New paintings and regular art updates.
Next weekend I’m busy with an open day at Spode and an exhibition and craft sale at the Whitfield centre with Orme Art Group. I was trying to think of a theme to use for some little paintings I want to do and I’m thinking owls and maybe hedgehogs (which will be curled in autumn leaves). If it happens I’ll post some pictures.
A picture I created five years ago. Collaged from an angled view of part of the old spode factory in Stoke on Trent. I love it because it looks like it’s floating in a beautiful blue sky, with patterns of wispy clouds creating a tracery of waves like the tide coming in around the buildings. I should do more….
Describe your ideal week.
I would spend time at my studio at Spode, painting, or drawing. My plan is to try and go back to it. I spent a few years there, then covid happened and I lost my nerve a bit. I started to go back, but health issues cropped up. If I don’t return soon I never will, but I’ve built a wall round things in my mind. If I can’t do things properly I seem to freeze up.
My ideal week will be less stressful, full of real art, not just quick digital drawings. I would then build on it, even if I was only in my studio a couple of days a week. I would try and produce more small paintings for craft fairs, but it’s about time I started doing some ‘proper’ paintings real fine art, not craft based. I just need to get my confidence back. I have good intentions but I keep prevaricating. Maybe I can have that ideal week. It needs to be soon….
I took this photo of an old door at Spode pottery five years ago. I guess you could call it shabby. I would not have seen it but there was some work going on at the main entrance to Spode studios so we had to use a side entrance.
I only found this again because of the marvellous Facebook memories. I don’t know how many hundreds or thousands of photos I’ve taken since this, but not that many get put online, so this one must have felt special to me.
I think this might have been a pottery mould store, there was a collection of several thousand old pottery moulds that were a historical record of the shapes of the ceramics Spode used to make. Unfortunately I think they were destroyed a couple of years ago because they were not going to be used again. I think that sort of destruction is unforgivable.
Is a chair!
I have a real studio
Down at spode
Was going today
But I hurt my foot!
Going to paint
Going to draw,
But I turned my foot
On the floor.
To get to Spode
Means climbing stairs…
A really short walk
Not too far,
But my foot is sore..
So I’ll stare at my chair…
Feet up..
What was the last live performance you saw?
Our choir members sang at a celebration for the completion of a project a few weeks ago. We were involved with a performance at The Potbank hotel at Spoke in Stoke on Trent, which also included the Boat Band (above). Our choir leaders are members of the band. We sang sea shanties and some interesting pieces, like the Eerie Canal and A Wonderful World which Louis Armstrong sang.
Being part of a choir is something I would recommend for helping your mental health. I only sing a couple of times a week and wish I could do more. Singing takes you out of yourself. Singing at a performance boosts your confidence. I’ve sung many times over the years and I don’t get overwhelmed with nerves anymore. OK it’s usually only to a few people, but if I’m giving pleasure to other people then that’s good.
As to an actual performance that I saw, but was not involved in? That goes back a few years I think. We went to the theatre and saw a play about suffragettes. It was interesting, it brought out a lot of the issues women were affected by in those days. I wish I could remember what it was called? It’s so long ago that I’ve forgotten! I don’t know if it was during or before the pandemic? Life can be hard to remember!
Glass roof and glass bottles letting the light through. Rain water running down the surface from a drainpipe on the wall above. Glass bottles are perched like pigeons on a beam below the skylight. Bright blue sky and white clouds scud past high above. The roof of the Spode museum building is visible behind the bottles. This was in the ‘Factory Floor’ conference and party room at Spode. I like the conjunction of the glass roof with the glass bottles is pleasing, it is also interesting to see the metal industrial chimney rising above the roof.
I started out today at the Factory Floor at Spode singing with our choir and another choir. We were with the Boat Band who played cajun music first. Two of the band are our choir leaders. We sang before lunch was served and then again afterwards. It was great fun.
Then I went home for a rest, but I decided I felt well enough to go to yoga class. I haven’t Bern for a couple of weeks. I do chair yoga because I can’t get down on the floor and I can’t do inverted postures. My blood pressure is too high for that. Even so I felt tired afterwards, but it made me realise I have got over the cough and chest infection I’ve had for a few weeks.
Straight after yoga I sang with the other choir I am in. Each song was fun. I felt my voice getting clearer and I was able to hold notes I hadn’t been able to last week. We are learning some new songs and I was pleased that I could hear the tunes and pick them up. I had a really good day. I hope it carries on like this. X
Three pottery paintings I did a few years ago. The one of the jug is going to a new home soon. ❤️
I took them to a joint performance of our Clay chorus and the Starfish choir because we were singing a song about the Willow pattern (this is based on a Spode platter) and also a ship called Hispaniola bringing pottery clay from across the seas that had been written for us by Mark Whitter. I was very proud to have my work appreciated.
I am making cards from these if I can so I need better photos to show them clearly .
Also on the easle today, my Spode reflected painting. I was at the Orme Art Group earlier and I took the painting with me to tidy up for an exhibition at the New Victoria theatre in Newcastle under Lyme, Staffordshire. It is due to be hung on Monday. The painting is from 2019 and had been knocked on the corners so I got my black paint out and covered over the white patches where paint had flaked off. I would like to have the picture framed but as it’s about 2 1/2ft by 3ft I can’t really afford it. It will be for sale at the exhibition.
Mallaband-Brown