This is my phone screen saver. It just cheers me up to see it. I only have it because someone asked me for a copy of a painting I did forty years ago.
You can see how I’ve laid the scene out and started filling in the image. I don’t tend to underpainting but go straight in with colour. I rarely sketch in the image, but because this was going to be a copy I had to fit the buildings on properly and also it helped with the perspective.
This is about four years old. I can confirm its new owner was very pleased with it.
I had a lovely afternoon out so I gave my friend this small painting to say thank you. It’s only about three inches square. We had gone to a garden center so I felt it would be nice to give her something floral. Poppies are my favourite flower, vibrant and silken looking. This is a simple painting in acrylic. Drops of dew or rain sit on the petals and shimmer in the light. A bud ready to burst sits next to the flower with it’s promise of further beauty.
Art, and particularly painting is where I get “flow”, that is lose track of time when I’m creating art. Sometimes I can go months without painting, but I still create things either by drawing or working on digital art.
From my earliest memories I can remember painting and drawing. It got to the stage where my mom would show relatives my art because she thought they were good. I only had half a bedroom because I shared and that was on the window side, so to display my art I strung strings across the bedroom and hung my pictures from them!
I was obsessed with Elizabethan fashions and used to draw women and men in great dresses and suits of silk, with slashed sleeves and enormous ruffs around their necks. I was also interested in the Asterix the Gaul and would copy the cartoons of him and the other characters. I would spend hours getting the images correct. I think that was when I started getting better at drawing.
I remember spending hours over my art exam paintings. In fact one of my paintings was selected to be put on display at our twin town in Europe.
I think they say you have to do something for 10,000 hours to become an expert. I must have done far more than that. But the time has flown and I don’t recall it being hard work, “time just flies when you are having fun” is a saying that I think is based on what happens when you do an activity and you lose track of time.
A few years ago I did a painting of the bone and flint mill in Etruria. I exhibited it in a small exhibition and I ended up getting four commissions to paint it again!
I had to give each painting a different name, not flint mill 1,2,3 and 4, but slightly different wordings for each.
I only remember this because the photos appeared on Facebook memories. It shows, I think, that I AM a real artist, just because I’m not doing much at the moment. I have paintings to finish, but dear old artists block keeps biting me in the bum. Things I have to do get in the way. Life gets in the way.
My old painting jeans. They are years old. When they started to split I started to sew. One patch of sewing covers another. Trying to keep up with the holes!
Mostly sewn with cotton reel thread, a few strands of embroidery silk. My stitches are no longer neat and small. My shaking arm makes it hard to hold the material while I try and stitch. The yellow is the latest cotton. I will swap to another colour soon. I just need to catch the rip below the pocket before it gets any worse. It’s really threadbare…
This is like the story of the old broom. It’s had three new stales and two new brush heads… But it’s still the old broom you always knew… X
I was painting a backdrop for the final penkhull mystery play before the pandemic. It’s unlikely the plays will be continued, people get older or move on. The children who used to be involved are growing up. I don’t feel able to do anything like this any more. I can do some things but I shake too much to get delicate work like this done. At least I have memories. Willow pattern design I made up.
Seven years ago I had a small exhibition at Etruria Industrial museum. This blurry photo just came up on my Facebook memories.
The blurry image of my painting was taken from a photo of my friend with a white elephant she had made of paper and willow withies. She was sewing a rich red and yellow fringe around it as way of hiding the legs of the person who was to carry it. The back had a hollow ‘houda’ I think its called? Like a basket to sit in. This was so a person could carry the elephant but look like they were riding it. I loved this representation of the elephant and decided to paint this image. My friend had the painting. The elephant? I think it was destroyed in a fire in the shed where it was stored…
The props for the penkhull mystery plays were made using willow withies tied and glued and then covered in paper and glue and painted white, then volunteers decorated them. I had fun giving a couple of horses a Picasso feel. I don’t remember if it was me or another volunteer that painted this one. There were four horses for an apocalyptic scene! I think we made a monster too but these are the photos from 9 years ago off Facebook memories.
Nine years ago I was helping with penkhull mystery plays. Painting flat boards for scenery and Picassoesque horses which were props for the show. I really miss those days. The plays were sometimes religious or sometimes historical. Covid seems to have ended it. We all got older and it was hard work for the organisers to keep going…
Mallaband-Brown 