New paintings and regular art updates.
The mural is about half finished. There is a lot to do still, more details on the geese. Splashing water, not added yet, I’ve been trying to get the background done first. Then outlining the patches of water. The little goslings need a stronger yellow. Then the reeds and leaves need finishing. I’m getting tired.
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I did more to the mural today, climbing up and down some steps to get up to the top of it. I’m tired but happy with it so far. I’ve toned down some purple I’d added to it and made it more grey. This was because I was trying to add colour to it but was a bit overwhelming. Once I’ve finished blocking in the background I will add reeds and leaves and other details. I’ve got some iridescent white which I’m going to use to add more sparkle to it. Once it’s finished it’s going to have a glaze over it to protect it.
May get it finished by next week.
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I’ve been asked to paint a mural of some geese in a friends house. It’s a small space and on two walls. About eight feet high by about ten wide?
I spent the afternoon painting. Got to go back and carry on with it later in the week. Then I went out and went to a yoga group, then singing. Got back shattered.
I’m glad I said yes to doing the mural.
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Continuing the point about copyright, this is my painting of the Burslem witch, Molly Leigh.
Our local TV programme, Midlands today used the image of the elderly woman, (I based it on a painting by Theodore Gericault, of an elderly French peasant woman). I emailed them twice to point out it was my mural, but have not had any response back.
Last Friday I was interviewed by the Sentinel newspaper about this and a photo of my Burslem riot painting that the paper had used without crediting me. I don’t know when it’s du to be published, do it might already have come out.
Anyway. I keep painting.
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Just been up to Burslem to try and see my paintings in the back room of the Leopard Hotel. Unfortunately they were closed. I think they run ghost hunts late in the evening so I had a look through the photos of murals I painted and spookily found this one.
The story I was told that the back room used to be split into small snug areas with wooden panelling. Apparently a woman was found in the back room. She had been Murdered, her throat was cut. I know no more about it but the mural was meant to depict it. I do remember being in the back room and hearing strange noises, it could have been the beer pumps. I would go into the bar to get away from it. I wasn’t exactly scared but felt a bit nervous.
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I am a local artist in Stoke-on-Trent and about 11 or 12 years ago I painted a series of murals in the Bennett suite at the Leopard Hotel in Burslem. Recently my paintings have appeared on a book, on Midlands Today a BBC local TV channel, the Sentinel newspaper and on a ghost hunting website. All without my permission. I hold the copyright for the images and I would like people to contact me if they wish to use them. The image is my painting of my painting of the Burslem Riot of 1842. I’ve contacted the people who used them but only one has responded so I have given her retrospective permission. What can I do?
In 1842 there was a Chartists riot in Burslem which is the mother town of Stoke-on-Trent. During a meeting of Chartists in the town the magistrate decided to read the riot act and the police and military shot a rioter called Josiah Heapy while they were trying to quell it.
I did this painting at least ten years ago and recently it appeared in the local press to illustrate the root. I wrote to the paper giving them retrospective permission to use it, but now it’s on other Facebook pages. When I informed one page they took it down. I don’t mind it being used but I did it and several others and would like some recognition. Some people speculated that I copied it from prints from the time. But actually I researched it. Look closely and you will see faces of customers, staff and the owners of the hotel. I used old prints to get the buildings right in the background. Things have changed since then including a victorian town hall which was built later. The police and mounted regiment are in uniforms that I had to guess. I tried getting the information but could not find it out in time.
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In 2007 I did a series of murals in The Leopard Hotel, Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent.
One image was based on a story of a woman in the 18th or 19th century who had been murdered in the back rooms of the hotel. Stabbed to death, in one of the small “snug” rooms which the back room was divided into.
In the painting the woman is slumped in an old high backed arm chair, her glass of red wine lying on its side on the floor. At first she just looks like she is asleep, but the pool of wine is slowly mingling with another red liquid. The woman sits in front of a raging fire. But her skin is pale. Almost white. She wears a mob cap and a low cut blue dress. Is she a maid in the hotel, a pottery worker, or a lady of the night plying her trade?
No one I spoke to knew her name or why she had been murdered. It could have been a crime of passion or a theft of money. If anyone had heard anything surely the criminal would have been caught?
Does her ghost walk the back room of the hotel, looking for her killer or his children down through time. Is it her footsteps that are heard when the room is quiet and empty?
I don’t even know if the story is true, but I made her a simple maid, cut down on a dark cold night, abandoned with no care about how it would affect her family, her parents, her siblings.
Murder looks so simple, a moment of rage, without thought to the victim or their family.
I hope it did not happen….that it is just a story and the chill that runs down my spine is just the central heating playing up.
Mallaband-Brown