Haworth Parsonage, Autumn Evening

I finished this piece, pasting the final leaf on, at about 2 o'clock this morning. Obsessive or what? Anyway, I am fairly happy with it and it captures the atmosphere I was after. Gone are the dog and the plethora of graves. It would be too easy to always plump for a strictly bleak and tragic view ... coloured by our knowledge of how their brief lives played out. It's autumnal, yes, but happy autumnal I hope. Before the advent of the grim reaper down Haworth way.

"My home is humble and unattractive to strangers, but to me it contains what I shall find nowhere else in the world - the profound, the intense affection which brothers and sisters feel for each other when their minds are cast in the same mould, their ideas from the same source - when they have clung to each other from childhood ...", said Charlotte Brontë in 1841

Detail showing the sisters

So there she is clinging to Anne by the side of the parsonage, Emily striding out across the moor in the background. The three large birds? The sisters' soaring imagination, with the distant Branwell perversely flying in the opposite direction, poor thing.

And there they are again, inside the plain, solid, somewhat comfortless house (their father brooked no curtains or carpets for fear of fire, apparently) looking out of the windows.

I once read a Freudian interpretation of Wuthering Heights, the author of which had counted the number of times that windows and doors featured in the work. Having lived with the facade of Haworth Parsonage for a couple of weeks I have to say that windows were an architectural feature the Brontës must have had an awful lot of trouble ignoring in their day-to-day lives.
They certainly had me cursing with the fiddly panes.

Eight years after Charlotte Brontë wrote the lines quoted above, she was to write to her friend, wryly laughing off the suggestion she take a companion (her siblings having died in the intervening years):
"... the young person whom I might request to come and bury herself in the hills of Haworth - to take a church and stony churchyard for her prospect - the dead silence of a village parsonage - in which the tick of the clock is heard all day long - and a grave, silent spinster for her companion ..."
Needless to say she didn't wish the fate on anyone.

Now that does sound a grim and tragic scenario, but even that isn't as grim and tragic as the one which would be the lot of their father who outlived them all by six years,

I feel a bleaker parsonage picture coming on ....

A Keatsian card and other stuff

Here is my prototype card. I now have to source the blank cards and envelopes. When you live on an island on the edge of Europe this is not as easy-peasy as it sounds. The envelopes I have found so far are either a few millimetres too big or a few millimetres too small. I may have to resort to importing them to find some that are just right. The Goldilocks effect even influences envelopes.

And while I'm about it, here is a wider view to take in what I think of as my trophy shelf in my studio on which the card is perched, just for any nosey parkers out there (I know I always am when it comes to Other People's houses):

Roughly left to right holding some junky pencils and brushes is a plastic beaker from Jamaica, leaning against which is a postcard of East Head and West Wittering beach, then comes a battered sheep from Edale, the last of a herd I cast in plaster of Paris then painted and sold to Peak District tourists more years ago than I care to remember, up above that is a postcard of an Alfred Wallis sent me last year from Cornwall, crowned by a leaf retrieved from the garden of Wentworth Place. There's a Gauguin girl in the background, a portrait of Sir Astley Cooper by Lawrence, a postcard of Sir John Soane's house (and believe me, until you go there you don't know what clutter is) and a boat sharpener that used to belong to one of my daughters' school kit.

Golly, as you see I go nowhere without buying a postcard or three. An lifelong habit. For which there is no known cure.

The Living Year

The cards will be on sale in my online shop which I hope will be up and running by September (my generous deadline). I may have figured out the procedure by then. To say nothing of having enough to put in it.....

Haworth evolution

Dog's out ... leaves in.

Frustrated by having every colour backing paper except the one I want. 

This piece is too small.

Life's too short.

Happy Easter!

Haworth in peril

This is the latest stage of the game. Taking snaps as I go along as nothing is fixed and everything is likely to be in a flux, not to mention imminent danger of being scattered to the four corners of the studio and beyond by a draught if I inadvertently open the kitchen door or more likely a cat decides to muscle in on the act. I eventually happened upon Charlotte Bronte in the bathroom by the way, she must have stuck to the sole of my shoe and been transported there at some point in the day. She is now restored to her rightful place as you can see, winging along in the wake of her sisters.

