Quickie #4
Saturday walk at Cawsand and Kingsand .
Expanded story soon
Plymouth, quietly, having a moment.
A Plymouth Mackerel- Juliet CornellPlymouth was quietly having a bit of a moment in the National Media this week. Firstly the Eddystone Lighthouse was a google doodle. Strangely to mark its 321st anniversary of the first time it was lit.https://www.google.com/doodles/321st-anniversary-of-the-first-lighting-of-eddystone-lighthouse
Then The Guardian ran an article about the city centre being designated as a conservation area.https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/nov/16/plymouth-city-centre-designated-conservation-area?CMP=share_btn_linkThis could be a coincidence or a sign that the City PR team are ramping up the pressure now Mayflower 400 is just edging into view. Commemorating a 400 year shared history with what is now the USA and the sailing of the Mayflower , Mayflower 400 is a multi location celebration. Plymouth was the port the Mayflower successfully set sail from to reach America.https://www.mayflower400uk.org/2020 also sees the opening of The Box, a long awaited reincarnation of the Museum and Art gallery. Reimagined and re-engineered to bring contemporary, world class exhibition space to the West Country.
A Hard-Hat tour of The Boxhttps://plymhearts.org/thebox/An earlier article in the Guardian puts into perspective the struggle the city is overcoming to grab some headlines. The actual amount of war time damage was so shrouded in secrecy that it is rarely mentioned in the way London or Coventry are. Without proper mention of the damage it is difficult to then applaud the regeneration.https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/11/post-industrial-plymouth-business-social-enterprise?CMP=share_btn_linkIt’s good to see Plymouth getting some well deserved positive press.Time Out , the London listings magazine is even getting in on the Plymouth Love, featuring Illuminate as a ” Great Escape”
Friday
This stretch of mud is one of my favourite sights. It appears on the banks of the Tamar. Pill Creek feeds into the main River at Saltmill; at low tide its serpiginous track into the main body of water is clear to see. There are many others that can be seen from the road bridge but this one is easy to get close to on foot. I never plan my walks to deliberately to see it but serendipity is kind several times a year. Time stops still for a bit when I catch it at perfection. It recalibrates me until the next time.
Quickie- #3
Hugo and Lola + ghost writer
Today started well in dogland. There was mention of birthdays and beaches. All sounding good from our large warm bed.
Random stuff was loaded into the car to be delivered to Sam the only human son in this family. He’s only just reappeared in our lives , I thought he was an adult human but for some reason a massive box of Lego was being delivered to his new house. Is this normal for a 33 year old? Books and university clutter competed with other stuff all labeled John Lewis . Who is that for, for pity sake we thought Sam lived with a woman!
The mums seemed really pleased to have empty storage under the stairs, they can be really strange some times. We’ve seen Harry Potter, lets hope they are not thinking of downgrading us fur babies to the ” so much space” area.
Harry Potter is a human they can move in there if anybody does.
Breakfast done and everything seems ready for an outing . Towels are packed and coats . We try to eat the old cats food but the mums catch us and the cat swears, a lot. She really is a foul mouthed creature, you’d think at 22 she would be a little more polite in front of impressionable pups.
The drive to the beach was lovely, warm air blowing and Radio 4 mellifluously in the background . Woman’s hour, thankfully Jenny et al were not discussing orgasms or sour dough. We get twitchy listening to that kind of talk when the mums are around. They are a little outspoken at times and crazily rant at the radio. We don’t think they know Jenny is not really in the next room.
And so to the beach, someone so got the planning wrong, the tide was high and the wind and rain was wicked. Our ears were blown near inside out and not getting wee on our fur was virtually impossible. In our world the perfect poo requires 3 rotations and a look of quiet concentration . No chance of that today there was so much buffering and blustering. We had to give up on the rotations and just scamper to opposite ends of the beach just to keep the mums occupied, bless them they did look chilly. Poos done we frolicked with the foam and chased sea gulls. It’s always so much more light-hearted once the poos are out. We know the mums really love us because they even treasure our poo by keeping it in fragrant green bags. We would not do the same for them, the very thought makes us queasy, luckily we never catch them doing one on a walk.
