What would be the wisest thing to do on a dreadfully greige day that is coincidentally World Earth Day. We took ourselves off to a fabulous friends solo art exhibition at Cotehele in the Tamar Valley. Clare creates landscape magic with a palate knife.
Wonderful pictures of landscapes at their vibrant best.
Goodness me that Prosecco hit the spot last night. It bubbled gently into the fissures, sulci and gyri of my brain and loosened up random thoughts that I felt obliged to share. Thank goodness it was a talking party and not a dancing one. Undoubtedly Prosseco would have given me the misguided belief that I was flexible.
On the way to the party we found a little moss heart. Tossed to the ground by birds impatient to get their nests built.
It is the time of year when something soft and yielding provokes a sinking feeling as we walk in our street. The instant reaction is that it is a poo left behind by an inattentive dog owner, or worse a fox. Such a sense of relief when it is just a bit of carelessly dropped moss. The little heart had three locations to pose in on our short walk.
Not exactly a low tide blog today. But ‘ Tide and Time wait for no (wo)man.’
My personal tide has been a little on the low side, hence the somewhat late Friday Blog. I have been a blog gatherer with so much new stuff to write about and no time to do it.
Hardening off near the looks.
The last two days have been a bit mad, planned things failed to materialise and unplanned things filled the gaps.
My usual early morning blogspot was taken by early morning photography for a Tennis Club that I do a little Social Media work for.
Then every available moment to blog was filled with imperative stuff. The most exciting, was taking delivery of this seasons art cards to be sold at exhibitions.
The first card has already gone to a new home as this evening we toddled off to a party and used one as a thank you card. Rather too much Prosecco was involved and, lucky for you all, I was only briefly guilty of over- sharing. Time to, moderately, share one of this mornings pictures of an old wheelbarrow taking a rest in the corner of the Tennis Club.
Mudflats and meditating may not seem closely related. But mindful that I have fallen into the theme of low tides for this week I thought I would share again the mudflat that was close to my home in Cornwall for many years. I have photographed this mud many times. I have never physically experienced it between my toes. But I do know and love the feeling of soft warm mud between my toes. So much so, that often at the end of yoga sessions when I am mentally sinking into my yoga mat, I imagine sinking into the soft silt of low tide in and near the Thames Estuary near where I grew up.
Hardly most peoples choice of paradise but I know the texture of Essex’s coastal mud so much more intimately than other swankier muds that I may have experienced.
I never thought to photograph Essex mud so Tamar Valley mud illustrates this whole mud hagiography.
The fantasy remains perfectly orchestrated in my head even though I know sharp objects and slippery creatures lurk just below the surface. Beauty treatments involving mud are also a personal weakness.Mud and adobe houses, sweat lodges, wattle and daub dwellings. Mississippi Mud Pie.I’ve even painted landscapes using local to the area mud. On one remote occasion in an American National Park I attracted an audience of sixty or so excited tourists as I painted in the many shades of red dirt that could be found close to hand.
But on a Wednesday morning all the muds I have ever loved fill my mind at the end of a yoga session.
I am a lover of the absolute serendipity of daisies. Daisies are free -spirited, establish themselves wherever they choose and turn their heads to the sun. If only life could be this simple. These daisies are growing at a Lawn Tennis Club that is soon to open the gates to the public to raise money for local charities. Just beyond this photograph there are men and machines spiking and prepping a lawn to look the very best for the ‘Big’ weekend. These daisies are almost certainly gone for now, but men and machines are no long term match for diligent daisies. They will be back.
I am warming to these prompts for blogs from Jetpack. I pick up the ones I can best work with. Yesterday this delicious little picture fell at my feet and it would have been criminal not to use it in a blog.
I had to go to Sutton Harbour last night to pick up some printing from a company that I am new to using. They are incredibly efficient and helpful and had printed posters for a gardening event that I did some artwork for.
They were so efficient that I was left with an hour and a half of parking, to use on a sunny evening, in a harbour with blue skies, warm sun and tinkling rigging.
It was perfect serendipity to find this wonderful heart shaped mound of lichen next to a discarded party star in the tracks of a discarded rail track.
Which neatly brings me back to ‘ Describe something you learned in High School’
I was painfully reserved in secondary school. Margaret Tabor Secondary Modern did not get the lofty title of ‘High’ in its name until it became a comprehensive school and became, Tabor High.
I was painfully reserved at age 11, I know shy is not the correct word. Painfully reserved, exactly describes it. Separated from my best friend from Primary School, Manor Street. I floundered in a classroom full of people I didn’t know.
It is obvious to any reader that the names of my two schools are not part of an elite system. I had the free, state- provided, education in my local town.
Being cut adrift from my best friend at 11 made me regress into my natural social position of being on the outside looking in. I am naturally an observer and for the most part I spent the years between age 11 and 18 observing. Occasionally slipping on the mantle of a gregarious person but knowing in my heart that I was just pretending. I learned a massive amount at ‘High’ school but perhaps the most important thing was to be an observational person who can comfortably wear a cloak of gregariousness; while still having the ability to find the magic of a heart and a star in a post-industrial landscape.
