Category: art

#1261 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Serendipity2 Comments
Work in Progress
©theoldmortuary

For many, Easter is a four day weekend. Thursday evening seems just a little more relaxed than normal in anticipation. But two days of great weather have given way to a deluge. Luckily I caught sight of a group of paddleboarders at high tide and sunset. When the weather was being kinder

I took one of my ‘bad’ photographs and,  inspired by my puddle photograph of yesterday. I created an image with similar bold colours but enhanced the softness  of colour reflected in water.

I decided to slightly change the location and relative size of the paddleboarders. I will tinker with them some more over the next few days.

I suspect that this will be my image of Easter 2025 as I tweak it  into submission, in both senses of the word, ready for an exhibition in May.

As an aside to all this, my workspace is finally finished. It has taken us 6 months to find exactly the second hand furniture we needed to store regular life and art materials. We never intended bright pink to be an accent colour but an old sari is the perfect cover up for works in progress on the table, and my lovely old typewriter is just the perfect shade of beige.

Even as I write the words  ‘perfect shade of beige’ I realise that this tidy work space is another piece of great procrastination. I need to set to and get on with the work for the Turner Exhibition at the end of May. But while it was in a tidy pristine state yesterday I sat and filled in the application form on line. When I was done, not a thing was out of place.

It didn’t last.

#1260 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Serendipity1 Comment

Describe a decision you made in the past that helped you learn or grow.

Sometimes the prompts from my blog hosts are interesting and can feed into an interesting ponder. Most of the time they are just of no interest to me, so are swiftly scrolled past. Occasionally one like this holds no interest but there is a glimmer of interest in the  irritation I feel at the absurdity of the question.

Surely the result of every decision made,big or small, good or bad creates learning and growth. This is why we only tend to stub our baby toes once in a given location.

I took this picture yesterday not for the graffiti particularly but because of the softness of the vivid colours in the puddle.

Puddle pictures are one of my favourite things when they are beautiful. It is just that muddy/dirty puddles are the norm.

I wanted to get this vibrancy into one of my seascapes for the upcoming Turner exhibition. This puddle set me thinking, the results of that thinking might appear any time soon. Or perhaps they won’t.

Decisions, decisions, learning and growing…

Or maybe not.

#1253 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Serendipity1 Comment
Mist and the Tidal Pool, Stonehouse.

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.

©theoldmortuary

#1252 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Concatenation, Serendipity1 Comment
© theoldmortuary Work in progress

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.

https://spookymen.com/a-history-of-the-spooky-men/?v=7885444af42e

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.

And I am back to a Spookyman playlist.

#1214 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art1 Comment

Starting with my palm tree I drew a simple sketch on watercolour paper.Then traced it and made a copy on more water colour paper.

Then I photographed the first painting as each colour was applied.

And finally made lines and cross hatch to improve the depth.

The second painting was much simpler and quicker. I just painted everything in its corresponding complimentary colour.

Then the fun of using all the techniques I have been practicing this month double and sometimes treble exposing photographs. But this time the photographs are of quickly rendered water colour paintings.

Two clear favourites emerged after an afternoon’s digital tinkering.

#2
#1

So much serendipity is built into these images. #1 narrowly wins because I love the sharp shadows that have been created by being off-registered. The image suggests a hot summers day.

#2 more perfectly aligned is like a different time of day.

I have two painting days scheduled for this week. I think the next one will be spent doing either a portrait or a nude. All that from a potted palm in February.

And saving the most exciting fact until last. The sunshine made its way into the studio for several hours today. That is certainly a sign of the ‘S’ word creeping up behind late winter.

#1213 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Serendipity3 Comments

Far too late in February I have realised that I usually enroll on a creative course of some sort. Three years ago it was a mindful watercolour course with Tansy Horgan which really shook up my way of working with colour.

https://tansyhargan.bigcartel.com/category/in-person-courses

At the time I was working at an art gallery showing an amazing exhibition called Songlines featuring the work of Indigenous   First Nation artists from Australia.

https://www.nma.gov.au/exhibitions/songlines-touring

©theoldmortuary

This was an abstract image inspired by my last day stewarding at the exhibition, created to express what I had learnt and felt about the experience of being submerged in the art of a significantly different culture.

I realised this morning that both learning mindful colour mixing with Tansy Horgan and being drenched in the colours and mark making of  Indiginous Australians has informed my recent hobby of digitally altering  deliberately dull and uninteresting photographs

So much so that I have not painted since Christmas.

I have had a painting project bubbling in my head for some time.

It’s too late now to register for a course in what is left of February. Time to get my bubbling project down on paper and resolve to be better organised next Winter.

©theoldmortuary

For now the Songlines painting combined with the rainy palm tree in my back yard.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18jx1HKCKe/

#1194 the oldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, PhotographsLeave a comment

I picked up this postcard at The Archaeology Museum (Acropolis)  of Athens in early autumn.

I’ve added the heart because it has become a favourite image. A girl standing with her dad.

I am fairly certain I don’t have a similar image of myself with my dad. Not for any estrangement or complex family dynamics, but because in our family my dad was the photographer and therefore never in pictures.

This is an almost unimaginable concept in a world where smartphones allow everyone to be a photographer.

In our spare room there is a big blue Ikea bag of family albums to be gone through before I put them back up in the roof. I can’t say I hold out much hope of finding a father-daughter picture   of us together until I was in my teens.

In pondering and googling this thought I found a really interesting article which I have shared below.

https://www.itstartswithadam.com/blog/what-smartphones-have-done-to-photography-and-our-capacity-to-look#:~:text=Smartphones%20have%20made%20photographs%20fluid,does%20the%20remembering%20for%20us

And just like that I have found a long form blog about artiness that I really enjoy. I like New World art writing for the same reason that New World wines are so interesting. No snobbishness, less entitled twattery.

Pondering and googling and a day walking in the sun.

It makes me think and that is always a good thing.

#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.

#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.

#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.