New paintings and regular art updates.
Just found this from June 2019,i was out sketching with #uskstoke at the national urban sketchers meeting in Stoke-on-Trent. We were due to meet in Leeds this year, but of course it was cancelled. This is a drawing of the Arnold Bennett sculpture in Hanley. This is the city centre of Stoke-on-Trent. I think I must have spent quite a while drawing it. Oh come back 2019!
My minds a maze
The world’s a haze
Memories topple
Like a worm in an apple.
Lost in a haze
Into distance I gaze
Thoughts that occur
Do not always concur.
Finding a thread
That just ends up dead
Seeing a face
But don’t know it’s place?
Older I get
The more…?
I forget.
I found these on my phone, small, colourful paintings in acrylic an tiny canvases. I think these were done a couple of years ago. I paint so many different things. I remember a lady from South Africa really liking these and getting one of them for her mother.
Today I get my results for my First term doing an MA. I hope I’ve done OK. You have to paint a lot of giraffes to get enough money to live on. So I’m trying to diversify! If I can get some illustration work that would be helpful. So fingers crossed and a deep breath. I will try and stay calm. X
Autumn Acers, painting from when I visited Jodrell bank a few years ago. I was just browsing my photos and thought how nice it would be to sit in their dappled shade this morning. Its already about 27 Celsius inside the house this morning, and hotter still outside . I’m up early to do some college work, but the heat is getting to me. The humidity is the worst thing. We had torrential rain along with another massive thunderstorm last night and more is forecast for today. Luckily I live on a hill, but i thought my car would get washed away last night because the water cascading down the hill started to look like a river. I would not be surprised if properties further down on the flat main road got flooded! So, yes, dappled shade in the garden is what I might be seeking a bit later on when I have a break. I’ll be back later.
Does anyone remember Spectrum? The agency that fought against the Mysterons who came from Mars and attacked the Earth? Captain Scarlet had been taken over by the Mysterons but he escaped. He ended up with the power not to be killed…
Captain Scarlet was a puppet show in the 1960’s and 70’s produced by Gerry Anderson (who also did Thunderbirds, Fireball XL5, Four Feather Falls, Stingray and also Joe 90, UFO and I think Space 1999.
I have this little Spectrum patrol car that was clearly merchandise from the show. I also have an Eagle space vehicle from Space 1999.
Isn’t nostalgia a strange thing.
By a waterfall, in the countryside, with friends. A little picnic, some cheese sandwiches, a flask of tea? An apple or a banana. Sunshine, a scent of flowers on the breeze. Driving a few miles further than I have for the last few months. Out of the city. Where my feet can touch grass. Where my eyes can be dazzled with colour and the clouds are as white washed cotton. I want time to go back. Before pandemics and Covid, before corruption and death..
Is it too much to ask?
Funny what you find in the drawer when you are looking for something else. Hubbies bike spanner for tightening up his nuts. It’s a little rusty but still useful. If you turn it nintey degrees it looks like a shocked face! Maybe even like the painting the scream! The other end of the spanner has a curve at the end. I think it is meant to be a tyre leaver to leaver off a bike tyre when changing a tube or repairing it.
I love the old worn look of this spanner, I guess it’s at least forty years old. Sometimes things get put away then turn up when you least expect it.
One of my largest paintings, done between 1982 and 83.about five foot by four foot. The man is my hubby and the cat our old lady cat we had several years ago. The rest is completely from my imagination. I’ve always been interested in standing stones. It’s based neolithic burial sites. The foxgloves and poppies are about medicine in the past. I think we must have visited Devon or Wales, because of the waterfalls. It’s oil on canvas. No idea what the book is about. But he’s always reading!
It’s been threatening rain all morning. It was raining earlier, the abandoned cat we look after appeared bedraggled at the back door so he came in for a pouch of cat food before going off again. He’s definitely an outside cat.
We were expecting rain all day. My hubby was going for a walk but that has been cancelled. So he’s in the shed making cozy places for the hedgehogs and the cat to sleep in.
Rain. One year, many years ago, we were suffering weeks of rain. I told someone that an ark was being built on the top of the hill. They believed me! This country (UK) has so many influences from the North, South, East and West that we can sometimes get all types of weather in one day. The rain is one thing, but we sometimes even get (very small) tornados. Also hail storms, water spouts, gale, storm and hurricane force winds. High temperatures (rarely) but highest last year it was 38°C. Low temperatures, probably worst in Scotland around minus 20°C.
So yes, rain, some of the UK is very wet, certain villages like Seathwaite in the Lake District get some of the highest rainfall. Some of it is extremely dry. The South East of England around London frequently gets less water from rain than it requires so water companies are allowed to extract water for public use from rivers and aquafers.
On the whole I like rain. Except for late one night when we came out of a club and missed the last bus home. We had a five mile walk in the heavy rain. The water ran down my ‘showerproof’ coat. My trousers got soaked, and then the rain started getting in through the coat seams. Oh joy! Even my shoes were sodden… Memories.
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There was a question today on Facebook about remembering old sayings that people used to tell you.
It made me remember things my father said to me. When I asked my dad where he was going he would say ‘there and back to see how far it is’ these words had a magically irritating affect on me! Also when he was annoyed he would tell us to ‘go and take a long walk off a short pier!’ Someone also talked about going the see a man about a dog.
The first time as a child you hear these, you think they are true. I used to try and work out what it meant. I didn’t know it was a saying. I imagined people falling to their deaths off the pier. And would dad be bringing a dog home? The worst was always the one about going there and back to see how far it was. It irritated the hell out of me. Eventually I was old enough and he would take usv for rides on the back of his motorbike. Generally I used to go for a ride out into the countryside just for some fresh air and to get away from the city.
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Mallaband-Brown