Carlos Acosta came to Plymouth. The ticket was a Christmas gift from a friend. Seeing him dance live with a wonderful partner, Laura Rodrigueiz in a show he had choreographed to show what his body is still capable of at 50 coupled with her amazing fluidity was a wonderful experience.
Link above for programme
Still pondering the joy…
Do you enjoy your job?
I’ve always enjoyed my jobs. The art one of the last few years does not bring with it a reliable income but that is the only downside. The job that brought a reliable income had a few more downsides. But both have been enriching experiences. Before my ‘proper’ job I worked from the age of 14-20 in a series of low paid, part-time jobs that could be fitted around education. Nostalgia and the elixir of youth make those jobs and time with minimal responsibility seem like the twinkly moments of employment. I fitted so much variety into those six years. Always at the bottom of the pile of employees, the ‘Saturday’ girls or boys got all the dreadful jobs on any day of the week.
Menial jobs were good for me. I find it easy to spot people who have never done minimum-wage jobs. Just as privileged people who have never been in that position can probably ‘spot’ me. Finding pleasure, and enjoyment, even in the tough, and at times gritty, low-paid jobs was a great lesson to learn.
This morning I had to hunt for an old sketch to send to a friend. The easy solution was to look in my Paintings/Art file of digital images.
This file is 10 years old in 2024, I am hopeless at keeping this archive up to date. This morning I put the two most recent paintings into the file. I also had a little scroll through an imperfect record of my creative output of the last ten years.
Once again I have mentally promised myself to be more diligent with my archiving over the next 10 years.And for now I must be more diligent in actually producing some actual art. Less pondering, more art .
After days of rain we discovered this furry blockade in the hallway. The sun was up and no one would be leaving the house without the dogs. We needed bread and the dogs needed daylight without getting wet.
Lola had a route planned, appropriate provisions were bought.
And some comfy rocks were found for some winter basking.
A good start to the day and so far very minimal pondering. Just dogs, coffee and a view.
9 years ago I was exhibiting at a private art gallery space. Brixton East, in Brixton. I was part of the hanging team and was lucky enough to be in the building before the artists delivered their work. The gallery was in a sympathetically restored furniture factory. For a blissful half hour it was just me and a young Hugo enjoying the texture of the old building.
All my favourite urban textures and contrasts were there, but also quirky placements of contemporary things.
And gentle reminders of the former use of the space. A poker-work chair seat pattern.
Borrowed light into a dark space.
Soon enough the space was full of the chatter of artists and later the art lovers poured in.
My painting in the gold spotlight. Momentarily I can say a proud moment. A fab moment in one of my favourite buildings.
But only a couple of years later I exhibited in the same space. I was not in the hanging team. A classic contemporary artist joke occurred. My abstract art was hung upside down, the curator could not be persuaded to rehang it. Ordinarily I would not be too precious. Art being in the eye of the beholder and all that. But on this occasion, my art was painted on a door, the exhibition was about homelessness. The door handle would have been at knee level. A whole new level of artyfarty bollocks would have needed to be written to make that right. The art gods were not with me this second time in the building. One of my unframed pieces was stolen by a gallery/shoplifter. Everything is forgivable in a building that I love.
I am not normally someone that has frequent lottery winning fantasies but when the owner put this gorgeous space up for sale I would have done anything to be able to buy it. A lottery win would have been my only chance. But something lovely has happened. The building has been renamed and is now a beautiful wedding venue.
https://www.100barringtonroad.com/weddings24
Without pondering today I would never have researched and discovered that one of my favourite buildings has had a happy ending of its own. Without me winning the lottery. Something new to follow on Instagram. In a perfect @theoldmortuary world 100 Barrington would serve coffee and cake when not doing weddings, and in that imaginary world, a somewhat older Hugo would slouch under a chair and watch the world go by.
This weekend has brought me a rich archive of Facebook time hop memories. Some of them were serendipitous. Yesterday we met some London friends at a country park and walked miles in mud and bright sunlight. 11 years ago they had sent us this message.
Their family now has two dogs but everything else is as it was, we laughed all day. Below is baby Hugo and baby Monty on the same day.
Another doggy memory features a baby Lola and our friend Steph.
Every picture tells a story, and the story of early 2016 is not one for an upbeat sunny blog. But there is so much love in and around this photo and we all needed it.
February wouldn’t be February if art wasn’t starting to wake up for the year.
The point of this Sunday ponder is to just enjoy these moments. Social Media isn’t for everyone but this weekend I have really enjoyed the reminiscences delivered to my phone over the last two days. The one below was a chilly family outing to Oxford Street. The gorgeous piece of Street Art perked us right up on a rainy day.