Anatomy of a Serendipitous Observation captured on a smartphone whilst waiting for two dogs to eliminate.
Old railway track from the time when this area of the harbour was the Tin Wharf exporting tin from the Tamar Valley all over the world for centuries. Tamar Valley tin has been discovered all over Europe wherever the Romans went.
Broken glass from the party pub just behind this picture. Plymouth Barbican is the Plymouth night-time economy hub.
Lichen Heart , in the South West Lichen thrives in our climate. Before humans this part of England was covered by Atlantic Rainforest.
Confetti star , the Barbican is a magnet for Stag and Hen do adventures. Finding a star was truly serendipitous. Confetti can be pretty and joyful but it can also be earthily pagan.
Thanking the blogging Goddess for a happy Star yesterday.
The last few days have been rather unpredictable weather wise. For the most part, very windy either with clear blue skies or with heavy rain. Trying to predict exactly when to walk the dogs has been a science that I have not mastered competently. They have no wish to be out in the rain but sometimes need has driven us all out in drenching weather. However just a bit of sunshine, on pavements that were wet moments earlier, are golden moments for dogs, even my enfeebled human nose can pick up petrichor. But for them petrichor plus the exotic fragrances carried by the winds has been life affirming this week. Noses held high they have refused my planned routes and have planted eight paws into the ground if I chose to take a corner that was not to their taste or in a direction of their choosing.
Same picture, different direction.
In the calm of this morning, I managed to note down the sensations of these past few days. This is both swirling seas and gusting winds. I have even added some manual typing to add flavour to this colour sketch. It may never progress to anything else but just making notes feels like a weather experience commemorated.
Exercising my colour eye is a pretty good way to spend a day. Currently my studio is in a proper pickle. All my own fault, but there are plans to restore order very soon. Not far from home nature is having its way with vandalism.A quick photo records Sunburst Lichen continuing to flourish on graffiti. While frantically finding work for an exhibition, old exercises have come to the surface.
The one below is a classic mini treated to some mindful colour mixing. I combined a limited colour palate with a stencil. Not remotely exhibition worthy but as an exercise very interesting.
And then another colour exercise. Wisteria at Pentillie Castle. This last one was also an exercise in utilising the unwanted water drops that landed on my paper from the resident labrador who decided to shake himself before admiring my colour sketching.
Glimpsing this advert over the weekend I realised, with horror, that I suffer from a complete absence of personality. No knobs on my cupboards. Please excuse the brief blog while I take some time-out to process this revelation.
I have worked in jobs where problems have been excused as ‘personality clashes’ On one occasion I memorably retorted that it was,
” Hard to have a clash of personality with someone who doesn’t have one”
Little realising that the person who had spiked my ire was simply a woman without knobs. I thought she was a controlling, bullying witch without a bone of genuine kindness. If only I had known that instead of attempting to find some soul in her I could simply have gone to a hardware store and bought her some interesting knobs.
Just imagine what this simple revelation could do in so many human interactions.
We are boggle eyed from painting doors, stairs and anaglypta panels a very dark grey. This morning after we made the most of the very early light we went out for an Easter morning walk before most people had thought about breakfast. This fabric hanging from a building, soon to be renovated has a plaintive feel, but the rest of the walk was full of spring colour.
Full disclosure the job was greater than the time we had. We deliberately started with the hardest end of the hallway and it has taken all of the time available to get about half of the ground floor hallway done. Our cut- off deadline was always 4pm on Sunday. Apart from one from one swim and many dog walks we have politely declined social activities all weekend. The work left is, by any measure, much less time consuming and can be achieved over a couple of weekends.
Work in Progress shot.
The under stairs cupboard door will also go grey. It is unimaginable how many hours have gone into this small space. My jaw tells me that I painted spindles through gritted teeth and we both have lower backs that are stretched by the constant crouching to reach hard to reach places. Our minds have been stretched by the music and podcasts we have listened to. YouTube failed me on Spindle painting. Apparently the modern way to achieve the same effect as hours of teeth clenching is to mask everything except the spindles in plastic and use a spray can or gun. After ten such jaunty videos I gave up and did it the Victorian way. When I was a small child living in a house with a much smaller staircase my mum took me away for the weekend while my dad ” Got on with the hallway. “
He arrived triumphantly, at my grandparents pub saying “I’ve boxed it all in”
In the space of 48 hours our between- the-wars semi had been turned into smooth 1960’s minimalism every panelled door or ornate spindle hidden behind sheets of hardboard and painted white.
After this past weekend I understand the sentiment but cannot praise his architectural vandalism. I hope whoever lived there after us was thrilled one day to take off the boxing-in ( thank you Practical Woodworking Magazine) and reveal the real charms of the house.
theoldmortuary.design 