theoldmortuary has been a blog for about five years. It has evolved into an almost daily event. Pondering on the things that are inspired by my daily life. Often mundane, sometimes repetitive I swerve from hyperlocal activity to big and small thoughts without blinking an eye. I am an artist and writer. My hometown is Plymouth in South West England, part of me will always be connected to London and another part loves to travel.
Without any planning this week is turning into a low tide kind of week. Hannah did the late evening walk and caught this beautiful image, which is exactly as it presented itself to her. This is an unused wharf,which again we rarely photograph. In fact, just like an old fisherman tale, it is the site of the ‘ one that got away’ We were here last summer with our granddaughter VV, who was visiting from Hong Kong. She,at 3,was a very diligent dog walker, taking complete care of Lola’s needs for the whole walk. This, in turn required us to be hypervigilant so no chance of a quick smartphone photo. The tide was in and the day was very hot with no shade. Something was going on in the water, there was a lot of fishy activity. We all looked intently into the water. Basking in the shade of floating seaweed we spotted a small shark or a large dog fish. Most likely the Lesser Spotted Dogfish which is common in these parts,where it is also called a Murgey. Just like fishermen, this one who got away from our photography, was larger than average. For an excited 3 year old there was no Murgey or Dogfish about the find. We had gone on a dog walk and found a shark. A Shark! At the end of the road!
Our familial needs on beaches are significantly different. Yesterday the human bobbers took themselves off to their favourite beach, for a somewhat gloomy, just after high-tide swim, at 4 pm. We like to swim near to high tide, as an incredibly useful set of concrete stairs lead us into chest high water, with no need to pick our way across seaweed strewn rocks. The dogs however prefer a low-tide beach precisely because they can pick their way over a rocky seaweed strewn beach. At 8 pm we went to their favourite beach for a low tide meander.
I almost never photograph this beach at low tide. On the opposite side of the peninsular to our swim beach, it faces the Hamoaze, a broad section of the River Tamar as the river meets Plymouth Sound and then the Ocean. Centuries of old industrial stuff washes up on this beach from the dockyards, one of which, no longer an active dockyard, is in the background of this shot. Hugo could spend hours here, rescuing seaweed from the waters edge. Lola is less enthralled, as am I, particularly on a gloomy day. However there is often some quite fancy sea glass, my pockets often return home with a few little glass triangles of ‘ Pirate Treasure’ . The washing machine engineer takes a dim view of ‘Pirate Treasure’ in the filters. Evidence that I am not a diligent pocket emptier.
Anyway, however gloomy it was yesterday, a little arrangement of sea debris caught my eye. A broken periwinkle shell, an oyster encrusted on a rock and some foraged, by Hugo, seaweed.
Nothing big to write a blog about but a little highlight of the day.
I am a lover of the absolute serendipity of daisies. Daisies are free -spirited, establish themselves wherever they choose and turn their heads to the sun. If only life could be this simple. These daisies are growing at a Lawn Tennis Club that is soon to open the gates to the public to raise money for local charities. Just beyond this photograph there are men and machines spiking and prepping a lawn to look the very best for the ‘Big’ weekend. These daisies are almost certainly gone for now, but men and machines are no long term match for diligent daisies. They will be back.
Timehop on Facebook is an interesting feature. Just as nature has seasons, so do artists. My time hop over the last few weeks shows photos and comments about me getting ready for exhibitions over many years in March and April. I will happily admit that the exhibition title for the exhibition above was not the jolliest but look at the address! Isn’t Old Paradise Yard the perfect place to address death and transition. It was an exhibition that really made people talk. I showed two paintings, at the time I was working in a world of actual death and transition, a Cardiac Catheter Lab. Thankfully the transitions there are usually in the happiest direction from challenging health predicaments transforming to greater health stability. But sometimes a different direction is taken. Either way there is frantic, sometimes ferocious activity followed by calm and peace.
