Month: Mar 2025

#1223 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Drawn to the Valley1 Comment

I have been painting a tree this week by only painting the negative spaces in shades of red. I chose red because the exhibition that this picture is intended for celebrates Turner, the artist and his work in the Tamar Valley. A big subject that I could easily have got lost in.

Turner, famously finished one of his great pictures, on Varnishing Day at the Royal Academy by planting a red blob on his misty grey seascape .

His great rival, Constable, saw this as an act of aggression as Constable often wove some red into his deeply rural landscapes.

An homage to an artists work is a big subject that I could easily get lost in so I have decided to reverse engineer the two things  he made famous; mists and red blobs.

Painting a tree using only red blobs looks uncannily like the histology slides used by pathologists to diagnose disease processes using tiny segments of tissue and a microscope. I have a few months to work on this technique but early results are looking interesting. After I have printed the actual tree skeleton over the blob painting. More stages to go.

Tree at Saltram. © theoldmortuary

Mists are also going to be reverse-engineered and dreadful flat, grey seascapes will be turned into colourful images that hint at rain and mist.

Drakes Island from West Hoe.

A lot to think about. This weekend I came out with a real arty response to the question,

” Where are you and what are you up to?”

“I am in the studio, considering my negative spaces”

Work in progress.
Red blobs and mist.

#1229 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Stonehouse1 Comment

Which animal would you compare yourself to and why?

For the last two days, a busy bee. Yesterday with fun stuff and creativity. Time spent with a two year old is never dull.

Drakes Island from Stonehouse Lawn Tennis Club

Drakes Island, in the rain from West Hoe.

This morning’s busy bee stuff is far less interesting. Trips to two industrial estates and the dullest of shopping lists done in my least favourite supermarket. The afternoon will not have to work too hard to liven things up. I will let you know how it goes.

And then nust like that the day perked up.  My wallet, missing for a week turned up. Misplaced and overlooked not, as secretly feared, lost forever.

#1228 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Spring1 Comment

Two weeks ago we bought two bunches of tight budded daffodils at a  reduced price of 49 pence each bunch because they were past their sell by date. Two weeks on they are in full bloom and are gorgeous double headed daffodils. Not past their sell by date at all.

There were no such delightful bargains to be had today.

#1227 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity1 Comment

Last night the bobbers went out, out. To  a silent disco under the watchful gaze of twenty ships figureheads.

One more ready to party than most. For once the bobbers did not get their clothes off in a public space but danced the night away until they had no more moves left in any cell of their bodies. For a change there were no frozen boobs or toes.

Just sweaty ears from the headphones and aching knees from lives well lived.

We were there to celebrate  International  Womens Day. But beyond that we were out with our tribe. A group of people who built a tribe of cold water swimmers, who came together initially 2 meters apart, to exercise by swimming in the sea at least once a week during the Covid Pandemic. So much water has washed over our bodies and passed under the metaphorical bridge since the first British Covid lockdown which started 5 years ago today. But Bobbing with Bobbers has been an accidental scaffolding that has supported us all into the post-Covid era with friends to do mad stuff with.

P.s One Bobbers  exercise tracker said she danced for more than 6 miles.

#1225 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Art for sale, Spring, StonehouseLeave a comment
Drakes Island, Firestone Bay. © theoldmortuary

We said farewell to some neighbours yesterday. The weather was kind for their last day of having a home near Firestone Bay. They are headed for Yorkshire. A place with a very different sort of beauty.

Meanwhile we have discovered that we have some foxy neighbours who have taken to visiting our yard at nighttime. Leaving a pungent calling card of foxy odour.

Foxy neighbours and their fragrances are not unknown to us. The picture below was a regular occurrence in our London garden .

Some neighbours are more welcome than others.

#1224 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Art for sale, Serendipity4 Comments

What is the last thing you learned?

That a pause, even for fifteen years is still a pause. This painting was started and paused 15 years ago when I was doing a painting course. It was painted using only my fingers. A technique I never tried again until this week when I realised what I needed to do to make it exhibition-ready.

The Wheelhouse proportions needed to be altered and the moon tweaked with copper leaf. Having tweaked the moon the ponies required a little tweakment and then with all that bling the shadows needed darkening and on and on it went. All the time using my finger tips!  All well and good until they start to get sore and the top layer of skin is worn away. Really not a technique I ever need to use again. Useful if I ever need to enter the world of crimes created with two fingerprintless fingers, but really not so smart for operating my smartphone with its fingerprint recognition.

Tweaked moon.
Tweaked ponies

#1223 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Hugo and Lola, Stonehouse4 Comments
Sunset on the favourite Beach.

