Blog readers. I left you hanging, while I was hanging.
A full day of receiving , unwrapping and hanging prints at Ocean Studios for the Drawn to Print exhibition that runs from this evening until Easter Sunday. Gorgeous nuggets of colour and some striking monotones.
Two racks of print bargains on washing lines.
Mounted but unframed works all arranged by four artists who worked through the day to be ready for the Private View tonight.
As the exhibition runs through the Easter break it would have been foolish not to have one rabbit available. Ours does not know the words fluffy or cute.
My procrastination took an interesting turn today. With a list of art admin to achieve I decided to start a painting entirely unconnected with the upcoming exhibition. Another riff on the theme of the contemporary green man.
This one has sunglasses instead of the traditional socketless eyes. His face is bathed with dappled sunlight as he emerges from his greenery. Which then had a good dose of bracken added.
Which will need to be greened down a bit tomorrow and his teeth painted in. Still avoiding the actual tasks of the day I gave him a digital tweak using a pop filter.
Thank goodness paint does need to dry! In those gaps I managed most of the jobs scheduled for today . For all those men who requested a bald representation of male fertility. Here he is.
Privacy and a woman who ponders daily online might not seem a natural pairing.But only a very small percentage of my ponderables or imponderables are blogged about. People don’t feature much in pictures. Today is an exception This blob on a beach is our middle grandchild enjoying a soft sandy beach close to home. This is a week of very high tides, something that can be a flood worry. The other side of the story is very low, low-tides which is how we found the soft sandy beach, way beyond our usual rocky shore. The sand was so very soft and clean she immediately ducked down to run the damp sand through her fingers and became a living version of drone filming , a technique that has become so popular as infill in film and television story telling. Artists and designers also love a flat-lay image. It is probably not going to catch on as a portraiture fashion but I rather like the image. Low tide near home is not my usual thing, the rocks are slippy and slimy but the area of the beach that only gets seen infrequently seems much cleaner and kinder to my ankles. I may become a low-tide wanderer. A reliable habit, of more value than being a cranio- caudal portraitist.
At long last the sun came out, sunshine replaced grey rainy day, after grey rainy day . On and on the greige days just kept coming until these vivid stools finally got a moment in the sun. Soon enough the stools filled up with happy basking humans. I looked up the phrase ‘ at long last’ . It rather sums up my feelings about this winter.
Sunshine, you have come back at last!
What was the best compliment you’ve received?
Knowing that people take time to read, comment on and enjoy this blog . So many conversations are sparked. Just as if we were sitting on these seats, warming our faces and staring out to sea.
This was a late commission for a retirement party. About 24 hours. I was also invited to the party so there was a personal scrubbing-up deadline to be met. The party was for a work colleague in a workplace that I had left a while ago. It was a fabulous lunchtime gathering of people that I had worked with in fairly intense situations, and it was such a pleasure to see them all again, because they were all people that I trusted when the going got tough. When we worked together, just seeing them pile in as a part of a small on-call team was a real pleasure because there were no egos in the room. Now before you all think. ‘ No workplace is that perfect’ I would agree wholeheartedly. But yesterday the people who make work life difficult were not at the table. And that was the point of the commission. The colleague who retired had a secret code at workplace social gatherings if she was bored or someone was being a twat. She would ask the colleague who commissioned the painting a seemingly random question. A sign that they should try to extricate themselves. Not exactly a ‘safe’ word but a sentence that could make or break an evening out. The sentence is hidden in the painting.
No-one mentioned canoes yesterday so that is a sign of a great gathering.
A ponder came from yesterday.
Wouldn’t work be fab if all the lovely people worked together and the twats just pissed each other off.
Now I am a team of one how do I know I am ‘team lovely` I could be ‘team twat’
P.s I am not used to delivering paintings when the paint is still wet. Normally I get the chance to tweak. I see some tweaks but cant nip into the studio. A very odd feeling.
This is what happened just after I pondered yesterday. A real life ponder, not a blog ponder, although now it is a blog ponder.
After a fairly normal morning routine. Tea, Coffee,blog,Shower, I hit a conundrum, 45 minutes between shower and a morning dip in the sea. What to wear in that 45 minutes?
While I sorted out my after-swim attire Hugo took himself into the folds of the unmade bed. My indecision gave him those moments that he needed to catch up on sleep. Normally we would be out walking but the plan was for his walk to combine with my walk to the beach.
He effortlessly goes from pyjamas to daywear without pondering.
I opted for half putting on my wetsuit, legs and bum only. Letting the arms and body hang down. A dressing gown completed the ensemble. Of course, someone knocked on the door and of course, as I accepted a parcel my two dangling wetsuit arms pushed themselves out from beneath the dressing gown. Nobody deserves that image etched into their morning routines. Which is why I am just sharing pictures of Hugo. The swim was also completely non-photogenic, wild and wet, rough and bouncy. We congratulated ourselves on how brave we are on these wilder days . Not, I might add, dangerously brave, just cautiously brave. Freshwater rain and seasalty fingers do not combine to take good seascapes.