The mums decide coffee is needed, they really do have a problem. We are always having to find independent coffee shops to keep them in the happy zone. That in itself is difficult to work out, no tails is such a design fault in a human. Fortunately there is a parking space and we all squeeze into The Sorting House. St Agnes, Cornwall.
Coffee is not our cup of tea but cake most definitely is. All too soon the mums decide to take us on another walk . I’m never sure quite what the point is but it keeps them happy. We ended up in a graveyard, they do take this ghost writing thing seriously.
St Agnes has a very pretty churchyard but one of the road names just makes us wonder if humans really are the superior race.
Thankfully the wind and rain persuaded them to return to the car, sleep, as ever, was our happy ending, once we’d sorted out the imaginary rats in the footwell.
Great coffee and cake, rubbish weather.
H and L
PS We’ve been here before. Here is theoldmortuary Instagram feed from July 2017.
Terry Conway
My first bench story comes to me from a new friend. We met at a writing course organised by The Gentle Author at The Town House, Spitalfields. Liz heard me talking about wanting to write about memorial Benches and emailed me the next day.Terry Conway was a friend of hers, and goodness me does he have a lovely bench. It is situated just outside Allendale and overlooks a spectacular view.
The location for Terry’s bench using what3words is beyond.envy.beauty. “These words are somehow very appropriate for Terry who wrote lyrical songs about the beauty of Northumberland”mused Liz. Luckily for this blog Terry was the subject of a Guardian Other Lives Obituary. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/aug/01 You can also hear Terry on this YouTube clip. https://youtu.be/fcCLmqUIM9w
For anyone not interested in following links. Terry was a council roadman for 30 years and a hugely respected singer and songwriter in the Folk tradition. His day job inspiring his songwriting. Fittingly the
commemoration of Terry’s bench was a folk music moment.
The location for Terry’s bench using what3words is beyond.envy.beauty. “These words are somehow very appropriate for Terry who wrote lyrical songs about the beauty of Northumberland”mused Liz. Luckily for this blog Terry was the subject of a Guardian Other Lives Obituary. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/aug/01 You can also hear Terry on this YouTube clip. https://youtu.be/fcCLmqUIM9wFor anyone not interested in following links. Terry was a council roadman for 30 years and a hugely respected singer and songwriter in the Folk tradition. His day job inspiring his songwriting. Fittingly the
commemoration of Terry’s bench was a folk music moment.
Quickie- #2
I popped into this local visitor attraction this morning.
When I asked Brian, the Centre volunteer for today, why he joined this tiny new museum as a guide. His answer was simple.
” Because I’ve been in construction all my life.I just love seeing something that has been designed by engineers, fulfilling its purpose effectively” he explained
Enthusiasts are so great to talk to, alongside his extensive knowledge of both bridges I also learnt that Brian had started life in a drawing office. His technical drawing skills were way more advanced than my meagre ‘O’ level. He explained that final, finished-build,technical drawings were done on waxed linen and that the fabric was amazing quality, if there was any spare you could take it home and wash the wax off to reveal beautiful fabric to sew with.
It must be a fabulous experience to draw on waxed linen, I find it hard to imagine the process. The smells and textures would be so different from the usual paper. Perfect though if a tea spillage occurred..
Amazing fact, and the excuse for this picture. The workers on the bridge wore normal every day clothes and used no safety gear. There are photographs of men at work in flat caps and suits. Maybe not as visually pleasing as this shot ; which I chose because it could be a contemporary fashion shoot and yet it is more than 50 years old.
Memorial Benches
I’ve been mulling over Memorial benches for some time. Where appropriate or acceptable I would love to tell the stories behind the plaques on so many benches around the world.
