What is your favorite holiday? Why is it your favorite?
An evening walk at a marina gave me the perfect image to describe a favourite type of holiday. And I am not a boaty person, but the name says it all.
Not just holidays though although I may have to google the word holiday.
Holidays are just an extension of ‘ moments’ or ‘taking a break’ Periods of life that differ significantly from the mundanity of the norm.
I had loads to do yesterday but the two big dog walks of the day gave me the chance to take two mini coddiwomples. The one in the boatyard and one in a city park.
The city park, courtesy of Victorian municipal planning gave me quite the tiny coddiwomple in bright April sunlight. From a shady English Woodland…
To the fiery colours of Far Eastern Azalea bushes, simply by turning my body 90 degrees.
Two unknown destinations when I set out on my mini coddiwomple. A tiny holiday from the days admin.
I can never be sure where a book will take me and this one is no different. But the project for today is unexpected.
Drum roll…
Turner did not use white paper or canvas, his whites are created by white paint. Which I am slightly averse to. True Whites in my paintings are usually gaps in the paint. Today I will be soaking paper in cold tea and drying it in the sun, for a more random 250 year old look.
These slightly mad little experiments are unlikely to make it into the public domain, even at a Turner inspired exhibition, but the way colours react in different circumstances is fascinating to me.
But none of this is where this book has taken me in the last few days.
While I was busy doing a job not involving art. I was on a parallel and self guided path of art appreciation and dabbling with watercolour. Until I decided to give art a more academic and educational space in my life by committing to many years of part-time study doing a Foundation Degree and then a Fine Art degree. While still studying the essential science stuff for my career.
Without much research I started the journey towards a degree in Fine Art, imagining that I could immerse myself in the world of artists from Turner to the Impressionists. Not to be. Without due diligence I had signed up for a Contemporary Fine Art Degree. One of life’s awkward moments, regrettable at the time, but the fees had been paid. Turner and the Impressionists slipped from view, pushed out by Rothko and Grayson Perry and many late 20th and 21st Century artists*.
*This was the best learning experience ever, so glad I made this error.Contemporary Art really stretches thinking, and thinking makes for great pondering.
This last couple of months has been the first time I have been truly back with the older generation of artists for 20 years.
The things I did not know about Turner are manifest. In the last few weeks it has been easy to find Turner locations on the Devon/ Cornwall border. But unknown to me my London life was very Turner centric. The number 3 bus from Crystal Palace to Oxford Street is like a Turner Experience. If only I had known when it was my daily commute.
I took this quite a few years ago because life was mimicking art.
Wisteria in April is a fabulous herald of a properly established Spring. The Wisteria above and the white spider set the bar very high. The Wisteria grew on a pergola in my Cornish garden and attracted white crab spiders, who could be a little spooky.
Another one that we visited yesterday in Cornwall was in a glorious mood.
Ours in the yard in Devon after just under a year of being in our possession, is not so forward . In fact it is seriously behind the curve. But one day I might feel the urge to paint it. For now the Wisteria of Pentillie Castle will have to do.
A big but belated event is occuring today. Very late into the project to create art that is inspired by the JMW Turner 250 celebrations, a book, How to Paint like Turner, will arrive.
Coupled with the discovery that my pastel store has only deliciously soft colours lurking in its dusty drawers. Apart from the new, vibrant, kids on the block, who are not actually as fabulous as their much older colleagues. I want to paint flowers.
Is there any jeopardy to this book arriving? Of course there is! I am the woman who always wanted to study anything but the thing I should be studying. So creatively there is now an annoying little worm in my head that is telling me to paint flowers. Mr JMW Turner did not paint flowers.
This worm is an old associate. When I should have been reading this many years ago.
He told me to leave my books and go to the Tate and study the works of Mr JMW Turner. Which I did.
Now I actually need to study Mr JMW Turner the worm calls my mind elsewhere. This morning I am thrilled to look at this physics book as if it is an old friend. The words, essential at the time, beguiling me because they are part forgotten or so embedded in me that I no longer notice them.
