Category: Art for sale

#854 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Art for sale, Serendipity1 Comment
©Peter Ursem

What is your favorite type of weather?

You might not think that a lovely old chair and my favourite type of weather are connected. But they both occupy liminal space in my mind.

Derived from the Latin word “limen” which means “threshold,” liminal space is a concept that may sound unfamiliar, but it’s something you’ve likely experienced in your daily life.
Liminal space can best be described as going through a change or going from place to place—from one thing to the next.

I like the weather of May and September. Slightly changeable  with the chance of moderate warmth and no need for too many layers of clothing

Perfection would be twenty minutes  in a chair like this. With a small mug of black coffee or a cup of tea. Sat at an open french window overlooking the sea or at a garden that is not screaming for attention.

A chair like this in gently warm weather would encourage me to read or listen to the radio or a podcast. Or natter. This is not the time or space for TV or devices.Possibly something gently productive like sketching or crochet. Or maybe I could just be. Twenty minutes of not much in particular.

©Peter Ursem

Peter Ursem is currently showing work at Ocean Studios in Plymouth.

#854 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Art for sale, Drawn to the Valley, Drawn To The Valley Artists1 Comment

Who was your most influential teacher? Why?

Too many to mention but sometimes the most influential teacher of the moment is the last person I spoke to. Always so much to learn from others. Particularly this week as I have curated a Print Exhibition in a Gallery Cafe.

Here it is, on the morning after the night before. Spic and span and ready for the coffee and art-loving public to flood in.

Last night was a hubub of bubbles, and artists/printers/art- lovers having ernest, fascinating and sometimes wildly inappropriate conversations.

What did I learn last night?

That if I just shortened my beads they would sit better. They do.

#853 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Art for saleLeave a comment

Blog readers. I left you hanging, while I was hanging.

A full day of receiving , unwrapping and hanging prints at Ocean Studios for the Drawn to Print exhibition that runs from this evening until Easter Sunday. Gorgeous nuggets of colour and some striking monotones.

Two racks of print bargains on washing lines.

Mounted but unframed works all arranged by four artists who worked through the day to be ready for the Private View tonight.

As the exhibition runs through the Easter break it would have been foolish not to have one rabbit available. Ours does not know the words fluffy or cute.

©Debs Bobber

His axe is tipped with real gold. Cutting down the infection risk when he catches the small children who steal his eggs.

#839 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Art for sale, Serendipity1 Comment

Playing the parking lotto got me a big win yesterday. But I have to play against my better judgement. Normally I am an early bird shopper, but if I need to park in the old part of the city the parking charges work against me. Arrival before 9 pm and the meters are still on the overnight tariff. Rather expensive. Arrive soon after 9, and everyone is in a parking mood. The best plan is to arrive mid-morning after the first wave of early birds is done. I am an early bird, leaving things until mid-morning is not my thing.

Yesterday at 11 am I got a two hour, FREE, parking space next to the printers who were printing my C*****mas cards. Two hours free for a five minute job is a fabulous achievement. I was giddy with excitement. Even better I had done all the domestic admin prior to my arrival. What a gift.Time on my hands with no ticking meter. The sun was out and the dogs needed a walk.

Which took me to a Plymouth institution for lunch. Cap’n Jasper’s and their famous 1970’s smoked glass mugs.

The mugs disappeared for so long after Covid, I worried that they had been replaced forever by something less iconic. A twenty pence deposit is returned when you take the mug back. Albert gave me a look and the 20 pence was not returned to my pocket.

Tea finished.

And it was time for the main event. A bacon butty with fried onions.

An unexpected lunch out and still an hour of free parking left. I figured I could walk to my next planned destination, an art materials shop and the library. The sun was out, it was a bit of a walk, but both of the destination tasks were quick.

Back to the car with five minutes to spare…

The parking spot was only actually free for an hour. Who’s the idiot now.

But I had not been caught.

Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! * I chortled in my joy.

I had saved £3.60 and spent £20, 2 hours of unexpected pleasure in the sun. A lovely bit of old boat on the way.

And still some afternoon printing achieved.

* words of celebration from Jabberwocky by Lewis Carol.

#837 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Art for sale, SerendipityLeave a comment

How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success?

I failed to write an early blog today, hopefully this apparent failure will set me up for later success, now, as I gather my words. Blogging at a snails pace I believe. There are many reasons I should have got my printing on the go more than a month before the exhibition opens. Today is a case in point. Real life still goes on, cars and vans need servicing and M.O.T’s. Life admin needs attending to and dogs need walking. Then the sun popped up in the studio and printing embellishment needed to be embellished.

Some embellishment is just a bit of type writing and a little bit of twinkle.

My mother would be ashamed,  she was a very accomplished typist. Speed and accuracy. I am slow and inaccurate. Good enough in the digital world of a laptop but truly I have sausage fingers on my old typewriter. Sometimes I forget the gap between words. Either a whole mistress piece goes in the bin or I have to hope that people are charmed by my typos.

#833 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Art for sale3 Comments
Gelli print, direct print and watercolour.

Do you believe in fate/destiny?

