A butterfly

A butterfly sunbathes on top of the fence. I couldn’t get a decent photo because it was too far away. It looks more like a speckled leaf. The edge looks like a wrinkled and twisted old dry oak leaf. There are plenty of flowers lower down on the fence for it to collect nectar as it sips from them.

I imagine it was trying to warm up as we have had lots of cold and damp days recently.

Talking about insects there was a Huge bumblebee in the bathroom yesterday. I tried to get it out, I couldn’t reach up to the window so opened the bathroom door and in the end opened the back door as well and it just flew out into the sunshine. It was good to see two different pollenating insects in the garden on the same day.

Art of course

If you were going to open up a shop, what would you sell?

If I could I would open an art shop. But I don’t have the skills. I’d need to be trained in accounting, in design to get things looking peofessional, and more knowledge of pricing. Also I’d need sufficient funds to rent or let a property.

At the moment I’m lucky to have some of my work on sale or display, but the business side of it doesn’t enthrall me. I’d never be an entrepreneur.

I did try when I finished work, I set up a studio and worked at producing new art. But the building us rarely open to the public, and my studio is off down a narrow corridor so I don’t have much contact with people when I’m there. Covid and lock downs stopped me from getting stalls on local craft fairs.. A cheaper way of selling than having a permanent ‘public facing’ shop.

I’ve heard of business plans but never had one perhaps that’s my biggest failing, I just keep getting on with getting on….

Sleep where art thou?

My head nods forwards or sideways and suddenly I wake with a jump. I’m sitting in an armchair propped up with cushions. I’m a one level person at the moment, living room, kitchen, bathroom. No escape from a forty foot long pathway to nowhere. I can’t climb upstairs yet and the step out the back door or out the front are non negotiable even with crutches.

Hobbled is a thing that people do to stop horses wandering off, I think they tie a couple of their legs together to stop them running away.

I feel hobbled as I shuffle through the house. Jacob Marley with all his tangled chains couldn’t go much slower than I am at the moment. Then a cat will create an amusing barrier, wanting it’s tummy tickled or just to let me know it’s there. The nightly perambulation of a cat is interesting but inexplicable. In, out, in with a little purr… Crunch biscuits or eat wet cat food, out again. I’m up and down to the bathroom frequently. I have to guess when I will need to use it as it takes about five minutes to walk there.

Dawn is coming up in about two hours. If I put the radio on low I might drift off. Otherwise I’ll watch a bright dawn come up on one side of the house and the sun set behind the big hill about 9pm on the other.

Sleepy but not sleeping, sleep walking? Waiting for loud cars to start roaring past at around 6am. I want my bed!

I don’t stop

I can’t stop playing with images. I have to keep taking things a bit further and then tweaking things, changing colours, adding pattern. Digital can look analogue. I might not have the right tools, or a real brush, but that doesn’t mean I will stop experimenting. The pattern and colours were meant to transform into a mythological creature, a green man.

Umbrellas

Facebook Memory from 2017.

‘Just back from the Leopard Hotel in Burslem. Met Sharon Crisp the landlady and her lovely staff…it’s 10 year since I painted the murals in the back room there, she is very kindly taking some photos of them for me! This is the Clarice Cliffe Umbrellas mural that I painted way back then …2007?’

Even now I miss my murals, the Leopard Hotel in Burslem was left empty and people got in and vandalised it, started growing cannabis. The building caught fire and only a shell of it remains