Not my favourite beach and not Lola’s but definitely Hugo’s. A dog who was born in Bedford and raised in London is obsessed with collecting seaweed. He learnt this habit on the pebbles of Whitstable and the Thames Estuary.Perfected his art on the expansive beaches of Cornwall and currently operates on the city beaches near our home.

Wonder and Joy

This beach would win no prizes for human pleasures beyond exquisite sunsets over the Cornish bank of the Tamar. But for Hugo at mid-tide, it is a pleasure-dome of seaweed research and reconnaissance and, ultimately, rescue and retrieval. He is at his happiest when he can create a pile of seaweed. Obviously, he works along the water’s edge and creates his pile a little distance from the tide’s reach. All well and good on a lowering tide, the distance walked just gets greater, but on an incoming tide,he just rescues the same ten or so strands of seaweed as his pile is gently washed back into the sea as the tide  laps at the foundations and then destroys the evidence of his endeavours. On a good weather day he would choose to be there for hours. The only thing stopping him is me. I am not always his best friend.

#1222 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Firestone Bay, Royal William Yard2 Comments

I woke up this morning with a busy head. The sort of busy head that requires a list to be written for the rest of the month. The list is almost more important than the blog. But the blog is my calming moment.

Morning Mist

But not so this morning.  Jetpack my blog hosts have upgraded my phone App overnight and nothing is where it should be. This development will take a little getting used to! This blog will be brief because that list really does need attending to.

Misty Morning

I also woke up wondering if this was a ‘bad’ photography day. Which I think it was. Aurally the day was fabulous. Mournful fog horns and distant church bells. The 21st  Century was wiped from view. I wanted to create digital images that were truthful to the location but that still made the mist the story.

Stonehouse Tidal Pool in the mist
Royal William Yard in the mist.

Brief and to the point this morning. I’m sure I will get the hang of this brave, new Jetpack world, but today is a day of lists and ticking things off.

Why mist? The Exhibition I am entering in the summer is about exploring the Tamar Valley with the Artist, Turner in mind. He and mist are forever entwined in my humble opinion. Mist and the Tamar Valley are also fairly frequent companions

But work for that exhibition doesn’t even make today’s list.

#1221 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn abstract photography, Serendipity1 Comment

After the fabulous light show of Dazzle which has brightened up my weekend nighttime dog walks .

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/16KaWjxHjM/hi

It was marvelous to see this lovely Magnolia in the dark yesterday.

https://theoldmortuary.design/2025/03/03/1220-theoldmortuary-ponders/

It reminded me to reflect, in a very self indulgent way, on the passing of winter and how as an ardent winterphobe I improved my attitude to my least liked season.

Reviewing things I realise that actually there are only three things I really dislike. January, constant rain, and short daylight hours. None of these things avoidable.

In December I am lifted by the run up to Christmas, festive lights and goodwill.

And I love February for its brevity and skippy nature as the days grow a little longer and Spring flowers spike the sodden soil.

Leaving me just with January to endure. ‘ Find the positives ‘ was the advice from Newspaper magazines each Saturday. I am always an optimist but January sucks my optimism. But I gave positivity  a go and decided to try and create interesting images out of the shockingly dull photographs I was taking. What light there is in January is overlayed with a perpetual mist and large quantities of rain. I tried everything in my medical imaging repertoire of image manipulation, everything in my arty photograph toolbox, some painting skills and used image manipulation software from really old systems to current ones.

There is almost no predictability about which bad pictures will turn out to be visual gems with my tweakments but learning to use all the tools and ideas in my head has been  fascinating. There have been some epic failures.

I even went back to the nineties and bought myself a home printer. Goodness me they have improved.

January and indeed winter 25/26 I am ready for you.

Here is the Magnolia on a gorgeous shade of ‘ greige’, surely my most used word of the winter months.

And finally the image I was aiming for.

Other worldly Magnolia.

#1220 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn dog walks1 Comment

Dog walks have been giddy experiences this weekend.

https://devonport200.uk/dazzle/

Four nights of magnificent illuminations and projections and the dogs given access to buildings they would not normally enter.

Quite what they made of it we will never know. But a festival of projected light makes the average last dog pee of the night a lot more illuminating than usual, with paths, walls and steps rather more vivid than usual.

I think a celebrated and projected history of Devonport may have passed them by but they sniffed their way through every location with dogged diligence.

Which allows me to ponder on what they really get from sniffing other dogs pee.

Foxes are supposed to be able to read the pee messages left by several generations. I assume dogs are similar. Wouldn’t it be cool to pick up family and local history by just sniffing,