March is here. My fate or destiny for the day is set. The first sea swim of the new month awaits. I have spent the week mistressing* a new printing technique. Gelli printing. My shoulders are tight from concentration and need the morning swim. I wouldn’t be in this tight time constraint with tight shoulders if I had used the last 18 months wisely. I hadn’t printed since Art School when I planned and curated a print exhibition in a local gallery.  In the summer of 2022. The printers I worked with were inspirational and I vowed to take up printing, to be well prepared when the next exhibition happened. I am rubbish at long deadlines. A sensible woman would have done printing courses. Not me! I did a watercolour course and fell back in love with the serendipity and subtlety of pigment in water. I do have a print course booked in two weeks, exactly one week before the exhibition. Meanwhile I am trying to invent a method that involves printing and watercolour. Madness.

This morning a swimming friend sent me the video at the end of the blog. Oh dear!!! My tight shoulders got an early work out as I chuckled and was appalled. I have used those smug phrases.

” I swim all year actually “

Even worse for me, in a distant life I moved from London to Brighton

” Well, Hove, actually” **

In other printing news, next year’s Christmas cards are with the printers. Last use of the C word until the other side of Autumn.

Happy St Davids Day, enjoy the vid.

* I like to rehabilitate the word ‘Mistress’ from its philandering connotations. I don’t need to master anything I am a woman trying to create a mistresspiece.

** ‘Hove actually’ is another, possibly smug, statement known to all who live or have lived on the South Coast.

#827 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Art for sale, Plymouth Sound1 Comment

I am a mucky watercolour painter. I am also a procrastinator, so sometimes I see disaster as a lovely excuse for a tidy-up.  Yesterday afternoon I discovered something messy had occurred in my watercolour storage box. Despite needing to get on with a painting I set about resolving my disaster. Meanwhile, outside, my home city of Plymouth was dealing with a much more serious potential disaster.

BBC News – Plymouth WW2 bomb found in a garden, detonated at sea. Read link below.


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-68385962

Not an everyday driving job. ©Cyberheritage

The outdoor potential disaster had given me a few daylight hours to start a new painting. All waterfront areas were closed to the public, and many local roads. No trains, busses or ferries. The perfect excuse.

Paints all tidied up. My models were arranged.

And I began the painstaking task of painting and printing a cup of mint tea resting on a bistro table, standing on a tiled floor.

I think there is a delicious irony in painting a cup of calming mint tea; while not 500 yards from my home a bomb weighing over 1,000 pounds or 500kg is being towed out to sea.

Daylight failed me, eventually and I have not managed to finish. Just the dregs of the tea have been painted into the cup. Two disasters resolved successfully.

One day later and the job is done.

#825 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Art for sale, ExhibitionsLeave a comment
©theoldmortuary

What bores you?

I have no idea what bores me. I seem to have made it my life ambition to avoid boredom. I wonder if that is just the way some people are. The painting above is hot off the press and depicts clothes dropped on a bathroom floor. Black jeans, blue jumper and an off white silk shirt. It is possible that a woman who could spend 3 hours doing such a painting maybe has no grip on boredom and really should not be commenting.

The technical challenges of painting such a dull subject were fascinating and kept me busy planning how to go about it.

The first stage was to paint the shadows that would fall on the tiles, then print the tiles but masking off the area that would be the clothes.

Have I bored you yet?

Clothes dropped on a bathroom floor. Who would ever choose to paint such a thing?

On a less boring note my greetings cards for an upcoming exhibition have just been printed. I am pleased with the way they look.

#680 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn archive, art, Art for sale, Serendipity1 Comment
Autumn in an Arsenic Mine

Facebook Timehop keeps coming up with old friends. Not the human sort but artwork that I have entered into exhibitions and then sold. October is traditionally the beginning of my artistic hibernation. Last exhibitions have been entered and the unsold works return to the studio. My work is not particularly gift-worthy so unlike many artists my exhibiting season does not extend towards Christmas.

I have got into the habit of having an experimental phase for a few months from November until February and then I knuckle down to create some new pieces to replace those that have sold the previous year. This year has been a little different in that some large works that had been leased/ loaned to a company that had huge white walls, were returned to me when the company moved locations. The last one of these pieces was sold last week.

Deadheading

I miss paintings when they are gone. Just as dog breeders probably miss puppies.

The one below was given a high gloss resin coating so the farewell picture also features a self portrait of the artist. (Me)

Dive

As paintings are sold and others return the studio gets a bit of a reshuffle. I’m not entirely sure how a reshuffle differs from a tidy up but this year there is a distinct difference. The tidy up meant I completely lost two monoprints that have an interested buyer. The reshuffle of this week has found those monoprints and an original watercolour which I need to make some cards.

Nearly there trees.

One more original to find. Pumpkins also needs to be turned into cards but somewhere between the tidy up and the reshuffle he has gone missing. So missing that there is not even a photograph!

In contrast to these pictures my experiments are quite different and may never see an exhibition. Yesterday I painted Storm Agnes in Tranquility Bay. A slightly strange mix of reality and imagination, but that is the point of experimentation.

Storm Agnes in Tranquility Bay.

It does me good to reconnect with sold pieces of art. I had almost decided to stop painting bigger pieces as they are so difficult to store, but seeing these has galvanised me into future action on bigger canvases. They, at least, never go missing.

#686 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Art for saleLeave a comment

Morning clouds this morning. Followed swiftly by a rainbow.

There was just a hint of a double, but one rainbow or two they were uncomfortably close to the parking restriction lines. Parking fines certainly are a pot of gold for councils so perhaps the rainbow was in exactly the right place.

Exactly the right place was also the location of this picture.

It found a new forever home yesterday. After posing in a medieval entrance hall for a week it has been awarded the red dot of a sold piece of original art. Exactly the right place. Lucky me.