Tag: Life

Fuzzy brain

Posted on Posted in UncategorizedTagged , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Finished or almost finished? Not sure. I’ve spent the last two days painting this while having my studio open to the public. In the end you lose track of what you are doing. What you are saying. I can waffle forever but it stops making sense after a while.

I like people to ask me questions about art. But then I get nervous. It’s like a fog descends over my head and I can’t articulate or describe what I mean. I hope my paintings are pretty self explanatory but I still try and explain what I am doing. Artists on TV seem to be able to tell people what they are doing, but I can’t do that. I’m a painter not a public speaker…..

So anyway, I finished this painting today. It’s called mermaid.

X

Cold

Posted on Posted in UncategorizedTagged , , , , , , Leave a comment

IMG_20181006_234034_613

The chill cold of autumn has penetrated Spode studios this weekend, the high ceilings prevent the warm air produced by heaters in each makers studio from keeping the chill air out. As soon as you open your door it escapes like a hot air balloon. If we had our studios in the roof space we might be warmer. The studios are little wooden boxes like hermits cells sprung along both sides of corridors that meander off around corners  Some of the studios are open, without false ceilings and these get even colder unless you put industrial sized hot air blowers on. The studios with windows are single glazed with either wood or metal frames. Some have louvers to allow air in. Even when they are closed they let cold air in.

Don’t get me wrong I’m not complaining, just explaining. There are a few warmish spots, like the kitchen if you shut the door.

Each studio that does have a false ceiling also has a layer of insulation above it. So you can actually be warm there…. But walk along the corridor when it’s cold and your breath steams. If you make yourself a coffee in the kitchen it could get cold just walking back to the studio.

One architectural novelty are the curved, almost barrel vaulted ceilings along parts of the corridor. I have never seen anything like it before. Great waves of concrete curve like giant corrugated tin above you. But the wavelength is far longer. Its a very interesting building to work in… But did I mention… Its cold ❄

Which is why I have used a warm picture of autumn flowers to illustrate it.

X

Smell the flowers

Posted on Posted in UncategorizedTagged , , , , 2 Comments

IMG_20181004_174646_015

Poppy time is my favourite time of the summer. First the buds swell, then split. Papery petals unfurl and stretch. Like butterfly wings emerging from its chrysalis.

Poppies are my favourite flowers, to see their cheery heads waving in the breeze in a cornfield, or along the grass verges of motorways. Their lovely flowers help feed the bees, and their pepper pot seed heads spread thousands of seeds everywhere. I love breaking the dried seed heads off and scattering the tiny grains of seed all around the garden. They don’t always grow where they are sown, but like disturbed ground and can lie dormant in the soil, which is why they can appear on building sites and why they bloomed in Flanders fields.

Poignant reminded of war. Pretty flower, or even narcotic. Poppies have power.

Archery ?

Posted on Posted in UncategorizedTagged , , , , , , , 7 Comments

2018-10-02 17.36.40

I’ve been going to Archery now for about 6 months off and on. I thought I would be getting better but struggle with the whole thing somehow.

While my partner shoots bare bow (without sights) and has gradually improved, I feel I’m actually becoming less accurate. He got eight golds last week where I just got 2, and this week I kept missing the boss  (the support the paper target is pinned to).

It looks easy, lift up your bow, pull back on the bowstring, look through the  sight and let your arrow fly. Watch it wobble in its flight towards, then over, under, to the side of the target…missed again! I try and place myself in the same position each time, holding the bow not too tightly, trying not to pinch my fingers around the knock end of the arrow so it releases from the string smoothly. Place my hand holding the string under my chin with my nose and mouth touching the string. Sight along the arrow using a sight that has a hole with a little dot in it so that it is sighted over the gold. But a tiny deviation where you are is large when you have a target 20 yards away and worse as you get futher away from it.

I’m going to keep trying, I hope I can do it, I will persevere.

 

Inktober

Posted on Posted in UncategorizedTagged , , , , , Leave a comment

You may or may not have heard of Inktober also known as #inktober or #inktober2018 its something that comes up at this time of year where artisrs are encouraged to draw something in ink for each day of the month. The drawings are shared on instagram under these two hashtags. Oh and I forgot each day has a theme I think. There was a list last year but I haven’t seen it yet.

