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.
Not exactly four seasons in one day but almost. A very chilly start in Plymouth. Followed by a couple of hours of basking below The Hoe, in bright sunlight with too much caffeine, the right amount of nattering and laughter. Watching boats near the Lido.
Before returning to our yard to work off the caffeine in a yard that has declared Spring very much here with buds and blooms and sharp shadows.
Before rain chased us indoors. Then off to the Tennis Club to enjoy the views and rehearsals for Sri Lankan New Year. Coats were definately needed. But worse was to come…
Woolly hats were needed for the evening dog walk. April. What are you doing to us
This may not be the kindest way to discuss my maternal grandmother, but pondering does not always go the way of acceptability or indeed kindness. On a positive note I cleared the algae off this photo before using it.
Rocks at Bigbury
For good pondering I also need to flip and tweak.
I have outlived my own mother for four years and in the last year we have bought a high magnification illuminated make-up mirror.
As I peered into the mirror one mornng I looked close up at my soft but craggy cheeks. Skipped a generation and thought how alike my face was to my Nana’s. This is no bad thing, I adored my grandmother and kissing her softly wrinkled cheek was always a pleasure. Her cheeks were velvety and yielding, and smelled of glamour. She ran two businesses,smoked elegantly and constantly and always looked like Lucille Ball.
Men couldn’t help themselves and neither could she. In her seventies she moved to Melbourne in Australia. Pastures new and different men to captivate. Welsh Valleys , the flatlands of Essex and finally an Australian city. All changes made when her allure required her to move on.
My cheeks have not lived the life of my Nana’s. My mother very much disapproved of her ‘antics’. I was directed, encouraged and obediently followed a different path.
But a small child knows nothing of such adult stuff . Kissing a soft cheek that smells faintly of smoke, good cosmetics and a gin and tonic was a safe and exotic harbour for me.
I was aghast when my own wrinkles were laid bare by the new mirror but also charmed that in some small way my grandmother had returned to me.
My mum and her mum ( in the doorway of her pub) and unknown woman.
Google is a funny old thing. The pub my grandparents ran is long gone and has changed from the robust name of the Red Cow to the rather generically cute Daisy Cottage.
Google found an old Christmas card sent by the publicans.
12 Days of Sunshine. Spring has not been this good since the first Covid lockdown of 2020. A lot of water has flowed since those days of uncertainty and impending sadness. If I could pick one good thing, one great thing actually, of the whole Covid debacle. It would be the formation of ‘Bobbers’ our cold water, sea swimming clan of interconnected humans. Not a week passes without a chilly dip in Firestone Bay.
The tide and the currents were not our friends yesterday, but the Royal Navy ship HMS Sutherland, the Navy’s fastest ship, cut through our bay in a way that we could not.
WIP H.M.S Surherland
The thing that keeps us safe from peril in this sea is the one thing that I have yet to add to these two pictures. And yet it is the marker of achievement for a ‘good’ bob.
Getting to the first buoy. One of three that string the boundary of our swimming zone. We do our thing on the coastal side of the buoys and the Navy, and all other nautical traffic, stay on the island side of the buoys.
The buoy needs painting in a way that it will be obvious in these two pictures. A tiny project for today. But for now I just stuck the two buoyless pictures together. It works for me
Yesterday I perfected the art of painting a bad watercolour, a skill that goes alongside taking a bad photograph for my hybrid print/image making project.
After I have digitally processed my 3 poor photographs and stuck them together I remove any ugly or unnecessary marks and features. Then I paint a water colour, badly, to add the texture back into the finished images. And Voila!
I have had a few bubbling ideas for an upcoming exhibition. Ideas are one thing but they can be tricksy things, soon enough something will come along to whip the ideas into shape. I have known for a while that an exhibition to celebrate JMW Turners birth, 250 years ago was coming up.
As I have lived, off and on, in the Tamar Valley for 35 years. I have always been aware of the artist’s relationship with this location.
Taking Turner and the Tamar Valley as inspiration is quite a daunting thought. Last week I narrowed down my thinking to two Turner Tropes. Mist and red daubs.
This week I received the information sheet.
Some of my ideas fit the brief, others don’t.
A sensible woman would write down everything important and only allow her creative thoughts to meander along the paths set out by the information sheet.
