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.

#1173 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn abstract photography, art2 Comments
Drakes Island on a dull day.

Cold water swimming and creativity. Where or what is the buzz?

Cold water swimming is repetitive and challenging in my chosen location. No matter what I am stuck with, a cold water dip brings clarity. Since this is about creativity I can share a very recent light-bulb moment.

I was away in Penzance with a number of people for whom the physics of medical imaging is something they could natter about endlessly.

Some of us went swimming in Mounts Bay on a dull, cold, grey day.  After dipping in the sea I found a naturally occurring rock  pool that was big enough and deep enough to hold a whole human .

I could gaze out to St Michaels Mount and appreciate the beauty and bleakness of a winter day. Knowing that my photographs would be lacking a little interest. My light bulb moment arrived as my core temperature dropped.

I could manipulate the image just as I would an ultrasound, X-ray, C.T or M.R.I image. And then stick the images together using a reference point. In this case the island of St Michaels mount.

Taking to the Sky, Mounts Bay.

My own home cold water swimming spot has its own island that I can use as a reference point.

Drakes Island on a dull Day

The buzz this morning was applying my Mounts Bay, medical imaging ideas to Drakes Island.

Poof!! I hear you say this is just photography. Where is the art in that?

But what is to stop me doing a water colour or many watercolours with a registering point and then photographing them and suprimposing.

An experiment for the next few days.

And that is what cold water swimming brings to creativity. A clear mind where new ideas flourish.

Drakes Island on a dull day.

#1172 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn SerendipityLeave a comment

Visits to Art Galleries and Museums are one of my life-long pleasures. I really loved my visit to Penlee House and I am sharing the Bloomberg Connects QR code to explore the Galleries for yourselves.

This blog is more trivial than an appreciation of a really great gallery.

The artist responsible for the rainy promenade picture is Norman Garstin, his daughter Alethea was also an artist.

It was this fact that jumped out at me.

Many years ago when I was first pregnant my mum had lent me one of her guilty secret novels. Guilty secret, because she didn’t always read great or worthy books. She often read books that she described as ‘ pulpy kidney novels’.

The heroine of this fiction book was a talented artist called Alathea Heron.

I have no idea if the author deliberately chose two Cornwall based artists to create the name. Alethea Garstin and Patrick Heron.

Unusually for one of my mum’s pulpy kidney books this one was very readable.

My hormones were madly in a state of flux and I immediately thought I would call my possible foetus Alethea and that she would become a great artist.  At the time I was an obstetric ultrasonographer in Brighton and I quickly realised my foetus was a boy and the name Alethea dropped out of thought and mind until this week.

By the time I was pregnant with a daughter I was living in Cornwall and despite being very aware of Cornish artists, when I chose her a Cornish name Alethea did not cross my mind.

Which led me to a very trivial ponder. Do people carry over their name choices for each pregnancy. Should I have kept the name Alethea close to my heart until I actually had a daughter or is it entirely normal to discard the unused name and choose afresh for each pregnancy.

I suspect my daughter is very grateful for my fickle mind, her actual name is much more suited to her character.

This whole trivial ponder has just cost me 75 pence with free postage! The book was published 40 years ago but Abebooks had several. I wonder if the heroine will impress me as much as she did 39 years ago, or was it just hormones?

No Alethea or Alathea here.

#1171 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn abstract photography1 Comment
All detail stripped out. My start point image.

The Penzance days are done for January 2025. There has been a lot of actual pondering while my eyes and mind could settle on a distant horizon with St Michaels Mount a geograhical and visual reminder of reality.

The trip was always about pleasure and work. There has been much talk of how to make medical images the very best they can be. Often that is about optimising many shades of grey without creating artifact and false detail.

Cornwall in winter is often a study of 50,000 shades of greige. A colour that swoops and dips between grey and beige.

I have spent a little time applying medical image physics to my photographs . Altering them to suit my needs to create a false image of a real place using real images.

I won’t bore you with the details because it really would be very boring. These three pictures were taken in the space of 5 days. The registration point was that St Michaels Mount could be seen as I took all three pictures.

