New paintings and regular art updates.
Our Orme group continues to meet and create new art.
We are holding our annual exhibition, with paintings, sculpture, jewellery and other art and crafts available. There will be festive refreshments available.
We have new artists who have joined this year so there will be different work amongst the art on display. If you are in the area of Newcastle under Lyme, Staffordshire, on 23rd November 2025 why not come along?
I saw this yesterday. A tandem stye bike. It might be two bikes converted by removing the back wheel of the first bike and the front wheel of the second. I don’t know if it would be stable enough to ride?
It’s been painted gold and might be part of a sculpture trail? I couldn’t get close enough to get a better look, this is zoomed in.
Describe one simple thing you do that brings joy to your life.
I love painting (oils, watercolour, acrylic) , drawing, digital art, printmaking, pastel and charcoal drawing. Pottery, jewellery making, creating fused glass. Collage, scenery painting, illustration, photography and more.
I’ll try and do anything once. I’ve even tried drawing with boot polish and had a go at melted wax art. (I’m quite old and don’t like getting bored). Even had a go at brass rubbing once!
This is a stone carving I think? It’s on a building in Newcastle under Lyme. The building, a shop, has closed and other buildings around it are partially demolished. I hope this carving will be recovered and reused, maybe it will go to a reclamation yard? I think it’s probably an art nouveau design. I hope the business that was there is successful in its new home (there wee signs saying it had moved elsewhere.
It’s a wire cat my friend made, she’s done fairys and birds and squirrels. But now she’s gone onto making cats. I really like this, it’s about 12 inches tall and 9 inches wide. I’ve got it on my windowsill along with a collection of ornaments and a couple of plants (which I keep forgetting to water). I think its well modelled and quite cute. She certainly put a lot of work into it.
I have so many cat ornaments dotted round the house. Some were gifts others I bought for myself. This is not a good photo of this white cat, but I like the way it’s legs are stretched out like a lion, or a sphinx. If I decided to get rid of some of my cats this is definitely one I would keep.
I’m not sure who this is meant to be, it’s a photo I took three years ago at Trentham Gardens in Stoke-on-Trent. The woman is carrying a snake.
I looked up various ‘women holding a snake’ entries on the Internet. Some had two snakes, some were about Asian goddesses. But this is a single snake, classically represented. I don’t know if it’s Greek or Roman but I think I remember the statue being linked with medicine so I plumped for a roman version from Wikipedia.
Angitia
The Romans derived her name from anguis, “serpent,” hence the form Anguitia. As snakes were often associated with the healing arts in antiquity (see, for instance, rod of Asclepius), Angitia is believed to have been mainly a goddess of thaumaturgy.
I made this at an art group today. It’s quite odd but we had dried leaves and twigs and bits of greenery and wool. The black curved piece at the back is a large dried leaf meant to be a cape. I thought the piece of wood looked like a face and body, the two forward sticks are meant to be arms, one is holding a stick. The blue wool round the base is meant to be water which witches are not supposed to be able to cross. The greenery is meant to be being whipped about by her forceful spells.
We were making Faery related objects for an art project and walk that is on tomorrow at Spode there were lots of other objects being made. Most of them held together by hot glue.
At the British Ceramic biennial on Sunday Probably made by the same artist that made the frogs on exhibition there. I love it’s sinuous shape, you can almost imagine it’s gait, legs splayed out, first the legs on one side come together, then the spine flexes and the legs on the other side meet. Crocodillians have been about for millions, of years. Even before the dinosaurs? With it’s front legs lying alongside it’s body it looks like it’s about to slide into a river or pond….
I found a photo of a ceramic head I made several years ago at my friend Claire pottery class. It must have hung on the same nail in the back yard for at least 20 years!
The weight of the face squished the space inside it in a bit, but it still is a good planting pocket. It has a crack in the back from the firing, so when I plant it up I use plastic to line it but make sure there are holes for drainage. I put different plants in each year, this time I have some sad snapdragons still clinging to life. Maybe next year I will try Sempervirans? (house leeks).
Mallaband-Brown