Both my pictures sold, I have no recollection of one but a small part of the other was on a poster. In my memory the paintings have become secondary to the absolutely great conversations that were had about death and our human relationship with it. Just lovely informal natterings during the Private View and the first early days of the exhibition. People from all over the world and with many different life experiences exchanging thoughts and observations. It was all going rather well until a therapist ( of what variety I have no idea) who was a friend of one of the artists decided this was far too big a subject to be left to amateurs and took it upon herself to be there for the last few days of invigilating, or stewarding the exhibition. I don’t know if her presence ever made a positive impact on the informal discussions on the days I wasn’t there. But on the afternoon I shared with her, the conversation did not take organic twists and turns in the exciting and meaningful way I had experienced earlier in the exhibition.
Her obvious experience and authority on the subject were like someone pouring bleach on the conversations. All the colour and warmth of shared or unique opinions seemed to be lost. I know her offer of being in attendance came from a good place. She was concerned that the conversations could lead to some dark places that she could help and support with, but her presence somehow restricted the flow. Certainly no one got into a dark place but conversely there was no joy in the gallery either and no stimulating conversation to reflect on at the close of the day.
I am warming to these prompts for blogs from Jetpack. I pick up the ones I can best work with. Yesterday this delicious little picture fell at my feet and it would have been criminal not to use it in a blog.
I had to go to Sutton Harbour last night to pick up some printing from a company that I am new to using. They are incredibly efficient and helpful and had printed posters for a gardening event that I did some artwork for.
They were so efficient that I was left with an hour and a half of parking, to use on a sunny evening, in a harbour with blue skies, warm sun and tinkling rigging.
It was perfect serendipity to find this wonderful heart shaped mound of lichen next to a discarded party star in the tracks of a discarded rail track.
Which neatly brings me back to ‘ Describe something you learned in High School’
I was painfully reserved in secondary school. Margaret Tabor Secondary Modern did not get the lofty title of ‘High’ in its name until it became a comprehensive school and became, Tabor High.
I was painfully reserved at age 11, I know shy is not the correct word. Painfully reserved, exactly describes it. Separated from my best friend from Primary School, Manor Street. I floundered in a classroom full of people I didn’t know.
It is obvious to any reader that the names of my two schools are not part of an elite system. I had the free, state- provided, education in my local town.
Being cut adrift from my best friend at 11 made me regress into my natural social position of being on the outside looking in. I am naturally an observer and for the most part I spent the years between age 11 and 18 observing. Occasionally slipping on the mantle of a gregarious person but knowing in my heart that I was just pretending. I learned a massive amount at ‘High’ school but perhaps the most important thing was to be an observational person who can comfortably wear a cloak of gregariousness; while still having the ability to find the magic of a heart and a star in a post-industrial landscape.
Anatomy of a Serendipitous Observation captured on a smartphone whilst waiting for two dogs to eliminate.
Old railway track from the time when this area of the harbour was the Tin Wharf exporting tin from the Tamar Valley all over the world for centuries. Tamar Valley tin has been discovered all over Europe wherever the Romans went.
Broken glass from the party pub just behind this picture. Plymouth Barbican is the Plymouth night-time economy hub.
Lichen Heart , in the South West Lichen thrives in our climate. Before humans this part of England was covered by Atlantic Rainforest.
Confetti star , the Barbican is a magnet for Stag and Hen do adventures. Finding a star was truly serendipitous. Confetti can be pretty and joyful but it can also be earthily pagan.
Thanking the blogging Goddess for a happy Star yesterday.
The last few days have been rather unpredictable weather wise. For the most part, very windy either with clear blue skies or with heavy rain. Trying to predict exactly when to walk the dogs has been a science that I have not mastered competently. They have no wish to be out in the rain but sometimes need has driven us all out in drenching weather. However just a bit of sunshine, on pavements that were wet moments earlier, are golden moments for dogs, even my enfeebled human nose can pick up petrichor. But for them petrichor plus the exotic fragrances carried by the winds has been life affirming this week. Noses held high they have refused my planned routes and have planted eight paws into the ground if I chose to take a corner that was not to their taste or in a direction of their choosing.
Same picture, different direction.
In the calm of this morning, I managed to note down the sensations of these past few days. This is both swirling seas and gusting winds. I have even added some manual typing to add flavour to this colour sketch. It may never progress to anything else but just making notes feels like a weather experience commemorated.