The what3words app makes things a little easier.
For continuity I would like
1. A picture of the plaque or inscription.
2. A picture of the bench
3. A picture of the view it overlooks
4. A bio of the people whose lives are being commemorated.
5 The exact location. Better still using what3words code.
Please send me your bench stories to include them on this page.
theoldmortuary.design@yahoo.com
Something for the Weekend
This was a weekend of passions colliding. I had enrolled in a blog writing course run by The Gentle Author who is known for his books and blog about Spitalfields. I don’t know how or when I discovered his blog but it has been a pleasurable daily habit for a long while.
By the greatest of personal serendipity the course was held in one of my favourite London cafes The Town House, Fournier Street.
I can only recommend reading https://spitalfieldslife.com to explain quite why I wanted to learn how to craft my own blog in his style . Similarly I don’t have the words to explain the subtle beauty of https://www.townhousespitalfields.com/ Make the time to go. I went for the first time some years ago during a Hugenot History Festival. I’ve been an irregular visitor ever since.
The Gentle Author attracted the most interesting group of people to his course, There was a group decision to keep details of the course unspecific on social media. Specifically though this was the loveliest group of people I’ve ever done a course with. The Gentle Author encouraged and extracted beautiful words and moments from us all, seemingly effortlessly. If I was shattered after two days of writing, extracting the best, oh so kindly from 14 of us must have been exhausting. The Gentle Author just kept finding writing nuggets right until the end, and then he went home to write a blog. We all went home with his book Mr Pussy tucked under our arms. Our cohort was such a lovely group of people, we are all keeping in touch to support and encourage on our blogging journeys
Our writing and thinking was fuelled with fabulous food by https://thegentlewoman.co.uk/library/leila-mcalister and drinks by the cafe at TheTown House.
I’ve reproduced the details of the next course below. I am still fizzing, such a positive experience email spitalfieldslife@google.com
Spending time in Spitalfields is never just about one sensation. Obviously. There was a little time to take in the local vibe . Street Art is everywhere. My walk to and from the course takes me through some favourite streets.
London gives good Palimpsest is an earlier theoldmortuary blog and features some Spitalfields Street art. It takes so many forms, I found this sticker not far from Fournier Street on Sunday morning . The beauty of the street art here is the mix and overlaying of aesthetic and political art, obscured and damaged by flyers, stickers and random scrawls. She will be gone soon.
That, my friends, was a weekend very well spent.
Tethering my Abstracts
Abstract art is art that does not attempt to represent an accurate depiction of a visual reality but instead uses shapes, colours, forms and gestural marks to achieve its effect. The term is also applied to art that is based on an object, figure or landscape where forms have been simplified or schematised.
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/abstract-art
Synesthesia is a condition where one sense ( for example hearing) is simultaneously perceived as if by one or more additional senses. The word synesthesia comes from two Greek words syn ( together) and aisthesia ( perception) meaning joined perception.
https://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/syne.html
My abstracts are mostly landscape inspired. Rooted very much in a particular place but also informed by the history and geography of the place. In some respects they are also created with reference to my synesthesia. Whilst creating art I often listen to music, sometimes deliberately chosen , other times just random. I often choose not to allow synesthesia in and listen to spoken word radio. A painting created with Joy Division as background music would be subtly different if it were created while listening to Benjamin Britten. These things are hugely important to me but joyously insignificant to everyone else.
http://www.joydivisionofficial.com/reimagined/
It’s important to me to know where a painting comes from once I’ve committed it to canvas or panel. Naming it is obviously a start, but that has never quite satisfied me. Owners of my works often read something quite different into them , sometimes I share the geographical location or the synesthesic source, but they are of course, free to interpret the art on their walls however they see fit. However for me there has always been a tethering that I couldn’t quite catch, something that satisfied my need for a location but that didn’t dictate too much to the final work . I’ve recently discovered ‘what3words’ It is a location system that is simple and accurate to a 3m x 3m square anywhere in the world.
https://what3words.com/daring.lion.race
Retrospectively I’ve started giving my pictures a ‘ what3words’ tethering.