Of course the worm is actually procrastination. Something I am particularly adept at, and curiously good at concentrating on. Happy Sunday.
A very long while ago I was gifted these fine art pastels. They had belonged to a friend’s mother who had been a well received flower artist. On her death the pastels found their way to me. I have had them nearly thirty years and she was very old when she moved on to the great studio in another realm, so these are probably more than 50 years old.I worked out yesterday that in my 30 years I have used about 20% of what I was given. After a sort out I had 5 empty drawers. For the first time ever I went into an art shop and bought some pastels. Some really bright pastels to create a specific image.
I really only needed red,orange, bright pink and black. But the local art shop didn’t sell single pastels. Although made by the same manufacturer as my old pastels these giddy contemporary pastels are a little more difficult to use, they are possibly a student version . A bit of research tells me that Rembrandt pastels were first introduced in 1924. There is every chance that some of my pastels are nearly that age. Some of them certainly lived through World War 2 in London with their previous owner.
Favourite tree on Mount Edgecumbe
Which is rather fabulous as I am creating a time warp landscape that features Devonport, formally Plymouth Dock, a favourite tree, duplicated.
Fireworks or Incendiary Devices over Devonport formally Plymouth Dock
Fireworks or incendiary bombs and of course, given the current project Mr JMW Turner.
Mr Turner under a tree.
I think the landscape, should it need a genre might be classified as Magical Realism.
Turner overlooking Plymouth Dock for 200 years. Inspired by Wallpaper.
And a direct Turner quote
My blacks are deliberately very black and the brights are either sombre or joyful. The Plymouth Blitz or Firework night.
All this from a box of old pastels and a few gaudy new ones.
As I lay in bed writing this blog, I realise that by chasing down references to JMW Turner’s painting and sketching exploits in the Tamar Valley I am going down some fascinating googleholes.
Curiously the location of Mr Turner’s position to paint Plymouth Dock is very similar to where I sometimes watch the British Firework competition, although I face more to the right.
Maybe I can paint a Turneresque Firework painting…
This week I was at Newbridge. Mr Turner did not leave much more than a blank page
Following my own Mr Turner theme of Mists and red splodges. I have done two Newbridge sketches.
But now I am thinking that my bedroom is lacking a little Turner ‘ something’. But I could put that Mural in my loo/futility* room. A mural in there would just add to our eccentric smallest room.
*the futility room is tiny and yet somehow completes all of the tasks of a utility room but not in any logical way. Hence the name futility.
Now I am very much risk averse , harm averse would better describe me. But if I switch the word risk for unpredictable outcome or experimentation then I am much more comfortable with the whole concept of taking a risk. I am not a huge fan of timid or obnoxiously certain people because their place on the risk taking spectrum is so different from mine.
Arty and creative risks are my favourite things to do. A bin full of failure is the foundation of my creative practice.
I took a risk with the picture above. I had a stash of very old (20 years) but very good quality Ink Jet paper.
This image is a bit of everything, gelli printing, collage, watercolour and pastels. Under such pressure many papers would fail and this one was no different. But the failure, where the surface pulled off is almost its greatest success. The orange area above the boat got a bit too wet in the process and the surface started to lift off. Working into the area with pastels created the cloud texture.
Then a bit of photo meddling created two different images.
An Easter weekend of socialising and doing yardening jobs meant that the jobs were all done, but the resulting need to visit the tip was put off until yesterday. Which turned out to be a gift from the Goddess of Serendipity.
Yesterday was the 250th anniversary of the birth of JMW Turner, the artist whose works are the inspiration for the next exhibition I am entering. On the drive to the tip I listened to the radio and two very interesting women were discussing both his work and the changes that he caused in the critical thinking of Landscape painting.
JMW Turner was a regular visitor to Saltram House in Plymouth, as well as the wider Tamar Valley area. His work is held in collections the world over. In London Tate Britain holds not only a collection of his works but his papers, sketches and other items
The Turner Bequest comprises the majority of Joseph Mallord William Turner’s works at Tate. It was established after the artist’s death in 1851 and includes nearly 300 oil paintings and around 30,000 sketches and watercolors. The collection is now housed in the Clore Gallery at Tate Britain.