At the same time the urban sketchers I am a member if have set a 1 inch drawing challenge for the month. Each of us is trying to do a drawing in a 1 inch square for the month of October, so I’m trying to amalgamate the two and kill two birds with one stone as the old saying goes.

Whether I will fulfill the challenge depends on how busy I get, whether I remember to draw and if I remember to post. I think I might report back here once a week. If course I could draw everything and just post one drawing a day, but I like the spontaneity of the idea , so I will try and draw in the moment.

X

Penkhull flag result

Posted on Posted in UncategorizedTagged , , , , , , , Leave a comment

DSC_0195.JPG

A while ago Penkhull residents association decided to have a competition to create a flag for the village. The pictures surrounding the final flag were the 10 designs that had the most overall influence over the final design. I was really pleased to find out that one of them was my design. (the middle top design).

It feels good to have a flag to describe the village. The oval and lines coming in symbolise the village green and the roads coming into and surrounding it. The cockrel is based on the weather vane on top of the church. The colours are vibrant and cheerful. Local people had a choice of 4 designs taken from dozens of entries. The central flag in the photo was the winning design.

Tide

Posted on Posted in UncategorizedTagged , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Time and tide wait for no man

Tidal reef,

High tide……

Why tide?

The Moon pulls on the Earth and the Earth pulls on the Moon. They are gravitationally linked so that one face of the Moon always faces us and the water in our oceans is attracted upwards towards it by its gravity. On the other side of the world there is also a rise in the waters because there is less gravitational pull on the oceans because they are futher away from the moon…..

Why high tides?

The water is pulled up so far by the moon, but as water flows inwards towards the land as the tide comes in it can also rise further if it is pushing into a narrowing area such as a gap between two islands or into the narrowing channel of a river or stream. In this case sometimes the water can overtop the banks if it is a particularly high tide, such as a spring tide. The water will rise higher if it is forced into the estuary by wind as well as tidal forces.

One third of the world’s population live on various coast lines around the world. If the world continues to warm up then these people will be at risk from the rising tides caused by global warming. Many countries have built costal defenses but these are being damaged every year during stormy weather. Replacing the damaged protective barriers is being abandoned in some places as not cost effective and some costal salt marshes are being recreated to protect the land.

Fluffy clouds

Posted on Posted in UncategorizedTagged , , , , , , , Leave a comment

 

Fluffy clouds, mares tails and con trails at Spode today. I loved the way the sky was crossed and patterned with clouds. The sun was quite low and now we have moved into autumn it took on that crisp shimmer when the heat of summer has all but been extinguished from the sky. The warmth seems to wash out of the blue and it becomes a deeper hue.

Round about the skeletal remains of parts of the spode site sit like dinosaur ribs, shed of flesh and skin, one gaunt necklike chimney sits upright looking out over the landscape of rust and broken bricks.

All this hides the beating pulse of creativity, artists, ceramacists and other makers populate the various untidy buildings. Glass and clay, paint and photography, laser cutting and architecture. All of them dwell under the fluffy white clouds, mares tails and con trails.

Next weekend we are having an OPEN studio. On the 6th and 7th of October.

Admission is free from 11am to 4pm. You are welcome to come into the studios which are open to the public. There will be much to see including a new exhibition of people’s work on the theme of transition. We are at the Spode site, Elanora Street, Stoke, Stoke-on-Trent. The way in will be signposted.

X

Whats the point?

Posted on Posted in UncategorizedTagged , , , , 4 Comments

IMG_20180920_172908_402

Someone speaks to you, says they can do all sorts of things to help you. It just needs to go through some sort of committee .

You wait to hear back, but after a while you hear you have been unsuccessful. It’s like having a job interview for a job you didn’t know was available, you hadn’t prepared for it, had no knowledge of what it entailed but once someone had dangled the carrot you felt suddenly recognised for having some small amount of worth.

So

What is the point?

Have they read this blog and decided its not commercial enough? That it does not come up to scratch? Should I just post photos of my art and keep my thoughts to myself?

What is the point?

Why bother?

What should I do?

What is the point? What is the point…..

Feeling down, but not quite out.