Creatively, I am embedded in a pre-1820s Plymouth. Trying to imagine life in my local neighbourhood as JMW Turner would have seen it, but also wanting to include contemporary aspects that would have been unimaginable and crazily futuristic to him. My normal life goes on around my creative thinking. When working in the studio radio and the dogs are my constant companions. The Work in Progress above is a concatenation of yesterday’s studio time. Apparently, mid-May is when semi-sea swimmers return to the cool waters around the British coast. Yesterday was named by the BBC as Dippers Day.This information was a news infill on the radio station I was listening to. A semi-sea swimmer only partakes May to September.
As a year-round swimmer I suppose I have noticed an increased number of swimmers in the last couple of weeks.
Lunchtime Thursday
Yesterday was glorious, my lunchtime dog walk was fabulous and there were many joyful Dippers Day Dippers. The whole concept set me off on a great procrastination when I returned to the studio. Sea swimmers in the 1820s in the style of Turner. Not on my schedule at all.
But it will be today, after I have joined the Bobbers for a post-dippers day bob.
All over the place, from my old on-call bedroom that overlooked Turner’s Harley Street backyard, in London, to a grubby underpass 1/2 a mile from home. Via a rubbish tip in Plymouth, which nestles into a quarry that Turner sketched while he was staying at Saltram.
Grotty underpass embellished with colourful graffiti.
It has had me reading a lot.
Coming towards the end of the painting bit of prep I had left the most local location until last.
Confident that some research on my morning dog walks would give me the prize of a replicated location. Imagine my horror, the old bridge, when viewed from the former military hospitals, had vanished. Lost to view by a modern busy road. The creek that Turner viewed was blocked off, dried out, and turned into sports pitches.
Finding the actual bridge from the south side took tenacity. Taking me to the underbelly of urban Plymouth. Dirty footpaths in industrial estates smelling of weed and piss. Littered with broken glass, gas canisters and abandoned knickers. But last minute luck was with me. Plymouth is the home port of Princess Yachts.
Their Stonehouse boatyard has the only view of the old bridge. A quick email to the company, to ask if I could have access, was required,because the perfect tide and perfect light only coincided yesterday and today. Thankfully unlike Turner I could turn up with just my phone and a small camera. Turner would have arrived with a horse and cart, painting boards, paper and an easel, paints and brushes in a box, sandwiches and some bottles of beer.
I was in luck, Christine from the sales team was quick to respond to my email and I was welcomed into their elegant reception area. Then taken to a room with a view. And what fabulous views, high tide, gentle morning light and boats. So many photos to work from.
Below are a couple of work in progress images.
I think the bottom image has more of a Turner vibe, lets see what happens over the next couple of weeks.
In a lovely twist of serendipity a couple handed me a book later yesterday, showing the old bridge from the direction of the industrial estate.
The arrow is roughly where I took my photographs from.
It is such a shame this piece of history is so hidden from public view and not celebrated as one of the world’s most influential artists chosen subjects. My thanks to Princess Yachts for giving me access.
The early distractions of yesterday, a misplaced work i.d and fob, a jumper delivered to a friend and the purchase of some dull, but essential art stuff all fitted quite easily into the early part of the day while the domestic goddesses, Madams Dishwasher and Washing machine did the hard graft.
All should have been set for late morning artiness but fate had other plans.
Yesterday was planned to be an art day with a side serving of domestica turned out to be quite a different type of day. Starting with a scene of domestic bliss, pale linens blowing in sunlight.
Our Springtime Yard
Moments later the springtime yard was draped in pale linens as the high (20 foot) washing line broke.
My Dad (born 1931) and my grandad ( born 1888) were very practical men and regularly mended high washing lines so I knew it wasn’t a job beyond me. I had even bought a spare washing line, when we moved into this house, for just such a moment. Planned , preventative maintenance was my thought at the time but I procrastinated and found myself in an ‘ emergency’ situation.
Nothing in my recall of stringing a high washing line involved the macrame nightmare that I created yesterday. Two hours later the washing was once again drying in the sun. All the colours of a domestic victory dancing in my mind, projected onto the twice washed linens.
Linens in the style of Tamara de Lempicka
Would I have been better off using YouTube for instruction rather than relying on intergenerational knowledge?
I don’t think so, and I am a big user of YouTube to fix things. But those ‘How to’ videos are so slick.
Learning from my dad and grandad taught me the art and tolerance of non-slick but effective repairing. My Grandad dealt with washing-line macrame by deep puffing on his pipe and a quiet walk around his garden with his arms held behind his back. My dad would retreat into his shed emerging with the macrame tamed into calm coils of new washing line ready to be strung up.
I have neither a shed or a pipe habit but I have tolerance and tenacity which in my own way beat the macrame.
What’s one small improvement you can make in your life?
If I could eliminate non-productive distraction from my life I would have an extra hour or two every day. My problem with being certain that I want less distraction is that I never know if distraction is an entirely bad thing. Distraction only happens because something interrupts me and I am too nosey to let it pass, usually because my interest in what I am doing is wavering a bit.*
*I am able to be super focussed and single minded. In the right conditions I can turn my ears off.
