That a pause, even for fifteen years is still a pause. This painting was started and paused 15 years ago when I was doing a painting course. It was painted using only my fingers. A technique I never tried again until this week when I realised what I needed to do to make it exhibition-ready.
The Wheelhouse proportions needed to be altered and the moon tweaked with copper leaf. Having tweaked the moon the ponies required a little tweakment and then with all that bling the shadows needed darkening and on and on it went. All the time using my finger tips! All well and good until they start to get sore and the top layer of skin is worn away. Really not a technique I ever need to use again. Useful if I ever need to enter the world of crimes created with two fingerprintless fingers, but really not so smart for operating my smartphone with its fingerprint recognition.
It reminded me to reflect, in a very self indulgent way, on the passing of winter and how as an ardent winterphobe I improved my attitude to my least liked season.
Reviewing things I realise that actually there are only three things I really dislike. January, constant rain, and short daylight hours. None of these things avoidable.
In December I am lifted by the run up to Christmas, festive lights and goodwill.
And I love February for its brevity and skippy nature as the days grow a little longer and Spring flowers spike the sodden soil.
Leaving me just with January to endure. ‘ Find the positives ‘ was the advice from Newspaper magazines each Saturday. I am always an optimist but January sucks my optimism. But I gave positivity a go and decided to try and create interesting images out of the shockingly dull photographs I was taking. What light there is in January is overlayed with a perpetual mist and large quantities of rain. I tried everything in my medical imaging repertoire of image manipulation, everything in my arty photograph toolbox, some painting skills and used image manipulation software from really old systems to current ones.
There is almost no predictability about which bad pictures will turn out to be visual gems with my tweakments but learning to use all the tools and ideas in my head has been fascinating. There have been some epic failures.
I even went back to the nineties and bought myself a home printer. Goodness me they have improved.
January and indeed winter 25/26 I am ready for you.
Here is the Magnolia on a gorgeous shade of ‘ greige’, surely my most used word of the winter months.
Yesterday was the most predictable of days. Chores, errands and dog grooming.
A publicity poster for the National Trust ( A Charity in the U.K that protects beautiful places and spaces) did not reflect my lived experience of a late February Thursday with chores to do.
I knew exactly where I would find myself and the list was not thrilling. But the sun came out, a gap appeared in my to-do list and,the somewhat dull, life admin was achieved early. Thanks in no small part to the parking deities who were endlessly kind yesterday.
After the dog grooming I returned to Wembury beach car park, where the poster was and took my pristinely clean dogs for a walk on the beach. A treat rarely available to them due to beach restrictions for most of the year.
Where will I find myself? Back in the same place.
And in finding myself in exactly the same place as I had been two hours earlier I had two delightful moments of serendipity. A hug from a friend and fellow club administrator who was cliff path walking. And an encounter with an off-duty witch. She was astride her witches broomstick by the sink in the public toilets. Not a word of explanation as to why she had a broomstick between her legs but being English we made pleasantries about the weather and the tragedy of a closed cafe. She said cake was her downfall and affected the brooms performance. So in some ways she was grateful.
If you could be someone else for a day, who would you be, and why?
Not for a whole day . Just a morning or afternoon or evening would be enough.
I would love to experience actually being the conundrum of humanity that is an Alpha male. Potus or Putin perhaps if I were aiming for infamy or more humbly, any regular Joe who just sees women as inherently inferior. I could wear the invisible Stag Horns of a person who actively seeks out confrontation and domination in the tiny details of life as well as the more significant ones. Actually, any horn would probably do.
Just a portion of a day would be enough to start with, to give me some level of understanding. It would also give me plenty of time to make my apologies and relax my jaw from all that jutting both real and metaphorical.
Meanwhile the Alpha male I have briefly inhabited could perhaps enrol on a Lambda ( Lovely) man course and we would both have been enlightened.
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.
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.
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.
What is the biggest challenge you will face in the next six months?
A WordPress blog suggestion I am happy to respond to.
Having lived for more than 130 six month periods I know with some certainty that what I imagine my biggest challenge may well be eclipsed by a bigger but unexpected one. I would also not bore you all with my greatest challenge on an open public blog if I could identify one, which I can’t.
But it is one of life’s great mysteries that what we perceive as challenges often turn out not to be remotely challenging and yet seemingly mundane or benign moments can suddenly be challenging.
