You can tell a lot about a person by the way they hug.
For the next couple of months hugging is the loose starting point for my quick sketches. I don’t really know where the sketches will lead.
Hugging dropped out of favour during the pandemic and is only now rising, Phoenix like, from the still glowing embers of the new endemic era.
Have our hugging habits changed significantly. Will some people slink back away from the sensation of physical touch and isolate themselves forever from the causal embrace?
Others who have previously had a hidden,but effective, force field resisting hugs may decide that now is time to embrace their fellow humans in a way they never did.
I have always been a keen observer and practitioner of the hug. Watching it slowly return into the normal hurly burly of life is a rare opportunity to watch a human interaction re-establish itself.
Sketching and pondering hugs is proving to be an interesting project even if I have no idea where it is going.
The new etiquette of the social hug. It’s a jungle out there.
Sunset to start the day! @theoldmortuary has not gone completely mad. I wanted to ponder the soft pinks and oranges of May. The pink on the horizon of last nights sunset and the orange of the artificial lights illuminating the Royal William Yard.
My eye was caught by a scruffy little Geum in the garden centre earlier in the week.
There were much showier plants of late spring to look at but this one seemed to reflect the mood of the day more accurately. I am also a bit more aware of flowers in the softer pink spectrum since I did a colour mixing painting course. One of the pictures in yesterdays blog featured a painting by Beryl Cook that featured a silk dress in these soft colours.
I’ve finished the course now but haven’t quite managed, yet, to fully utilise these soft colours in my own compositions. But my awareness in the last few weeks makes me think again that I need to give soft orange/pinks a proper go.
These colours were highlighted in the colour course, that I was doing recently, to be deeply embedded in my memory archives, although had I considered these shades even six months ago I would have dismissed them as my least favourite and now I seem to be, subliminally, seeking them out. I suppose that is the point, of course, of courses, to make me think. I just never expected to think pink. Now I just need to find a way to use it.
One more sunset with a hint of pink to kick off Monday!
Nearly one year on from the house move and the work room is ready for business. Business for Hugo and Lola means an empty sofa each. For me it means clear desk space.
At 10:00 we were all ready for the first Zoom of the day. The dogs were already asleep on their chosen sofas and I had the lap top set in such a position that my head and shoulders could be at the meeting but my hands could be doing ‘other stuff’
Disaster struck, nothing I could do on any platform could get me into the meeting. This is the first time in over two years that Zoom has failed me. I have often wished it to fail but I’m sure I am not alone in that. With my vote handed over to some one who was actually in the room. I set about using the free two hours doing actual work for the organisation. This meant that the ‘other’ stuff had to wait until the evening.
And the dogs could take themselves off mute, or asleep as they call it.
For full disclosure, having shown you a tidy workroom. I have to admit that there is still a load of stuff that needs sorting in the garage, still. When working on the new shelves for the work room I needed to store some old shelves in the garage. I didnt have enough woman moments to make a space in the garage. I decided to deploy a South London trick and put the shelves outside the front of the house with a ‘free, help yourself’ sign and a message on our local residents Facebook page. Recycling at its finest, they were gone within two hours. To return to the failed Zoom meeting, the slight discombobulation of the fixed event of the morning becoming unfixed seemed to expand time for the whole day. I had already saved my self an hour and a half of travel by not attending in person and I worked solidly through the meeting time and stayed in touch with Whatsapp. Loads of extra jobs got done. The only casualty of the day was the ‘other stuff’ that my hands would have been doing while I was in the meeting. That remains unfinished even though I was still at it until the last dog walk of the day.
I have a little store of pre-prepared pages that I can take out with me when I know I am going out for a natter and some creativity. Sometimes, like this, one just an outline of some shapes. The destination of these watercolour doodles is never certain. I had a vague theme in mind but doodles like daily blogs tend to have a mind of their own. I suppose in art I am the opposite of a perfectionist, this may also be my my life planning style too. I like to allow enough space in life and in my creations for serendipity, for happy accidents, for the joy of whimsy. In common with perfectionists and every other living thing I also suffer from the bad things life can throw at an individual. I have found, however, serendipity, happy accidents , whimsy, and the love and friendship of some wonderful people and animals pulls me out of the mire of life in the most beautiful ways. Enjoy your long weekend wherever you are.
There has been an abrupt cold weather change this week. The sun is out but the temperature is decidedly chilly. Goodness knows what the sea is doing, from a distance in the early evening it appears to be very dark in colour. Closer up during a bobbing session on Wednesday the bay was this gorgeous teal colour. Bobbers can have lively imaginations about the sea creatures they can see when the water looks like this.
