Author: theoldmortuary.design

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.

#1245 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Drawn to the Valley, Serendipity1 Comment
©Ali Fife-Cook

Green is the Colour to Be by Ali Fife-Cook,our chairwoman, suggests the colour journey today at Drawn to the Valley, Spring Exhibition. Ocean Studios, Royal William Yard, Plymouth.

Followed swiftly on with Spy by Debra Parkinson the exhibition Co-ordinator.

©Debra Parkinson

The greens of Sally O’ Neill’s work brightly demonstrate the quirky nature of this gorgeous space. At different times of day the shadows are just a memory.

May on Links Tor. © Sally O’Neill

From moor to river with Anne Blackwell-Fox and Plymbridge.

©Anne Blackwell-Fox

And then the garden at Aberglasney with Sarah Grace. ( A small detour to Carmarthen but when I need green, I need green . It was almost certainly framed in the Tamar Valley)

©Sarah Grace

And where there are gardens there is a rabbit from Rosemary Wood.

©Rosemary Wood

Before we sweep down to the coast with Hannah Wisdom and her wonderful green seaweed.

©Hannah Wisdom

Before landing at the foot of Smeatons Tower with Jayne Ashenbury.

©Jayne Ashenbury

A green sweep of the Tamar Valley with the Artists of Drawn to the Valley. It took us a little longer to set up the exhibition than usual. 40 artists and the potential of 640 pieces of art arriving. Not everyone submitted their full quota, but it was close. A challenging two day hang completed by a diligent team. One of them wearing green.

#1244 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Drawn to the Valley, Serendipity1 Comment

In praise of red. @theoldmortuary is part of a team running an Art exhibition at Ocean Studios in The Royal William Yard, Plymouth.

Blogs for the next few days will take a peek at the artworks on offer following a colour theme.

First up a blood red, bullet shaped, paperweight from Yvonne Morrissey.

And what better to follow a bullet than a knife.

Strawberry with Knife ©Richard Barry

Followed by 20 shades, including red.

©Mary Toon

Geoff Dodd’s painting, Sunrise at Belliver shows both the glory and the challenges of hanging art in this beautiful,renovated, military warehouse.

Grade II listing makes gallery wires essential. The proportions and light of the spaces combine to create a unique gallery-visiting experience.

©Geoff Dodd

Next, the word red in Christine Smith’s mixed media work.

©Christine Smith

From one bird to another. A Pheasant, resplendently red.

©Kathy George

Not a brace of birds but a trio. Carole Cox created a splendid Electric Blue Cockerel who, as luck would have it has a splendid red wattle.

© Carole Cox

And finally, another Geoff Dodd image hanging with an @theoldmortuary original. Daffodils and Moonflowers.

#1243 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Art for sale, Serendipity1 Comment

Not much time to ponder today as it was set-up day for an exhibition I am involved with.

My last moments prep started at 6am with my own work and then there were the many last minute reshuffles of the stewarding rota. I have a watercolour I have always loved but the title always seemed just beyond my grasp.Until today, I cant imagine who inspired the title…

The Crumpled Crown of a Republican ©theoldmortuary

Finally the four mini pictures were all framed.

And another favourite watercolour was found, after some time being lost. All packed up and ready to be sold.

My Daffodils and Moonflowers found a fabulous wall on which to settle.

And just like them I am settling, right now. A sofa and mint tea, two dogs and a pair of throbbing feet . After a day of being arty farty on unforgiving stone floors, I may not move for some time.

#1242 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity1 Comment
Bull Lane, Fowey

Which aspects do you think makes a person unique?

What a question! Every cell in our bodies and every experience in life makes us unique.

I am like an old rock. Created by the gift of genes donated by my parents and then shaped by my life experience. Every day I am shaped by the previous day and every day before it. My pleasures and harms altering the way I bend towards the next day. Every person on earth is affected in the same way making us both unique compared to each other and indeed unique compared to ourselves of the past. I would suggest we continue to evolve in unique ways until our last breath. When just like that our uniqueness is altered by the love and memories we left behind. Unique again depending how every person recalls us, both good and bad.

Unique for ever, all of us.

Bull Lane, another back street, explored.

#1241 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Family, Serendipity2 Comments

Mothers Day.

I went to a live music gig earlier in the week to hear Cara Dillon perform tracks from her new album.

It was an unexpected, last minute attendance with my daughter. I had no prior knowledge of what I might be hearing.

Link below to a review of the album.

https://klofmag.com/2024/03/cara-dillon-coming-home-album-review/

https://klofmag.com/2024/03/cara-dillon-coming-home-album-review/

Coming Home was an eloquent and beautiful homage to family and place. Something Irish people do with skill and sensitivity.

Not so, the good people of Essex which is where my heritage and sense of place are rooted.

I came away from the gig enlightened and entranced by the music and the words and very humbled that I have no such ability to show such gratitude and respect to my forbears and place of my upbringing.

Some of the footling about this week with my hybrid photography/printmaking was definitely inspired by the gig.

The green abstract shape in the Tulip picture could be absent forbears or future descendants. Just placing me, represented as quick-to-fade tulips. Frozen in time as just a piece of the family jigsaw. Which of course is exactly what I am. Just a grain of sand in one family’s story.