Exercising my colour eye is a pretty good way to spend a day. Currently my studio is in a proper pickle. All my own fault, but there are plans to restore order very soon. Not far from home nature is having its way with vandalism.A quick photo records Sunburst Lichen continuing to flourish on graffiti. While frantically finding work for an exhibition, old exercises have come to the surface.
The one below is a classic mini treated to some mindful colour mixing. I combined a limited colour palate with a stencil. Not remotely exhibition worthy but as an exercise very interesting.
And then another colour exercise. Wisteria at Pentillie Castle. This last one was also an exercise in utilising the unwanted water drops that landed on my paper from the resident labrador who decided to shake himself before admiring my colour sketching.
Glimpsing this advert over the weekend I realised, with horror, that I suffer from a complete absence of personality. No knobs on my cupboards. Please excuse the brief blog while I take some time-out to process this revelation.
I have worked in jobs where problems have been excused as ‘personality clashes’ On one occasion I memorably retorted that it was,
” Hard to have a clash of personality with someone who doesn’t have one”
Little realising that the person who had spiked my ire was simply a woman without knobs. I thought she was a controlling, bullying witch without a bone of genuine kindness. If only I had known that instead of attempting to find some soul in her I could simply have gone to a hardware store and bought her some interesting knobs.
Just imagine what this simple revelation could do in so many human interactions.
We are boggle eyed from painting doors, stairs and anaglypta panels a very dark grey. This morning after we made the most of the very early light we went out for an Easter morning walk before most people had thought about breakfast. This fabric hanging from a building, soon to be renovated has a plaintive feel, but the rest of the walk was full of spring colour.
Full disclosure the job was greater than the time we had. We deliberately started with the hardest end of the hallway and it has taken all of the time available to get about half of the ground floor hallway done. Our cut- off deadline was always 4pm on Sunday. Apart from one from one swim and many dog walks we have politely declined social activities all weekend. The work left is, by any measure, much less time consuming and can be achieved over a couple of weekends.
Work in Progress shot.
The under stairs cupboard door will also go grey. It is unimaginable how many hours have gone into this small space. My jaw tells me that I painted spindles through gritted teeth and we both have lower backs that are stretched by the constant crouching to reach hard to reach places. Our minds have been stretched by the music and podcasts we have listened to. YouTube failed me on Spindle painting. Apparently the modern way to achieve the same effect as hours of teeth clenching is to mask everything except the spindles in plastic and use a spray can or gun. After ten such jaunty videos I gave up and did it the Victorian way. When I was a small child living in a house with a much smaller staircase my mum took me away for the weekend while my dad ” Got on with the hallway. “
He arrived triumphantly, at my grandparents pub saying “I’ve boxed it all in”
In the space of 48 hours our between- the-wars semi had been turned into smooth 1960’s minimalism every panelled door or ornate spindle hidden behind sheets of hardboard and painted white.
After this past weekend I understand the sentiment but cannot praise his architectural vandalism. I hope whoever lived there after us was thrilled one day to take off the boxing-in ( thank you Practical Woodworking Magazine) and reveal the real charms of the house.
Our Georgian style, Victorian house has many original features. One of which is Anaglypta panels in the hallway. In 1889 when this house was built Anaglypta was the Metro Tile of the era. Anaglypta was invented in 1887 and bespoke panels were set into the plaster walls. In any house this would have been a hard job, getting the panels shaped to run in line with Dado and picture rails. This house is built near the peak of a hill. The front of the house runs up a hill north to south and down a hill front to back. Getting anything straight was a miracle.When we looked at the house and decided to buy it, the panels were painted a bold mustard colour with a honey cream background. At some point during a very protected house sale the previous owners were going to take the house off the market and repainted the hall in a blander style for the rental market. Having seen the hall boldly painted we decided to make a feature of the lower panel and paint it dark grey. Hannah is on this now she has finished the doors. Right now we are wondering if we have gone too dark. Trepidation is a regular feature in our interior design journey.
Just as soon as we are done there will be a big reveal blog, but this morning with the early sun pouring in things are looking good even though everything is embellished with Canary yellow masking tape. One last push from me and the spindles up to the first turn of the stairs will be finished later today.
In between spindle painting I made some digital repeat patterns of the work in progress photo. I might print one out, frame it and hang it in an Anaglypta, panel a sort of infinite homage to Victorian craftsmen…
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