New paintings and regular art updates.
Never seen a tree trunk like this before. It’s like a hand reaching down grasping something protruding from the earth. The limbs explode above waiting to burst into leaf. I could see catkins but could not identify this gnarly tree. Bishton Hall near Rugeley, Staffordshire was holding a craft fair. Very interesting and enjoyable.
We also visited the new Spitfire Gallery at the Potteries Museum and Art gallery today. Our local council spent millions on the gallery to house a Spitfire E (with shortened wings for low altitude flying). But then earlier this year they decided to reduce the museum opening hours. This means it will be closed two days a week. The Gladstone Pottery Museum will also be closing for five months a year due to council plans to cut budgets. There is outrage in Stoke on Trent. We realise that this will affect tourism in the city and that it is cultural vandalism. But that is what you get when you are ruled by ‘bean counters’ knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing as the saying goes.
A few weeks ago we visited Rode Hall and the church across the road from it. I was running out of battery power so only took this photo. I just decided to look at it again because I like the colours in the glass. Blues, reds and whites highlight the figures and the textiles and architecture. The detail of the pattern at the top and base of the window panes help link each panel together. Just cutting the glass pieces out must have been so difficult and time consuming. Using lead to hold the glass in place. How do artists manage to do this? I’m full of admiration.
The Manifold Way is a cycleway near Waterhouses in Staffordshire, England. It runs along an eight mile stretch of valley and is a path for walking and cycling.
There is a cave up on the hillside, it’s called Thors cave. I walked up once.. Very steep. The valley is wooded and there is a stream running alongside the footpath for some of its length. It has a small tunnel through part of the hillside as it used to be a small narrow gauge railway with only two engines (hubby tells me). It was used for dairy products and passengers. A light railway branch line. We are so lucky to be near to such a beautiful place.
The derelict Goss Falcon Works at the back of Portmeirion pottery. (I hope I’ve got this right). You can’t see from here but part of the roof has collapsed at the other end of the building. You can see it from Penkhull New Road but I couldn’t get a close enough view to get a good photo. The city of Stoke-on-Trent that I live in is becoming more derelict. History is being forgotten or neglected. So sad.
I can’t find the photo of a finished painting. It had more detail on the wooden supports between the panes of glass. The paint was peeling off and chipped and that’s what attracted me to the image. I’m the final version you can see me and my phone reflected in the surface. It’s an image of the Spode factory site. Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire.
I didn’t know what this bush was but it has a lovely scent and was growing in places around the grounds of Rode Hall.
I has to ask one of the gardeners there what it was. She was very helpful in explaining what it was. When I got home I looked it up online: Daphne odora, winter daphne, is a species of flowering plant in the family Thymelaeaceae, native to China, later spread to Japan and Korea. It is an evergreen shrub, grown for its very fragrant, fleshy, pale-pink, tubular flowers, each with four spreading lobes, and for its glossy foliage. Wikipedia
Please note. I’ve been told they are extremely poisonous.
In one of the hothouses in the walled kitchen garden at Rode Hall. Yes I have gone on about it but it was an interesting visit. Vegetables were displayed as if they were in a competition. Onions balanced on flower pots, old gourds piled up and drying. Bulbs were sprouting. It must be spring soon!
This question from an American friend made me laugh, then think. I guess the answer is that some of the subjects I take photos of are picturesque. That is to say, fit the ideals of what a painting should look like. But I guess I cropped this to improve how it looks, and I chose to take a photo of it. I saw other views that I could have photographed that would not have looked as nice.
Rode Hall is a small stately home on the borders of Staffordshire and Cheshire. It’s on a lane running between two major roads, one of which is the A34, which is in England.
Each year they hold a Snowdrop walk at about this time. The weather today was cold, crisp and bright. The various varieties of snowdrops glowed in the sunshine.
We had a very pleasant walk along a pathway to a lake in the grounds below the hall. Then back along the path a short way and up the small hills around the grounds of the hall. Finally we visited the walled kitchen garden with glass houses full of award winning vegetables.
I took lots of photos and I will post more on other blog posts. It wasn’t expensive. The only thing was there was a massive queue for the tea room but we ended going off and getting refreshments at a local church.
Mallaband-Brown