One such item is the sketch below,
And where was I as I listened to this…
Chelson Meadows Recycling Centre (Tip). Definitely at Saltram
…at a tip, on the site of an old quarry. Definitely at Saltram. From famous English Romantic Painter to the distinctly unromantic dumping of a stinky, old, water butt.
I marked the serendipitous moment with two photographs, one an image I meddled with.
And the other an image of the most optimistic placement of a chair to sit and take in the view.
The chair is just under the red star. High tide visits only and only by using a small boat. 250 years on, what would Mr Turner make of his Quarry location?
In my quiet moments I am still researching JMW Turner and his travels while based in the Tamar Valley. For an upcoming exhibition. I am beginning to wonder if research is a form of procrastination. Since the one location that I don’t need to research has not yet been painted or photographed. Over the weekend I discovered that Turner had sketched Burgh Island. One of our favourite destinations for beach adventures. I worked on this image over the weekend and was ultimately very happy with this muted version. Although a ‘hotter’ High Summer version also floats my boat.
But muted is the way of today, because one of life’s great coincidences popped into my emails. Jacksons Art sent me a teasing image of a palate of watercolours they are selling. Almost exactly matching my colour choices for my Soft Summer at Bantham looking at Burgh Island. Mist and a Splodge of red
Not exactly an Easter Egg but as close as we got. Fueled by this Bagel we tackled big jobs in the Yard. Both had the potential to be grim jobs but neither were too bad either.
But first a recipe for Easter.
Not for the squeamish. But the results are just like regular compost.
We use two rhubarb forcing pots to recycle coffee grounds, teabags and dog poos that are done in the yard. If such a thing can be described as a recipe then the recipe has served us well for the eleven years we have had Hugo and nine years of Lola. The method worked on the clay soils of South London, the excellent soil of an old mortuary in Cornwall and now on slightly raised beds in a city yard. The pots never smell and we use the compost for flowers and shrubs.
The process couldn’t be simpler and the compost is excellent.
Ingredients
Coffee Grounds
Tea bags
Egg Shells
Dog poo picked up with bamboo fibre toilet paper.
A handful of juicy worms from a friend’s compost heap.
Method
Place rhubarb forcer on soil ( Lid optional)
Randomly layer the ingredients as available. Worms just once.
Empty from below in the Spring wearing gloves and with a hand fork.
Pick through the compost to remove stuff that has not been turned into compost. The biggest culprit seems to be tea bag fabric occasionally and friends who pick up their dogs poos with non compostable plastic bags.
I estimate that good compost is created in about a year with a three year cycle. Our pots seem to operate at about 2/3 full. We have two. When one is full to the brim we put the lid on and move to the other. The level drops surprisingly quickly.
In the Spring I harvest about 2/3 of each pot of compost from below and leave the top third to drop to the bottom when I stand the forcer back up. I always return a lot of worms to the top after I have done this.
We have moved house 3 times in 11 years there has never been a problem just bagging up and disposing of the small amounts of uncomposted matter at the top of the forcers.
Goodness knows why I felt the need to share this recipe. Except that we watched an Easter Special cookery programme that featured a ‘ What to do with left over Easter eggs’
Not in this house.
No programme ever features ‘ What to do with your left over dog shit’
The second job of the day was more tricksy, replacing a large plastic barrel home made ( not by us) water butt with an actual water butt provided by our water provider. First the full water butt had to be emptied and the water stored. Then there was butt wrestling to get the old one out and the new one in. And then refilling and landscaping of the new edition. All achieved before we went to a friends house for some Easter nattering.
It’s funny isn’t it, the conversations you have just as you leave these things that would have been so much more valuable at the beginning of the evening. We discovered the couple who left at the same time as us lived 1/2 a mile from us in Crystal Palace 8 years ago. Both relocating to the same patch of coast nearly 300 miles away. The funny thing is just a slight fleeting familiarity not associated with our current location. Conversations for another day…
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