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.

#1226 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity, Spring2 Comments

I sense that I have hit visceral Spring in the last couple of days. Caught between  Climatological Spring on the 1st of March and Astronomical  Spring on the 20th of March. I am both behind the game and ahead of it at the same time. Actual Spring Cleaning occurred yesterday. I am on the steps of pastel colours and fresh greens that ultimately lead to summer.

Summer and Winter Solstices are the big ticket events but I think I prefer the softer transitions into Spring and autumn.

Visceral Spring is an entirely emotional and personal response. The point when layers of clothes become intolerable and my feet protest at the thought of socks and boots. Visceral Spring is not without discomfort. Toes in sandals are nipped by 1 degree temperatures and cold winds find their way into spaces where thermal underwear is missing but that discomfort is my small celebration that winter really is behind me, and that is a good thing for a winterphobic soul. Even one who has done her very best to find the positive in the dark months.

Time to lay a tribute on the steps towards Spring, Summer and Autumn. Longer days and sunlight.

#1225 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn abstract photography, Hybrid Printmaking1 Comment
Devonport Park.

Some days are just so full of lovely conversations that it takes a while to sort them and file them appropriately in my memory bank while extracting the nuggets of gold to be used immediately.

One such nugget, is that my evolving photographic technique is called Hybrid Printmaking. Using printmaking knowlege combined with digital techniques ,my analogue skills just happen to be medical imaging, to create unique artworks.

Following on from that conversation was an explanation, see below, which I possibly cannot recreate as succinctly as it was explained to me.

“When an analogue skill becomes redundant it can become an enlightenment in the digital world”

Wow!

Less wow was my choice of clothes yesterday. Back buttoned dungarees on a day when I knew I would be using public toilets for a large part of the day.

What was I thinking??

#1224 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn pondering, Words1 Comment

When I discovered Venn diagrams at Primary School I became a little obsessed and created intersectional circles as doodles when I should have been doing something more meaningful in class. I would create figures and shapes with intersecting circles filled with words and thoughts. This image popped up yesterday on a science website and it just makes me smile inside at my much, much younger nerdiness.

The more mature me loves the associated word, Intersectionality which is most commonly used to describe the less admirable facets of society.

But Venn diagrams and Intersectionality can also be a way of quickly identifying positive and joyous connections in the world and are really useful in decision making and design. A Venn diagram is fabulous for colour mixing too.

John Venn has a fabulous alternativeblue plaque which also makes me smile.

Wikimedia Commons

Which neatly brings me back to the first diagram.

A man who is an acknowledged Logical Thinker is also an Anglican Priest. That’s a whole new Venn diagram for me to ponder over.

#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.