned with spirals and chequer boards in blues and purples.
Why not?
The exhibition is going well and I had my photo taken with my portrait of my husband as a green man. It’s called my green man. I’m pleased with the composition.
What next? Once this is over I’ve booked to put a show up in another local gallery called the waiting room, in Longport, Stoke-on-Trent. That will be in September, not got the dates yet. I’m also going to do a couple of craft fairs in the next couple of months. It would be good to be commissioned to paint for people but I’m not sure how to break into that sort of work. I am happy to paint for people. Just contact me.
This is an image from Rode Hall that I photographed a couple of weeks ago. As you can see the rhododendrons are in full bloom. These showy shrubs originally come from the far east, China I think? They are grown for their flowers which can come in a variety of colours.
They do spread though and can shade out native plants which is why they are sometimes drastically cut back in wooded areas, allowing light to penetrate the canopy of leaves.
I must visit the Dorothy Clive garden soon. They have a large and mixed collection in their quarry garden. They are in the countryside west of Newcastle-under-Lyme.
I was trying to help move a huge flower pot with an olive tree and a walnut tree growing out of it. My husband was pulling the pot and I tried to push.. He pulled me over! I crashed into some plants luckily not the concrete. Im glad he was there! I realised I was OK with only a slightly bashed knee. But I don’t have the strength to get up that I once had. I was flailing around on the floor, like the dying fly dance from the 70s or 80s. I managed to turn to my knees then he hauled me to my feet. My knee is a bit sore but it’s the shock and surprise, you feel yourself topple, everything goes sideways. Then it’s shock that you are on the ground. Last time was because a chair leg broke. Then I broke a rib so I count myself lucky today. Its scary enough when you are a child and fall over, when you’re a middle aged, unfit female it can be frightening. X
Found this lumpy moss on the church wall. It was lovely, little blobs growing on the old stone, even though its close to a busy road. It’s at the top of the hill so the wind scours across the hill top. Sometimes the wind is so strond it could blow you off your feet..
Moss is an interesting plant, the reproduction is by spores I think, and it needs damp conditions to live in. I’m sure people know more about it than I do. Anyway I took a couple of photos as an idea if what it looked like.
I then did a duplicated picture of it because it made an interesting pattern. 
Hope you enjoy.
X
this baby cucumber plant I’ve got growing on the kitchen windowsill seems to be tickling the cast iron cats ear! It’s been inside because it’s been too cold to plant it out. It’s barely had any water and yet it’s putting out flowers. The courgette plants that I had outside have been ravaged by slugs, but thus little beauty will have to go out before the kitchen resembles the little shop of horrors.
I like this image, the shadow of the wind-chime in the window is cast on the wall on the right hand side, and the slightly angry cat balances it up. Yes.. I’m thinking of painting it. All the other plants contrast with it. Taken at 2.30am so the dark windows and reflections would be a challenge. I have just the right long thin canvas for it……
I hope it survives – I had to use washing up liquid on the Pepper plant just a bit further along the windowledge today as it was covered in aphids and I won’t use pesticides. Right enough writing x
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.
Mallaband-Brown