On this occasion the sensible woman will prevail.
Some of my creative time will be spent creating a schedule, a work list and some deadlines. Oh how drear!
For now though, turquoise sea/ river mist and some red daubs.
This peaceful picture was the product of concatenation. So much unrelated stuff came together. There were flurries of noisy activity, to-do lists and then a sailboat with red sails.
No sooner had one art exhibition finished than the next one peeped over the horizon.
Yesterday was actually an admin day with lists and agenda’s to be compiled and emails written. Alongside some being on hand to give access to some tree surgeons at a tennis club I do some work for.
So while my head was full of mundane stuff my other head wanted to create art in homage to Turner!
There was a cacophony of garden hardware, mowers, scarifiers and arboricultural machines, chainsaws and branch shredders. And just like that a small sailboat sailed past wearing red sails.
The noise and niff naff of the day wasn’t silenced but just moved out of focus for the few minutes this sweet little boat sailed past.
Whenever I look out over this patch of sea I think about the 600 known shipwrecks that are under this stretch of water and the floral tributes and ashes that are regularly set free on this coast.
All of this fed into my current, since yesterday, work in progress.
The location has been anonymised and the reality significantly altered but this will be the foundation of a picture called Crossing the Bar
Which led, of course to Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
And then with the serendipity of Dr Google to The Spooky Men.
And that my friends is how a day that started with paperwork and chainsaws ended with deep and sonorous harmonies.
If you never click on any links I share on these blogs just do it this one time. Your ears will thank you for it. Meanwhile back to the work in progress.
I am not much of a repeat reader. If I reread a book it is often circumstantial rather than a choice. Book Club is a good source of a re-read but with the added benefits of being able to talk with a group of fascinating people about the book. This last month I read the book club book twice and I had also read it a few years ago. 3 times for a book I consider to be not worth reading. I probably didn’t finish it the first time. I didn’t plan to give it such diligence this month but after the first read I researched the reviews from when it was first published and gave it a skim-read second/third go.
I am an ardent reader for pleasure. The more I read this book the more I took from it, but pleasure was not something extracted on any one of my three adventures between its covers.
I feel I have failed by not thinking that this book is an insightful and fitting final novel by a great writer. But in truth this is not her final novel. She didn’t finish it and her hastily written manuscripts fueled by end-of-life medications were assembled by her much respected editor. Would she have sent it out in that form to her adoring public?
Could it ever be accurately judged as it was published after her death. Once one critic, from an unreliable cohort, mostly white men, had said it was her masterpiece ( mistresspiece) could anyone have disagreed?
Much better to read this article and the books mentioned. Written a day after her death the article mentions my personal favourite The Birthday Boys about Scott , a local Plymouth hero. But read by me long before I lived here.
I am going to read it again now. I suppose despite what I said earlier I am a re-reader. Just not over and over again. Life is too short!
If you could be a character from a book or film, who would you be? Why?
I think I would be the character or role that might be nominated for Best Supporting Actor. I think they always seem a little more interesting and perhaps better written than the lead roles. There is also a good chance that your character survives for most of the narrative. I like survival and longevity.
Having had a week of really interesting conversations with artists and art lovers at an exhibition for the last week. I am certain the book or film would need to be literary or arty. I don’t think I have action or thriller in my bones, although they are genres I can enjoy.
If this question was, what plant would you be? The answer would always be a border perennial, by the sea.
Waking up to the last day of the Spring Exhibition at Ocean Studios in the Royal William Yard, Plymouth. Megan Hall’s Sea swimming print sets the tone for the last blog of the exhibition. Today we are chasing orange. From the bitter cold of a dip in the sea to the gentle warmth of a barn in the countryside. Maya Sturtridge makes a little orange go a long way.
A garden image leads us to the garden studio of the artist, who created the last image of orange and ends the last of these Exhibition inspired blogs.
Last but not least in any sense. All of the paperwork and record keeping admin for this exhibition was created by Lynne Saunders. It worked like a dream.
Lynne’s Studio is called Figtreeshedstudio. Set in the countryside of the Tamar Valley. Her orange abstract is The End.
With a gallery roof that looks like this and a sunbeam catching my glass of Prosecco.
The only possible colour to chase is Aqua, hard to define. Is it blue or is it green. Does it have to have a watery element or can it feel substantial?
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