Maybe the take away from these February memories is that there is always so much to look forward to with ten months of possibilities to anticipate. Just like a tree waiting to grow leaves in the sunshine.
A little extra from yesterday. An accidental dam in floodwater.
I am a mucky watercolour painter. I am also a procrastinator, so sometimes I see disaster as a lovely excuse for a tidy-up. Yesterday afternoon I discovered something messy had occurred in my watercolour storage box. Despite needing to get on with a painting I set about resolving my disaster. Meanwhile, outside, my home city of Plymouth was dealing with a much more serious potential disaster.
BBC News – Plymouth WW2 bomb found in a garden, detonated at sea. Read link below.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-68385962
The outdoor potential disaster had given me a few daylight hours to start a new painting. All waterfront areas were closed to the public, and many local roads. No trains, busses or ferries. The perfect excuse.
Paints all tidied up. My models were arranged.
And I began the painstaking task of painting and printing a cup of mint tea resting on a bistro table, standing on a tiled floor.
I think there is a delicious irony in painting a cup of calming mint tea; while not 500 yards from my home a bomb weighing over 1,000 pounds or 500kg is being towed out to sea.
Daylight failed me, eventually and I have not managed to finish. Just the dregs of the tea have been painted into the cup. Two disasters resolved successfully.
One day later and the job is done.
This time next week we will all be waking up in March. If January was all about recharging and recovering from the pleasures of the Festive Season it also brought some unexpectedly lovely sunny days. Bright shafts of sunlight kick-started early Spring Cleaning and redecorating during February.
No bad thing as February has been relentlessly wet and drear. Global warming in the far south-west of Britain reveals itself damply. Growing up in the Cold War years (1947-1985) nobody talked much about the climate until they did.
BBC News – A brief history of climate change
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15874560
As a lover of words it seems interesting that almost with a flick of a switch the media swapped one temperature based threat with another.
I first heard the term ‘ Global Warming’ in about 1984 just as the ‘Cold war’ was limping to a conclusion of sorts. My ponder today is a really naive one. Does the world not take Global Warming seriously because the word warming is one that suggests comfort and cosiness.
Which leads me to today’s random question/prompt.
What advice would you give to your teenage self?
I took far too much advice as a teenager, so overburdening my younger self with more unsolicited advice might be unwelcome. But here I go.
Nobody gets it all right, all of the time. But getting things wrong is often the more interesting path but not the most comfortable.
Study Global Warming.
Plum Beautiful lipstick, Levi’s and Doc Martin boots will still be with you when you are sixty.
Keep reading and listening.
What bores you?
I have no idea what bores me. I seem to have made it my life ambition to avoid boredom. I wonder if that is just the way some people are. The painting above is hot off the press and depicts clothes dropped on a bathroom floor. Black jeans, blue jumper and an off white silk shirt. It is possible that a woman who could spend 3 hours doing such a painting maybe has no grip on boredom and really should not be commenting.
The technical challenges of painting such a dull subject were fascinating and kept me busy planning how to go about it.
The first stage was to paint the shadows that would fall on the tiles, then print the tiles but masking off the area that would be the clothes.
Have I bored you yet?
Clothes dropped on a bathroom floor. Who would ever choose to paint such a thing?
On a less boring note my greetings cards for an upcoming exhibition have just been printed. I am pleased with the way they look.
What is your favorite drink?
Life changed and took me along with it. My favourite drinks are time specific. The first caffeinated cup of tea of the day followed swiftly by the first black coffee. Since Covid stole or altered almost all of my sense of taste and smell, my favourite drinks are the ones with many layers of flavour. I am at my flavoursome best in the morning.
After midday I only drink modified water really. This is not a hardship. A whole new world of fruit tea is out there for me to explore. Sadly they are mostly just a few moments of flavour before they just become hot water. Mostly I just drink hot water.
Barszcz, clear Polish Borscht, served in a cup on Christmas Eve was a revelation. Exactly the mix of flavours I need to kick my tastebuds into afternoon action.
By the evening there is no point trying to kick the tastebuds, they are tucked up in bed long before I am. Alcohol has more or less abandoned me.
And this is the point when a prompted blog finds the true path to a ponder. Humans, or at least the ones I mix with are gorgeous hospitable people. They want me and my taste buds to have a good time. Only asking for a cup of hot water or a non-alcoholic drink upsets the balance of hospitality and generosity for most people. I realise now the struggle that it must be to be a non-drinker, by choice or need.
Generous humans abhor a clear fluid.
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