New paintings and regular art updates.
I read the book this quote was in, I think it’s got the character Granny Weatherwax in it, (who often holds a sign when she’s possessing another animal and leaves an apparently lifeless body, “I ain’t dead yet”) but I can’t for the life of me which Terry Pratchett book it is in, (he wrote so many). I recommend him as a funny fantasy writer.
He died a few years ago of a form of alzheimers disease. I miss his cheerful and intelligent books so much I just wanted to share his words.
https://marthakennedy.wordpress.com/portfolio-of-available-paintings-by-martha-ann-kennedy/
My friend Martha Kennedy has created a portfolio of her work that’s for sale.
She’s a talented artist and writer who lives in America. I love to see her paintings of ‘the big empty’, with mountains in the distance. And a ‘refuge’ for Sand Cranes and other birds and animals.
Living in a city in the UK I can only imagine the wide open spaces she sees. Or what I would call wilderness. X
Take a look…..
A view of St Austell in Cornwall that was at the BCB exhibition recently at Swift House, Stoke-on-Trent. With subtle tones of sepia colour it depicted a semi industrial landscape. I didn’t see a notice but I’m guessing it was made of China clay which has been quarried there for centuries. One of the sites was used to create the Eden Project, a set of giant domed greenhouses or ‘biomes’ which house tropical and arid environments from more equatorial climes.
St Austell is a town in Cornwall inland from the southern coast, in a landscape dotted with abandoned tin mines. It was once the home of a famous poet called Jack Clemo. He was blind but managed to write his poems while supported by his mother in the 1950’s?
Two little drawings of mice for my friend Zoe Ainsworth-Grigg. She commissioned me to do a couple of illustrations of mice for a poem. In the poem the baby mice sing. I’m not writing it out as she holds the copyright to it. She just wanted simple line drawings and she was very happy with this.
Image by N. F. Mirza from her book.
I don’t do reviews…
But (you know one was coming). I just sat down to read ” Swinging Sanity” a book of poetry by my friend N. F. Mirza, who I know as ‘stoneronarollercoaster’ at WordPress.
I’ve known her for a while and found out she was a writer and now a published poet. Her book is a small volume. But it’s full to bursting with poetry full of emotion. As she moves through life, using it to discover her mental health and wellbeing.
The poems are forceful, I’m no poetry critic, but I found them easy to read. Some of them touched raw nerves, and you can see her heart torn open in many of them. I particularly liked Ocean and I become one.
ISBN 9798618202992.
The D Road is a play we went to see today about a woman affected by the D Road.
The D Road is a dual carriage way that runs through Stoke-on-Trent and joins with the M6 motorway North and south of the city making a D shape.
The play is written by Debbie McAndrew. The story unfolds as an elderly lady is frightened by a man hanging around her house. Her grandson catches him and demands to know what he is up to…. The answers change all their lives…
Very enjoyable. Put on inside the Meadows suite at Spode. It was quite cold as its an empty factory, so we were given blankets to keep warm. Very enjoyable.
Saw this in Burslem today. On the main road from Cobridge up to Burslem.
Arthur Berry was an artist based in Stoke-on-Trent where he produced pictures of everyday figures and landscapes with a style of his own. Charcoal and pastels are used to chisel faces out of blackness, strokes of grey and white float on top of murky reds to bring out the dark shapes of buildings.
Arthur was also a writer and poet. We attended several of his plays when they were performed at the Victoria Theatre in Hartshill, Stoke-on-Trent in the 1980’s. We have a copy of a couple of his books. He was a very creative artist.
Mallaband-Brown