This week I’ve started work on a longstanding commission for some paintings of things that are actually in the sea.
My starting point is Mackerel.
Three jolly mackerel posed in the bright sunlight this week.It was so cold they didnt thaw out at all during the half hour posing session. Natural sunlight brought out all the colour on their backs and the subtle iredescence of their bellies.
It must be amazing to sail close to shoals of mackerel. I find them a really beautiful subject to photograph and paint. But being near them alive and swimming must be really special.
For this commission mackerel are going to pose on the fishmongers paper they arrived in. The crumples and creases make some really interesting shapes on a neutral background when lit by sharp morning light.
Enough of fishy posing and pontificating we are nearly at the weekend, we have arrived in April and here the sun is shining. Happy Friday, take care with cunning April Fool jokes, my early morning wake up by Alexa was the first to catch me out this morning. Enjoy the weekend.
Blogwise it is going to be a quiet patch for the next few days.
Lola has had a hysterectomy and is advised to take life gently for the next two weeks. No walks longer than ten to fifteen minutes. No giddy excitements. This was a planned procedure so I had stored up quite a few non exciting projects to be completed at home.
This morning I bought some mackerel, mackerel models if you like, for a longstanding commission and a portrait exhibition later in the year.
Plymouth Market has an excellent fishmonger with gorgeous fish straight from the fish market.
I had no qualms asking for three of the prettiest mackerel for posing reasons. The mackerel pose, not me.
I also asked for fish heads to paint actual fish face portraits but I need to go back later in the day for that.
Obviously for continuity of dog care it was a very quick nip into the market but even a quick nip created a ponder, one created entirely from my own ignorance.
I love a market, but snobbishly or for whatever reason, foreign or London markets really float my boat. Meanwhile my local market gets barely a thought. Well more fool me. I do know that Plymouth Market is an architectural gem and I do go there reasonably often but I have never noticed these two pieces of wall art before.
The bottom one even features by name one of my favourite London Markets. Spitalfields.
Now of course I need to return to the market and research the artist!
So for my next visit, fish heads and Art History, who knew caring for a post surgery dog could be quite so stimulating!
Feeling like a fish out of water is a common feeling when considering Social Media. Like most people I was lured and then fell headlong into Facebook and Instagram when they first launched. Then by complete accident I became responsible for the ‘ public’ Social Media face of a large art group in London. In that curious way that humans do I became known as an amateur expert, long before Social Media management became an actual job that people learned. I’ve always thought that in group situations you either chose someone for a job because they put themselves forward for it, their ego emblazoned on their foreheads like an accurate pigeon strike.
Others, like me, get chosen, almost by accident because we have a tiny nugget of experience and no one else really wants to do it. Social Media was never part of my actual day job. In 14 years I’ve done some SM learning but in reality I remain a dabbler while Social Media has marched on gathering glossy Social Media managers, influencers and all sorts of other job titles that baffle anyone in the real world.
This week I popped my amateur and now Plymouth based Social Media head out into the real world of Social Media and attended courses provided by Cosmic.
My amateur head feels less amateur now. My digital hand has been held, first in a group and second in a one2one session by a lovely man called Adrian. I know what I’m doing OK at, I also know where I am falling a little short. Adrian has placed his digital hand on my virtual back and pushed me well and truly out of my comfort zone. Personalities need to be revealed, videos need to be created. Tutorials need to be created….
What I learn for an art group might bleed into my blog life. You have been warned! Two tiny videos follow that definately show that I am a dabbler by nature. The unboxing videos of a new set of paints all perfect and glossy and a three month old tin with very clear signs of dabbling.
I’ve just managed to finish another visual/aural/real world and sensation mind map. This one created at dawn on the Vernal equinox on the Thames at Pangbourne. Since learning this technique on a recent course with Tansy Hargan I am beginning to find this colour mixing, meditative shape creating style really useful for making notes of the 3d experience of outdoor painting.
These were my quick notes.
And here they are together.
Far from being a completely perfect landscape this painting expresses the highlights and my irritation at sharing the early morning peace with a man still drinking from the night before. Almost the highest high point was the dawn chorus, something that accompanied me from the camper van down to the flood meadows on the banks of the Thames. The pinky gold colours are a representation of that sublime early morning sound of birds waking up and singing. Bird song filled the air and enveloped everything I painted. Really the inebriated man takes rather too much of the image, but in truth he really pissed me off.
