Charleston Farmhouse again ...

Plein Air in the Garden of Charleston Farmhouse

The lighting was better today and so I thought I would put this up again.

Yesterday's effort, taken in the evening, was far too gloomy.

 

I have also christened it.

Once I have a goodish photo and a title I feel I can move on to the next thing, somehow.

All framed up ...

... and ready to go to:

http://www.artsbank.co.uk/

a large consignment of eleven collages and paintings which, having been scanned and framed, are now being parcelled up for shipping tomorrow. Quite a large parcel. I always find parcels a challenge. Sticky tape and me not being what you might say the best of friends. Can you hear the fear? Not for nothing did I only last one day on the gift wrap counter in Selfridges in my student Christmas job days.

Meanwhile, elsewhere, I am deep into Edith Sitwell's Queens and the Hive and on an Elizabethan roll which has filled my former creative hiatus ... this is how things stand at the moment:

It's at that exciting stage when it has ceased teetering on the edge of the waste paper bin and looks as if it will shape up nicely.

Where, what and who?

I'll leave you guessing ....

A taste of Tenerife - and the Lakes

 

This is a small collage of a Tenerife farmhouse I am trying to finish off at the moment. It has been a bit of therapy and has served to get my hand and eye in after a couple of fairly sterile weeks.

So I did a therapeutic studio clean up and started this and now hope to return to my writers' houses, especially after discovering this ancient little yellowing booklet which had fallen down and was languishing behind the bookshelf:

It contains some very evocative small reproductions of contemporary engravings and watercolours. I was especially interested in one by the poet's daughter, Dora. It shows Dove Cottage walled by what looks for all the world like a row of headstones and not the drystone wall we see today. 

But however much I peer at it, I can't for the life of me make out what they are. Perhaps just huge slates lined up... a mystery.

All we like sheep ...

... is the name of a piece by Handel (I think), and I always have. Liked sheep, that is. 

I'm the mad woman who quietly squeals with delight when I get back to England and pass my first green field of sheep on the train.

So I had these scraps left over from my Naples Letter collage and they were hanging around on my table top and rather than throw them away I made one of my miniatures:

Sheep 1

Which of course led to me doing a larger one, the composition of which was based on a drawing I did ages ago of sheep in Edale, where I lived at one time.

Going With the Herd