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.
List the people you admire and look to for advice…
My actual list of admired people that I would go to for advice, specific to me, is subject to a strict Non Disclosure Agreement with myself.
They know who they are.
But I am an advice and knowledge junkie and will take advice or knowledge from anyone, admired or not if advice or wisdom is needed.
Unsolicited advice though, is not my thing. Just about tolerable if given with love or care but most of it just rinses off, unrequired, unrequested and unneeded. Selected deafness can be a superpower.
So can a killer sentence.
“That is really interesting, but I am afraid I am not interested”
Maybe just as a thought bubble or a quote on a T-Shirt. I will leave that to your own discretion.
I do. Quite a few years ago I narrowly avoided running over a political leader, he was a lucky man that I was concentrating. I was in bits he had stepped out in front of me from between two parked cars. He shrugged his shoulders in his expensive camel coat, gave me a small hand flap of thanks and went on his way. This seemingly minor moment in my life when I absolutely did the right thing always haunts me when I consider the damage he has done to our country. This morning is no different.
Moving swiftly on, our first rose bloom ever on our defensive planting scheme bloomed and drooped. We plucked her tiny head from her damaged stem and popped it in a shot glass.
She is a very thorny rose who has been purchased specifically to ramble over our garage roof to deter the neighbourhood cats from getting into our yard and having a shit. Which is exactly the word I used when I nearly ran over the politician. At the time I said it because I was frightened. Now, well…
Beltane , Mayday, caught me out yesterday. It was a day filled to the brim. Not another thing could have been squeezed into any second of the waking day. So much so that the blog was brief and largely unexplained.
I combined two exercises from Paint Like Turner to create a painting of our local tidal pool.
The first big takeaway was that watercolour painting 250 years ago was not done on paper that was anywhere near white. So the process took about 24 hours as I dyed paper with cold tea.
The process and the result.
Then dried the papers in hot bright sunlight, which bleached out the colour a bit. I think I quite like painting on imperfect slightly beige paper. In real life the image has a warmth about it which I quite like.
Then to read the instructions and dig around in my paint store for the suggested colours or as close as I had.
I was working from one of my favourite, very atmospheric photographs of the pool.
At this point I should point out that this is the pool on an excellent day.
And this once again is the painting. Very curious to create art from firm instructions.
I need to sort this horizon out before actually attaching the mount.
I was quite thrilled that the painting more or less has a Turner colour palate as demonstrated by the biography I am also powering through.
But the painting is nothing like a Turner in reality and much more like my photograph.
Which rather neatly brings me to the end of the day. Which was spent with a huge glass of Pimms , celebrating a friend’s success in the London Marathon. 26 miles of determination and endeavour.
This photograph has the colour palate of the sun going down through a glass of Pimms.
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.
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