Sand Dunes

All of my forbears, both close and distant are in another realm, my only purpose on Mothers Day is to celebrate that I am a mother and grandmother to some fabulous humans and remember that there were a whole stack of family members before me. Nothing really regrettable about  that. It is the natural way of a family tree.

I just can’t write amazing words and music to celebrate them. I blame my genes.

©Ruby Light.

Ruby Light Portraits
07779 266914

https://g.co/kgs/U6Ct8ex

#1240 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Devon, dog walks, Hybrid Printmaking, Serendipity1 Comment
The Bents, Bantham ©theoldmortuary

Yesterday was the perfect Spring Day so we set off to a perfect beach for a long meandering dog walk. The beach and surrounding estate were sold over winter.

Sold for an undisclosed sum. The asking price was £30 million

It is alleged that the previous owner had wanted to turn the area into a millionaires play ground. If that is true,that would have been rather sad. Bantham is a spectacular place enjoyed inhabited and visited by regular humans since the Bronze Age.

What makes you laugh?

Now it has to be said that I laugh at most normal things, but the idea of a natural paradise being turned into an unnatural paradise also seems to be so laughable that I can quite see why local people protested with enough vigor to stop such a scheme. I hope the new owners don’t give them cause to protest again. For now all seems peaceful. We paid our £5 parking fee, had the beach mostly to ourselves and the dogs made themselves giddy and exhausted with play and paddling.

I took some deliberately bad photographs to reprocess into Hybrid images and was once again surprised and  puzzled by my results. Just two of my chosen images worked. Jenkins Boathouse turned out pleasingly vibrant.

Jenkins Boathouse ©theoldmortuary

And The Bents, or sand dunes worked out as peacefully mysterious as I planned, but I am unsure if the blue sky or the pink is better.

So I stuck them together and got an entirely different feel.I am learning to enjoy the serendipity of bad photography.

#1239 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Footling About, Procrastination1 Comment
Figs in Space.

There has been some footling about this week.

In my hierarchy of work needs there are 3 stages. Procrastination, diligent effort and footling about.

Procrastination delays essential diligence and footling fills the gaps when the diligence cannot be undertaken.

Figs in Space is the product of footling at the end of the day. I had had a really busy day of admin and meetings. I also need to get ready for an exhibition which starts next week. My diligence in framing and mounting artwork had come to a stop because,unusually for this modern era the mounting kits I had ordered had been delayed in the delivery chain.

I was footling about with many pictures of figs.

The title Figs in Space came to me because my three-year-old son used to shout or use those words constantly after watching the Muppets. Figs in Space was a war cry, the equivalent of adult swearing and sometimes just used as words of exasperation when his three-year-old world was not going in the direction he needed.

Pigs in Space https://g.co/kgs/wM6iY3x

In truth I was using the last of my creative energy on figs because the admin tasks of the day had drained me. Although the meeting was very positive and possibly the cause of my late spike of diligence which had finished me off.

The parcel of mounts arrived just as the sun set. It remains on the floor unopened. Figs in Space was my last work of the day. Even if it was just footling about.

#1238 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn ponderingLeave a comment
Pondering. ©theoldmortuary

What’s something most people don’t understand?

If I had the answer to this I would almost certainly be far too busy to live a normal life. Explaining the ‘something’ to most people would take a lot of time and effort.

Better to concentrate on the things that I don’t understand and give myself a little mental upgrade. Most of my contemporary understanding arrives accidentally at my door. I often wish I had understood something better years ago.  But am always grateful that late enlightenment has arrived.  Pondering helps.

#1237 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Devils Point, Firestone Bay, pondering, Serendipity2 Comments
Do I have the measure of you?                 I do.   ©theoldmortuary

I thought I had the measure of yesterday. About 5 hours of admin for two organisations that I work for. Some dog walking and some domestica. Serendipity however made those things happen alongside some lovely pondering. My early dog walk gave me a rare moment on the most popular beach nearby. For once it was deserted and I could get one of my ‘bad’ photographs to play around with later in the day.

The sun was up, the dogs were happy and I could perch on the drying rocks contemplating my day. But I was not alone, just at the point where the high tide had turned last night, there was a gathering of memorial flowers and some ashes. Someone else had not quite left the beach.

©theoldmortuary

Just a small bunch of yellow roses signifying all the love and sorrow of an unknown person’s death. Somewhere in this Hybrid Printmaking image, of a spring morning at the tidal pool, these flowers create a little bit of the texture that makes this picture what it is.

Springtime at the Tidal Pool.  ©theoldmortuary.

#1236 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity1 Comment
The infinite Magnolia Blooms of St Mary’s, Barnes.

There is a memorial bench set under this magnificent Magnolia in the graveyard of St Mary’s. I don’t think my parents ever set foot in Barnes but this would be the perfect spot to have scattered their ashes.

Red Hot Magnolia

Growing a blooming Magnolia was a red hot topic in their marriage. My mum loved them and my dad didn’t seem to be able to ever grow one that bloomed. The thick clay soul/soil of North East Essex was not kind to Magnolias, or at least our small corner was not kind.

When they died their last attempt at growing a blooming Magnolia was beginning to show promise, buds appeared, but dropped off before they could open. Many years later I was stalking my parents old home on a property website and observed the tree looking very healthy in the garden. Maybe it blooms I thought. The house was for sale again recently, the Magnolia was gone. Replaced by a climbing frame.