New paintings and regular art updates.
View over rickety old workshops in Etruria last week. The roof is heavily covered in moss. It’s also covered in leaf litter from silver birch trees growing on the Etruria Flint mill land. It must have blown across in the heavy winds we had over the last couple of months. Today I’m having a rest after loudly wassailing last night.
Short days, the candle is nearly out. Darkness floats by my eyes as I look into the garden. Cold wind and rain is making it chilly and damp. Memory tugs at my mind, pulling my mouth down at the corners. But I caught myself laughing a couple of times today.
Where will I be at the end of next year? Will I find the safety and solace I seek. Will I manage on my own. Decades of being a couple makes it difficult to predict. I’m trying to explain how I feel about things. I feel like I did when I left school after that being my whole life. The cliff edge is close, my hubby could climb down cliffs while I cowered at the top. I don’t like them. I want to be settled and secure. Oh well, we will see….
Low mood
Slowly rising
Clouds lifting
Wind dropping
Rain abates
Gales blow out
Stopping
Leaves fallen
Cannot be replaced
But buds grow
Time moves
Green shoots
Spring forth.
Grateful
Thankful
Healing…
I woke at 5.30am, unable to sleep, I was enveloped in waves of heat and cold from the covid virus. I couldn’t decide whether to snuggle under the duvet or throw it off. I lay listening to the news on the radio.
Just after 8am I came downstairs. I took my medication and prepared to light a candle for my hubby. Today was the day he would be cremated but circumstances meant I could not go to a funeral. Life isn’t always fair. Many friends and family had promised to light candles for him too and I spent an hour in calm and quiet peace thinking about my loss and contacting people who had left messages and thoughts on social media. What a strange way of doing things these days.
After breakfast I wondered if I should take another covid test, but decided I will wait till tomorrow to see. What would be the point of just confirming I was still ill. I continued to get messages and contacted friends and family.
I’ve cried and cried today. Little things like stories of people going through similar circumstances touched my heart. A film which was one of my hubbys favourites was on the TV. ‘The railway children’ is a sweet film and when it reached the end I started crying all over again.
Sleeping has helped this afternoon. I decided to ignore the fuel bills and have the heating on today. I was so tired at one point that my sandwich I’d made for tea slid off the plate and spilt all over the floor. I was not happy with myself.
I know these posts are not nice. I guess I’m just trying to document how I feel. If I explain perhaps it could help someone else? I don’t know.
Glass ball with bubbles of air in it. I’m a bit of a collector of glass paperweights. I started collecting about thirty years ago when I got two with gold and silver leaf embedded in them. My latest one was a few weeks ago when I bought a apple shaped one with glass spirals. Given my current situation I don’t think I will be buying any more.
What cities do you want to visit?
I haven’t been to Manchester for years. I like it because it is a cultural centre. Galleries and Theatres and museums. But traffic is difficult. All the routes I used to know have changed. There are more bus lanes and priorities have changed. I got stuck in the city centre about five years ago. We had to turn round in a one way street and follow a bus lane to get out! Luckily I wasn’t fined.
Other problems include the train service, our last train from Manchester is always too early. You can’t stay for a drink after a theatre visit, there is no way to travel unless you take the car, and with carbon taxes it’s not possible to drive into the city centre in a pre millennium car.
Over several months a friend has been collecting some of my smaller paintings. She sent me this photo of them yesterday and it struck me how varied they are!
The galleon painting has gold paint on it to give a feeling of the sunlight reflecting back up onto the reverse of the sails.
The small painting of the woman in the woods was taken from a photo from a friend, I loved the atmospheric feeling of it and tried to evoke the colours of autumn.
The dragon is based on an image that I had created for my college piece on the mythology of dragons. I had drawn and designed a children’s book and this was one of the ideas I used for it.
I’m so pleased my art is being appreciated, I love being creative and it keeps me going. X
Dear Me
It’s been a horrible few days. I’m worried and scared, but I must try and cope. Remember to breathe, don’t hide away. Memories of other situations make me want to do this.
I remember my mom when my dad died, she sat on the settee in the darkness for three days, in the end I wrote her a letter and asked her to look after us, her children. I think that finally got through to her. She seemed to respond.
Writing this is just a way of talking to myself, but to share with others, maybe it is something to think about for other people?
What’s your favorite cartoon?
If I shouldn’t use this image I will delete it.
This was my favourite cartoon whan I was growing up. The stories were funny and cheeky. Asterix and his huge best friend Obelix would take a magic potion if they were going to fight the Romans so that they would have massive strength and defeat their opponents.
The tribe of Celts they lived with were a motley band, the Chief was scared that the sky was going to fall on his head, so his guards had to hold a large sheid over his head to stop it landing on him.
There was a wizard with a long white beard that made the potion. I think he was called Get-a-fix?
Obelix was a massive figure and would carve standing stones and carry them around. He was always trying to get extra potion.
I loved the books and would draw the characters endlessly to try and get my skills at copying images honed. At one stage I think I had all of them.
What are your feelings about eating meat?
I know I should eat less meat and more vegetables. I realise that the amount of CO2 and Methane created by meat farming is a major contributor to global warming.
The problem is I was bought up eating meat. Some of it was poor cuts of it, my parents could not afford much, so we had some very strange things on our plates. I’m not going to go into detail, suffice to say most of them had odd shaped bones.
I have tried to eat vegetarian food. But it’s hard to find a supplier of good imitation meat that isn’t too expensive. Suddenly vegetarian foods have become fashionable and therefore costly. With the cost of living crisis even tins of baked beans from some suppliers have trebled or quadrupled in price. So I guess the way to go is to cook from scratch.
Thinking about the prompt, I will try and eat less meat.
Mallaband-Brown