A cheeky dog in the unmade bed is much more appealing.
I’m not a naturally anxious person, so predicting anxious feelings is hard for me. Anxious is the soft and distant relative of anxiety which is an entirely different thing. Anxious moments are fleeting but give me a moment to check and reflect on whatever I am about to do. The anxious, anticipatory feeling of butterflies in my belly is one of the great ‘ tingles’ of life. One of the loveliest feelings is the realisation that anxiety was not needed. A sensation that is like seeing the prickles of a horse chestnut, but only experiencing the gorgeous brownness of the conker and the delicate softness of the conker’s bed. The experience, confidence and reliability of life makes the anxiousness quite unnecessary.
Yesterday I mentally berated myself and was a little anxious for forgetting to publicise a regular artist meet-up. One that I had helped to instigate in the post-lockdown period. I imagined sitting at a vast table all alone, like billy-no-mates. Just me and my paints for two hours. I needn’t have been anxious. We have been doing this for nearly two years, every second Thursday of the month. I needn’t have worried at all. As 10 o’clock approached artists started arriving, big bags of creative energy in their arms. The table filled up, three extra tables were needed and even with the extra tables, people were squeezed into almost non-existent gaps. Every surface was littered with creative paraphernalia and the cups and plates of artists needing nibbles.
The vast, industrial-sized space was filled with the noise of people sharing news and knowledge. Some people never even manage to unpack their projects because the talking and exchanging of ideas becomes the most important thing to do.
My little moment of anxiousness was quite unnecessary. As it usually is.
Framing day. One done and four more to go. This one took more than an hour, little bits of stuff kept floating onto the mount. Despite doing it on a clean piece of linen. Static is the work of the devil and it makes me huff .
These end bits of arty admin are not my favourite part of the process. In contrast, my morning was spent with 15 other artists drinking coffee and nattering joyfully about their creative processes.
The texture in the room was gorgeous , enhanced by coffee and cake. Three hours of arty energy and caffeine to power me through the pain of framing.
There was a clear plan this morning, get up, always a great start to the day, walk the dogs, decide which prints would be framed for next week’s exhibition. Then submit them before today’s 5 pm deadline. Write the blog then set about choosing, framing and mounting the other prints that I am exhibiting. This time next week will be a frantic two days of receiving all the work to be exhibited, building, curating and hanging the works that the printers have submitted for exhibition.
The fact that I am at the blog stage of the day before 10 am is both a miracle and rather satisfying.
Focussing the mind was achieved quite unexpectedly at a Gelliprinting workshop yesterday. I had forgotten the pleasure of sitting in a space with other artists all trying to harness the techniques of a particular process.
Covid made online teaching improve exponentially and I have loved being in classes with people from all over the world in a virtual art space. I had also forgotten the value of being in the same space with other artists
I have struggled with Gelli printing at home, everyone online seems slick but my attempts were nowhere near slick. I have been a bit disheartened to be honest. Irritated with the flicky hand dexterity of Youtube demonstrators who produce joyous images, seemingly effortlessly.
Then a friend arranged an informal workshop in a light-filled village hall. 13 of us all failing to completely tame the beast of a gelliplate, but failing together and then lifting each other with tips and advice. A Gelligang, all of us failing a little bit because failure is part of the creative process. The value of failure is harder accept in the echo chamber of our own workspaces at home. But doing it together makes it easier to learn from.
Tea and cake helps too, as does arty natter, especially when it carries on through the cubicle doors of the toilets. Pearls of wisdom from anonymous women as they pee.
I can be a bit grumpy when a word gets misused, literally is one such word which is both over used and inappropriately used at times. It was a surprise to me to find a whole new word this week that sounds the same.
Littoral…
But before I get onto my new word an anecdote about being taken literally.
I had talked to a patient for a little while who was about to have a breast examination. To conclude the chatting part of the appointment I said, while gesticulating to a stool in the corner of the room.
” O.K that’s lovely, if you could just pop your top on there, we can get on”
I gave her a moment while I finished writing my note. When I looked up she was nowhere to be seen. When I stood up there was an awkward sight.
She had knelt on the floor and arranged her two naked breasts on top of the stool.
Which is a huge amount more interesting than my littoral story.
Which involves a large bug . You can’t possibly know that he was a large bug because I failed to put another object in the photo for scale. He was probably as long as a finger. Google lens tells me he is a Bilge Bug or Sea Slater and he lives in the littoral zone. Bilge bugs live for three years. Every day is literally a school day.
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