New paintings and regular art updates.
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.
Today’s #bandofsketchers prompt was destruction. The Leopard Hotel in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, was destroyed by fire just a few weeks ago. This is a sketch from a photo by Stokie Bloke (I can’t face visiting the Leopard Hotel). Not very accurate. You can see the roof has gone. There were more photos including the room where my murals were. The walls are still standing, but there are just blank ashy grey spaces. So sad.
We bought this tree about 25 years ago as a sapling from Plymouth and planted it in our garden. It is now as tall as our house but as the garden slopes you could probably add another five or six foot to its growth. Since it was quite young it has produced walnuts which the local squirrels collect and store over winter. That has resulted in some unwanted saplings which we have dug up and given away. Walnuts don’t do well if their branches are cut. The sap tends to flow freely and can cause the tree to bleed sap. This can also allow infections which can damage the trees. Walnut wood is apparently very good for carpentry, but I intend to leave well alone. If it can get that big in twenty five years how big will it get in fifty…
Sitting in the Waiting room gallery, looking out on a blustery day. The road in front runs down past the gallery on the left of where I was seated then on behind me to the Longport station building where trains regularly stop. That is why the gallery is called :the Waiting room’. The gallery is linked with the station and is a community space that is run by the volunteers who have worked on maintaining the station building. I don’t know the full details but it’s good the station is still in use. Its just a short walk from there to the Trent and Mersey canal and along it to the Middleport pottery. It was a bleak, wet and windy day, but we were warm and snug at the gallery with a cup of coffee and a scone too!
Just been up to the Waiting room gallery in Longport, Stoke-on-Trent. They have hung my tryptich of Jupiter and it is for sale if anyone wants to contact me about it. I’ve said I would sell canvases individually but I think it’s better if it was sold as all three canvases. The image is based on a photo of Jupiter’s surface including part of one if its poles. I’m not sure which? Taken by the Juno mission a few years ago. Acrylic on canvas. It’s hung horizontally but it could be hung vertically or even diagonally. Is there an up and down in zero gravity? Just imagine being there, what a fantastic sight it would be!
Rushes on the edge of Trentham Lake. Black ink fine line pen in my sketchbook, then filtered in Photodirector.
The filter has modified the image. It has made it more homogenous, less natural, more stylized. The ripples seem more dynamic, the heads of the bullrushes are more like candle flames. The trees could also be on fire. I may colour the image in. I see red or orange as the flood fill choice. Like a fiery sunset. Greens for the rushes, blues and greens and orange for the water. Maybe….
This was the function room, the Arnold Bennett suite, in the back of the Leopard Hotel with my murals visible on the walls. They were quite high up and I’m only short, so I spent a lot of time climbing up and down ladders! If I had realised it was likely to take me almost two years to paint them (there were eleven? ) seven on one side and four on the other if I remember?
Titles were :
The Leopardess
Umbrellas by Clarice Cliff
Arthur Berry, artist
Walter, the regular
Pot banks and woman worker
Murdered woman
The Leopard coat of arms
The Burslem Riot 1842
Wedgwood and Brindley
Molly Leigh, Burslem witch
Burslem Angel
I cannot remember if there was another one. I’m hoping to collect a full set of images of them. I hope that local people will be able to help me.
Half past five in the evening and the clouds scud by. There’s still light in the sky but the rain showers keep pounding the windows. I love the newly washed look of the air. Almost sparkling. When I came here forty years ago there was far more heavy industry in the area. Smoke and dust polluted the air. A smog sometimes settled over the city and you could smell the fumes from the tyre factory or enamel being fired onto pottery if the wind was in the right direction. Now the wind is more a carrier of sound. The local A road and the motorway. The occasional sound of pile drivers when new buildings are erected, which is not very often. Sometimes smoke travels on the forlorn breeze as an old building accidentally burns down. So sad. So much bustle gone. We are a warehouse city of poorly paid jobs. No real chances. No ambition if the naysayers are believed. I think we can do better. Think creative, be creative. Let a bit of light shine on us. X
I painted these mugs with special overglaze paints about three years ago when our art group at Etruria were still meeting. We haven’t done anything recently because of Covid. It’s only when I look back at things like this that I realise I was doing so much more than now. It’s only when I remember these things that you know I am, or was, capable of so much more than I’m doing now. The designs were from my imagination. Painted directly, no sketching out first. Give me my Mojo back!
Walking home, Stoke-on-Trent, about 3.15pm this afternoon. The low sun barred by dark clouds. It didn’t rain but the bright sunshine really shone out behind the clouds. The lamp posts give a sense of scale. You can see the shadow of the cloud on the right cast at an angle so it gives an indication of where the sun is. It never emerged as I walked as the clouds were really slow moving.
Mallaband-Brown