Not because he was drunk, he was just a bit too much in my face, perching on ‘my’ bench when there were ten others available, asking stupid questions and scuffing his over white trainers in the dust beneath the bench. I’m sure he had no malign intent. The same cannot be said for the swan who approached for snacks, but the inebriated man skipped off on uncertain feet as the hungry chap approached, so a hungry swan became a good thing.
Water colours do not appear on a swans ideal diet so he, just like the drunk, waddled off. Leaving me at last to the pastoral scene that I had got up so early for.
Spring is finally here, it was good to be up early to see it arrive.
Sunday already in what has been an unusual week. We should be just returning from a city break in Spain. However our new passports failed to arrive, we had both planned for this unlikely event by making, but not discussing, Plan B’s. Mine was to take a city break in Britain, Hannahs was to decorate the spare bedroom . Hannahs Plan B won the vote which made for an unusual week because I was able to attend two meetings that I had sent my apologies for.
The book club meeting had the potential to be a little awkward as I had not read the book as I had not anticipated being there. Fate however was very kind to me. As I arrived people were unusually standing outside the venue and looked very pleased to see me. Mistakenly they all thought I had the key. Since I knew I shouldn’t be there, I felt smugly confident that I was not the key holder. I joined them outside and we all looked expectantly at the next arrival who surely must have the key. Once we were all there, it was plain the key was missing in action. Book Club was officially cancelled. What are the chances of that! I didnt have to admit to not having read the book. The key was later found in someone’s book bag.
Meanwhile I was hatching a virus, not something you want to take on a holiday. More Novid than Covid I could still go about daily life and we sourced stuff for the redecoration of the spare room. Largely trying to re-use, re-purpose or recycle. We did one trip to Ikea for some hanging rails and one trip to the local Scrap store for fabrics. We will finish the room later today so pictures tomorrow.
My other meeting was a gathering of artists to natter, drink coffee and plan for future exhibitions. Artists were encouraged to take a small piece of work with us to do whilst nattering.
For a while I am sticking with the meditative mark making and colour mixing that is being taught on the course I am doing. Even in the midst of great quality conversations I found it was quite easy to ‘doodle’ with colour and shapes. The top picture is the whole thing. I decided to depict the meeting in colour. The central motif was my coffee cup full of gorgeous multi-flavoured black coffee.
Around the coffee cup I doodled the twelve attending people. 11 artists and one art lover. The art lover, a lovely man called Nick was depicted slightly differently from the artists , I just used two colours for his part of the picture.
Everyone else got more shades of colour and were a little more entwined depicting exchanging of ideas. Some people get larger segments than others to denote that in any meeting you cant always talk equally to everyone.
With just a little digital tweaking I have turned the whole thing into something quite different. I have superimposed the black and white image over the coloured version. I always make a digital black and white copy of any picture, it helps me assess colour balance and tonal changes before the work is finished. I can’t quite work out if this image expresses the energy of the meeting, or, indeed, the exhausting elements of this weeks Novid *virus.
* Novid , a nasty old virus that consistently tests negative for Covid-19
Today was my last shift at The Box being a room steward for the Songlines Exhibition. There are still 4 more days to visit, for those of you who live locally, as the exhibition actually finishes on Sunday. Then all these wonderful paintings will be crated up for their journey to Berlin. I’ve pondered a good bit on what to write about this exhibition. Not feeling quite able to live up to the words of many very knowledgeable art critics or indeed the wise words of Dame Mary Beard, I’ve decided just to give my thumbnail response.
Songlines is a cross cultural tale, both ancient and modern, of womens care and responsibility to one another when faced with predatory male behaviour. It is a #metoo story handed down for thousands of years, woman to woman. The villain of these stories is a bad bad man. Songlines as presented here skims on some of the brutality and the accompanying texts are lighter in mood than the true depravity of the situations the women in the stories endured. All of the exhibition can be viewed by adults and children and enjoyed simply for the artwork, with or without,an age appropriate understanding of the story. But viewing all the paintings ,videos, and 3d sculptures leaves no one in any doubt of the way these stories unfold and that there will be no happy ending. For all that this collection of Australian indigenous art is a wonderful blast of colour and form, there is enough to keep most people occupied and interested for a whole day with appropriate rest and nattering stops. Throughout the exhibition the visitor is kept in touch with the artists who created the work and the portion of the exhibition which is held in the University gallery recreates the art hubs where these works were created.
Yesterday, among the hundreds of visitors, I pondered which piece of art I would miss most and came up with two choices that could easily be acommodated in my own home were I to become an International art thief. I don’t actually have the wall space for my favourite paintings.
Shape shifting vases.Poker work Coolamon
Since I have zero talent for crime, no theft occured.
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