Memory of a picnic on the beach this summer. The tide was out. There was soft sand to sit on. We had a simple meal of salad and melon for dessert. What makes it memorable was that it was a beach we visited a few years before and I didn’t think we would be able to go back. It didn’t matter that it was overcast, or that the beach was quite crowded, it made me feel happy. That’s why it’s good to go back to this memory. Nothing bad happened and it was really enjoyable. I need good memories.
WordPress keeps telling me my phone is full. I know! I keep trying to delete photos but it’s almost impossible. There are thousands of them. There’s lots of other things, I am not sure of half of what’s on here….
So I think I will have to buy more memory. Its funny how real memories are subsumed into a digital memory. If you don’t have a photo of it, it didn’t happen? Case in point, the recent death and funeral of the Queen. People have always recorded their lives throughout the ages, for example look at cave paintings. Then art throughout the ages, paintings for people who could pay, or sketches by people who had the means or ability to draw or paint. Then deguerreotypes (not sure of the spelling) became popular, painted portraits turned into slow motion photos that took time to take and heads had to be clamped in place to get a clear image. Box brownies, single lens reflex, eventually digital cameras, then phones which took a few photos. Now, the mobile phone is a hand held computer… But it still gets full.
The human mind can hold more information, but it’s not stored in a logical order. Links from the past suddenly reach out and grab your attention. Clearing a human brain of memory is not a good thing, and unless it happens through illness, age or injury, causing degradation of the brain structure, it is to be hoped that people can build memories (good or bad?), not lose them.
At the moment I’m up and down. One minute trying to plan things, the next remembering what has happened. Disbelief is my main emotion. That and loss. I feel like writing things down is helping a bit, so I’m here, blogging and sharing my thoughts. I hope that’s OK for people. I’m gradually working things out, grateful that I have hubby, friends and family there for support. When you lose a relative it’s a shock. I have cried, I will cry again, how long for, I don’t know. Its turmoil and chaos sometimes, then I calm down for a while. X
Three years ago I painted my hubby ‘my green man’. It came up on my Facebook memories today. He is a green man, gardening does him good, helps him to try and relax. He is a bunging in gardener, there’s no rhyme or reasoning to his planting, and he just plants things where he likes, but he must have green fingers. That’s why I painted him as a green man. Acrylic on canvas.
Detail from a life study I did several years ago. I’ve chosen the figure in the background who is drawing because I think it’s important in a painting or drawing to show what is going on around the subject. This figure mirrors the seated life model to dome extent. On the other side of the picture is a large cloth hanging down over a screen and table. The artist on the right helps balance the image up. I used a large round brush with a good point to paint in the textures and thin lines. I did this directly onto the paper. I rarely do any pencil drawing on things like this, I draw with my brush.
Water spray on a garden spider web caught in the sunlight.
I’m happy I got a reasonable photo as I had to use my zoom on the phone because I couldn’t get close enough. The spider was absent, probably taking shelter from a splash of water.
My phone memory is full so might not be posting much for the next few days.. I will try and post when I can.
The Leopardess at the Leopard Hotel in Burslem. She was supposed to be a mixed race woman that married the owner of the hotel and came to England to run it. I was told several tales by the landlords of the Leopard while I was painting murals there and I really wish I had written them down. But you know what it’s like. You are standing on top of a set of stepladders and chatting while you paint. You have ideas for each mural and have to fit in with what the owners want you to paint. Sometimes I was in the Arnold Bennett suite on my own for hours (I’d go up after work), listening to old creaking timbers and odd noises. It could be spooky in there. My memory isn’t what it was.