To be pedantic, I only want the right amount of dull and pointless distraction removed from my life. The joyous life-enhancing distraction is always welcome.
There has been way too much of this in our yard. Warm walls and gentle rain has brought out a parade of young snails on a Monday morning. My early morning cup of tea ,with birdsong, was somewhat ruined by watching dark snails of all sizes make their way up my crisp white walls.
Time to redirect the snail population off my white walls and into the snug, bijoux, terracotta paradise that is my composting system. Which means collecting them in a pot and moving them myself.
We have been growing climbers in our yard for about ten months.
Last year we missed the most dynamic part of the growing season so none of the climbers bloomed with anything more than the short lived flowers they arrived with. This year, the first where they have had almost a full year in our care they are all slow to get going. But first a climbing rose and now the Wisteria are putting out flowers. Just as the first rose bloomed its stalk became too weak and it was rescued to live a brief life in a shot glass. Yesterday the first wisteria bloom snapped off the plant and has been rescued into the kitchen, this time in a milk bottle.
A good excuse for some still life photography but hardly the Yarden of Eden we had imagined. The pollinators are not queuing up to buzz and pollen-up their bottoms any time soon in our yard. In contrast to our blooms the wooden bug hotel is terrifically successful brown, scurrying non-photographic things live a busy metropolitan life under and around our water butts. Worms live a happy terracotta life in our improvised composters, enjoying coffee grounds from around the world, tea bags and the occasional dog poo. If yardening were a sporting event our Mid-May results would look something like this.
Brown Things 6- 2 Pretty Things
The pretty things scoring a two because the roses have learned how to both bloom and hold their heads up.
Claire Austin rose and the sharp shadows of night in a city yard.
When I moved to the Plymouth area for the first time from Brighton, in the late eighties, I was not so sure it had been a wise move. The cultural and societal differences between a liberal and multicultural seaside city and a post industrial port were vast and uncomfortable for a long while. I quickly found my tribe by joining an art class.
Plymouth artists liked to drink in out of the way places. One such place was the Victualing Office Tavern, a grubby pub in one of the roughest parts of Plymouth. We went there to enjoy live jazz , rock and folk. Just as the quote says, we were a very broad gathering of people from all works of life. People creating art in council flats and some in homes that were mentioned in the Doomsday Book. There is a theory that artists are the first sign of gentrification….
Now I live in the exact same area as my 1980’s art excursions, after a ten year return to London. The VOT has gone up in the world, as has the area. Queen Victoria should have swapped the word dangerous for interesting.
Visionary rather than vituperative is a better way forward even for a Queen
Just a blog to use one of my favourite words that rarely gets an outing.
Oh the loveliness of concatination, and having friends in High Places. This shot from a TV shows my friend Jenny, standing on the outside walkway of the lighthouse on Plymouth Hoe. A T.V crew getting a much better view of the goings on at the Hoe yesterday than I did. She watched the T.V in case she was on, and she snapped this pic.
She and I were chattering because I was suspicious that I had also caught her up a lighthouse in one of my meddled photographs. ( A sentence I never expected to write)
It is lovely when serendipity and concatination come together.
Then on my way home nature got all serendipitous. Look at this beautiful pansy making the most of a difficult location. Now just as I went to the Hoe and saw nothing yesterday,my pansy growing is not the most successful, slugs believe I am their artisan food producer. But leave a pansy out of my direct control and they manage very nicely just growing away in a drain.
Here is a conundrum. I did not see the last live performance that I experienced but I did hear it. I went to Plymouth Hoe, this morning, for the V E Day 80 Civic service and arrived too late to see anything apart from service personnel’s bottoms.
Or the back of the Mayoral Party.
But I did hear some marvelous music and listened to the Churchill V E Day speech in full for the first time. All in all a most exceptional and interesting dog walk .
Even more thrilling, one of the people at the top of the Lighthouse is my friend Jenny. She is the smaller human of the three.
May is always my favourite month. 31 days of gorgeousness. I have been nurturing two climbing roses since my birthday in November. This one is called Claire Austin, she has been chosen for beauty and practicality. She is a spiky and reliable woman. Chosen to clamber onto a garage roof and deter the local cats from using our yard as a latrine. Not the most glamorous of jobs for such a beauty. I am still painting Turneresque images . 250 years ago when Turner was a visitor to Plymouth my back yard would have just a rocky outcrop surrounded by sea on three sides. Claire Austin would have been scrambling over rocks and turning her many pretty heads to the sun, I gave her a little bit of Turner yesterday.
The other rose is also growing but does not have a single flower head. The name ‘ Crepuscule’ is an odd word that makes me think of grumpiness. So far this rose is living up to the sensation of the name. Sturdy green growth but no sign of glamour or effort to climb anywhere. No background painting for the grumpy one . Instead, I picked some Arum Lillies at the Tennis Club. Cool white beauties under trees in an old quarry. Probably the quarry where the rock that was used to build my house was quarried from.
theoldmortuary.design 