Beast From The East.
From the title anyone can roughly work out the timing of this painting. It is an amalgam of a few wintry walks in the village of Forder near Saltash in Cornwall.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=beast+from+the+east+2018&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-gb&client=safari
The walk takes you along a creek into Churchtown Farm Nature reserve. Most days I stopped at the same spot to contemplate the cold . What is never obvious is that this was painted when I was personally very chilly as our central heating boiler broke down and we were without heat during this period. However I can perfectly express where I was standing when the inspiration for this picture formed using what3words.
Breathing. Frowns. Index. Curiously appropriate words , I’m sure this won’t always be the case.
Coincidentally I’ve discovered a whole new story for the next work that I was going to tether, I was doing a little research about the pillow in this picture, prior to giving it its ‘what3words’ location. As it turns out there is a whole new story which deserves a blog all to itself. Here it is at Tate Modern as part of the Pillowtalk Exhibition, with my lovely daughter.
Here is its estimated ‘what3words’ location while at Tate Modern.Loaded.Tiger. Salon.
The story of this pillows journeys and my experiments with what3words will be the next blog.
https://www.southlondonwomenartists.co.uk/pillow-talk-conversations-with-women/
Serendipity has its way. Joining Drawn to the Valley.
Serendipity plays such a part in life. I have serendipitously joined an art group local to me in the Tamar Valley. I’ve joined but I was not quite ready, obviously I applied to join but I had no expectation of being accepted so I hadn’t factored in my unavailability for various key events, or the fact that I was barely able to create any art in the critical early months of my membership.
The art group was not completely unknown to me. I reviewed their London show in an earlier blog.
Drawn to the Valley, Drawn to London. Artists of the Tamar Valley.
I had also often been to exhibitions over many years that were held in the Tamar Valley organised by the group
Joining a new art group is always a little tricksy. No two are the same and getting involved is the surest way of navigating your way in. A few months in I’m finally able to participate more fully. Here is a trio of my experiences so far.
The Summer Exhibition was a wonderful experience. For the first time ever the exhibition was curated in a new public space, Butchers Hall in Tavistock.
The Private View was fabulously busy, the venue was probably the star attraction for many but the art was not overshadowed. Visitor numbers were high and sales were impressive. As a new member I was thrilled to sell a piece. Anyone who buys a piece of original art at these events is more appreciated than they probably realise. A red dot 🔴 is guaranteed to make even the coolest artists perform back flips, mentally if not physically.
Open Studios is a fine arty tradition organised across the length and breadth of Britain. Artists open their studios ( obviously) but also their homes. Some group together and share a larger space. It’s a chance to grab a bargain for art lovers and a chance of a good clear out for artists.
I couldn’t participate because all my recent work is hanging at UltraCardiac, a cardiac ultrasound facility at The Science Park in Plymouth. Next year I will be better prepared, but for now I’m thrilled to have big white walls to show my pictures on. Grateful thanks to Sean and Sarah for their space.
https://www.ultracardiac.co.uk/
Not participating made it easier for me to get out and about to see other people’s work. There was a helpful guide book to assist people to locate artists around the Tamar Valley .
Drawing Day at Kelly House.
Once again the location was the star, that and the amazing hosts Sophia and Warin. Kelly house has been in the same family since 1100. About 15 artists were given freedom to sketch and draw both inside outside the house. There was also a room to gather in and chatter over drinks. I found a crumpled crown, previously used in a pageant in the 1930’s, and hunkered down for five hours of painting still life. A crime, I know, in such beautiful surroundings but it’s not every day that a crumpled crown presents itself to me.
I can’t say I’m the most sociable person when I’m painting but it was lovely to meet some other members over a cup of tea. I’m intrigued to see where Drawn to the Valley will take me.