In the summer we raised the height of our perimeter wall to deter the cats, chickens( and their associated r**s) from our neighbours city backyard crossing into our yard. The deterrent has largely worked until a new creature was added to their menagerie. He bounces onto our garage and balances along stone walls. A rabbit with Olympic skills in high jump and escapology. He has been rescued from the back lane and a local car park. This week he may have made his final escape. He has been missing for four days. His last rescue attempt on Tuesday evening when he was returned to gis own back yard. A rabbit with the 9 lives of his cat companions. Maybe this weekend he turned left and joined the Nuns who run Nazareth House just a hop and a skip from his home.
But for now, no more Olympic Bunny. But if you ever see a handsome rabbit in a wimple and a sturdy pair of shoes…
What a gift to a love of places blog, is a workplace called The Heart Hospital, under the small arrow. So much love for many of the people I worked with there, who are now spread around the world. Love for Marylebone the London village where it was located. Love also for Selfridge’s on Oxford Street which was always on the way home. A corner shop to beat all corner shops. The big arrow is Barts Hospital. The location of my seventeen-year-old self starting a career and also where I finished my professional life 43 years later. An unplanned circularity which is strangely satisfying.
The next picture is looking south to our London ‘home’s’. Dulwich Village, Brixton,Gipsy Hill and Crystal Palace. The greige makes them impossible to point out, but trust me they are there.
Similarly, on a greige day my daughter’s home village of Wimbledon is lost in the mist.
As is the destination of Harrow-on-the-Hill where my son began his international teaching career below the red arrow.
The large green space which is also below the red arrow on the north riverbank is the Chelsea Hospital, home of the Chelsea Flower Show.
And so to conclude my day trip to London. The Shard and the man we surprised there, photographed from Lift 109 at Battersea Power Station. The Shard is on the horizon above his head.
Farewell London Day trip.
Fortunately art can create colour out of greige.
And our friends got giddy and bright after we left. An evening with Abba while we sat on a train.
I was unsure if I could squeeze another blog out of our midweek trip to London. Not because we didn’t have a great time and the usual laughs with our friends but because our photographs from high up places,The Shard and Battersea Power Station, were, like the weather, somewhat greige.
But first with feet firmly at ground level some serendipity.
While organising ourselves and the Shard security to enable us to execute the ‘surprise’* element of our trip we spent a lot of time in the reception area, watching the moving floral photo opportunity. Countless people had their photos taken against the colourful display.
The mirrors and neon ‘love’ signs were constantly moving, reflecting the flowers and lights so the display was intriguing.
In a rare moment with no humans about I took a picture of the assemblage. This morning I discovered that I had unintentionally created a self portrait.
This gave me the poke I needed to explore our greige aerial cityscapes inspired by the word love, not in the romantic sense.
But I can show you the aerial view of places I love or love to blog about when I am in London. With luck the WordPress algorithm will link this blog to others written about the same places.
Tower Bridge.
I have loved Tower Bridge all my life. Small me could never have imagined her older self driving over this bridge at night for the on-call journey. South London to the City. An extra bit of love because the Dad of a friend used to operate the bridge for his job. How cool is that? Also in this picture the Tower of London. Ten year old me fainted there once when listening to a grizzly tale of public executions. Nothing compares to the fear I felt coming round in a mediaeval building surrounded by concerned men in very fancy uniforms.
Borough Market and Southwark Cathedral
Look for the semi-circular space just above the end of the blue pool. Bustle and serenity. I have shared time at Borough and the cathedral with so many friends and family. A wonderful part of London to love.
Borough Market.
And just like that a 2-year-old arrived !! To be continued…
Did the surprise, surprise. Yes it did. Even though we were doing it in an hotel with airport level security. So it took engagement with and the help of security men and a receptionist. What was fascinating and charming was that several hours later the same staff were interested to talk to us and discover if the surprise was a successful and happy outcome for all of us.
Planning surprises always have a degree of jeopardy, that is what makes them great when they work out.
This set of surprises had all of us with our feet not on solid ground for most of the day. Lunch and a hotel room in London’s highest building and then a trip up a Chimney at Battersea Power Station. 10,000 steps on the ground but many trips in funky lifts.
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