By double exposing 3 times using the horizon as my common point I have created a magical realism image where murmerating starlings join two kite surfers in the skies near St Michaels Mount. Banishing the greige.

Swoops and dips. ©theoldmortuary

Here is another one still a work in progress.

#1169 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Bobbing, Serendipity1 Comment

Monday morning with more murmuration. Really couldn’t help myself there. Although of course that was actually Sunday night. Here is a bright morning photo from Sunday too.

Bright dawn sunshine lights up a rust stained wall at our swimming zone.

We chose an area very similar to our home zone, with ladders and handrails to ease our way in and out.

Looks can be deceiving. This was not an easy location to get in, but it is the choice of local dippers.

Yesterday was a day of wrapping up warm and enjoying the smug sensation of a sea swim achieved early and a whole day left to warm up in the sunshine.

A pub roast dinner and a day of basking and walking in winter sunshine completed Sunday.

Morab Tropical Gardens

Let’s see how Monday shapes up.

#1168 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Bobbing2 Comments
The Rain it Raineth Every Day. Norman Garstin 1847-1926

Sometimes it feels as if this is true. William Shakespeare wrote the quote which is the title of this painting and the nearly true statement in Twelth Night. One of my favourite W.S plays.

A rainy day in Penzance. What to do?

A lot of enjoyable faffing about and dog walking in damp conditions and an afternoon trip to Penlee Gallery and Museum.  Which was a wonderful welcoming place.

And here is the serendipity of  live blogging.

The sun is out this morning, the Bobbers are up and the sea is exceptionally chilly.

No more arty faff. Just me and sunrise and my post swim plunge pool.

In my dreams the pool was a hot Jacuzzi.

#1167 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Holidays, Home and Away, Serendipity1 Comment

Here we are in an Airbnb in one of our favourite towns. Penzance in Cornwall. Part pleasure, part work, this trip is a brightener for January. As I washed up this morning I realised the universality of the Airbnb experience.

We have Airbnb’d around the world and the international common denominator is often furnishings and homewares from IKEA interspersed by local crafted items.

I realise for many people, this is a terrible travesty of consumerism, but I realised this morning that I find it to be comforting. Holding a hot drink in a familiar-looking mug makes me feel at home wherever I am. Just as I felt at home immediately in Soule and Marrakech with an IKEA mug in hand after a long journey into the heart of significantly different cities.

Local Art.

#1166 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Cornwall1 Comment

We have made tracks for the far Southwest. To the warmest place in England on this particular weekend. Part pleasure and part work commitment. A journey to Penzance and West Cornwall is always a pleasure in January. Even more of a pleasure because we caught a Starling murmeration.

No more words needed really.

https://videopress.com/v/iOTAzUTw?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&preloadContent=metadata&useAverageColor=true

 

#1165 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, SerendipityLeave a comment

Grumpy greige was banished by bright sunshine and a -1 degree temperature. The local ferry was caught in a sunbeam. Sunbeams bounced off windows as I walked to meet fellow artists at our regular monthly meetings.

The prevailing natter was predominantly about exhibitions in 2025. One of which I am fairly well prepared for and another that I am not at all prepared for.

I started a doodle as I talked which is the first time brush and paper have met one another in 2025.

Honestly sunshine and talking to other artists is the best way to spend a morning.

#1164 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity1 Comment

Three of my October pumpkins mingle with apples, grapes persimmon and tangerines from the festive season. This bowl was so pretty that I prioritised eating the fruit from other bowls, but now there is a gap, and the red surface of the plate is visible. Surely a sign that my mid-winter snacking is coming to an end. Persimmons were new to me, and I can’t say I will rush to buy them again.

The last packet of mince pies has been opened and the Christmas cake is down to a third of its original size. Christmas Day and New Years Day are 1/2 weeks in the past but festive themed snacking  will almost certainly last until the end of January. This is exactly how I like things to be. Midwinter is a time of snacking and reading Christmas books while real-life floods in to fill the gaps where festive used to be.

Meetings have crept back into my diary with plans to be made and decisions taken to shape the character of 2025.

Soon enough this red plate will go back into the cupboard of festive homewares. But in the shorter days of January, I still need a little bit of comfort and joy on the table.