So, if disaster does strike I have this memory jogger to restore order to chaos, so to speak.

I am still trying to ignore the fact that Keeper was brown, as you see ...

Messing around with Haworth Parsonage

This is how I've begun. Nothing stuck down yet. Just playing around with the basic shapes and ideas. There are supposed to be three black Bronte birds (and I use the term strictly in the ornithological sense), but one dropped on the floor and I can't find it.
Was Keeper black? Probably not but he will be for me..
Anyway, it's a start.

Which is hopeful after being stymied in my quest for envelopes for my Keats cards by Semana Santa. The big stationers recommended by the printer was closed, as were 95% of all other shops in La Orotava. Strangely the funny little shop on the bridge that sells outrageously lacy, scanty and expensive knickers was open for business. I was forced to conclude they are either atheists or desperate.
Maybe both.

Bronte country

My thoughts have turned from that house in the north of London for the time being to one in the north of England, now that I have decided on expanding on the Keats theme and starting a series of writers' houses as an ongoing project.

The Brontes are a recurring interest of mine though my collection of books on them (a grand total of 3) can hardly be compared to my Keatsian shelf.

I came upon a nice little cache of magazines at the fleamarket the other day to begin a collage. But first I have to find a way in, as it were. So I have been reading around the subject and turning it over and scribbling words and rough sketches and website links on scraps of paper.
I love the research and doodle bit.

My raggetty ideas book

One of the things which struck me was the contrast, in contemporary accounts, between the clean, neat and well-kept house and the indifference with which the garden was treated, to the point, according to some, of neglect. "Stunted thorns, shrubs and only the most hardy plants ..."
I brought home a bunch of roadside English-looking weeds from my walk this morning to get me into the mood and doodle in my ideas book.

Some inspirational weeds, and a ginger cat exiting stage left.

Have to see where this goes. A single sentence in one of the books might trigger me into action ...
In the meantime I am finishing that linocut today.
I hope.
Anybody spot the undeliberate mistake in my last post? Yep. I did it again. Forgot to reverse the image I mean. I was so embarrassed I went back and removed the photo!
I definitely need a break from carving bits of lino ...

A linocut card

This is what I am aiming at: a composite of the collages and the bookplate, another element in what I am now thinking of as my Keats suite of bits and pieces. It will be a hand-printed card.

Still a way to go.

I am getting a bit weary of black and white and need a change. Mmmmmm .... I feel a painting or a collage coming on.

Ex Libris - finis

Finished tweaking:

And I had some surplus ink on my roller so I reprinted an old carving from a few years back to have a nice fresh print instead of the unloved dog-eared item in my drawer:

Done and dusted!

Naive bookplates

Testing, testing....

Just tweaking and trying different papers and messing about with ink. 

This last being something one of my cats was apparently doing overnight, as I woke up to find black paw marks all through the house.

Linocut rage

I have a lot on my mind just lately. And a lot on my desk, as you can see.

Which is just a bad excuse for my complete and utter idiocy in cutting a bookplate and forgetting to REVERSE THE TEXT.

That'll teach me to carry on beyond midnight when the spirit is willing but the brain is in freefall. At least mine must be.

My only consolation was that it was a small piece.

And this evidence in a book on my shelves that even the great Carrington was capable of the same mistake. At least twice. And once on a bookplate as it happens.

So ... time to clear the decks and get back to the drawing board tomorrow, stop mixing metaphors and letting cats invade my workspace.

Deep, deep sigh.

Mellow fruitfulness

The first print of three I'm satisfied with. 

I had forgotten what physical work it is and Ingres paper was the best I could find for the time being. 

Measures 24 x 31 cms.

A Dominican Republic naive giant

Stopped in my tracks I was on Friday when I popped to the framers to get a couple of pictures mounted (yeah, I know, Miss Lazy me). Dominating the whole shop was this wondrous thing, a truly tropical Noah's Ark which was fair sizzling off the canvas.

It had apparently been purchased in the Dominican Republic by some lucky person in Puerto. It stands about five feet high and nine wide and I fell in love with it so I quickly took some pictures as best I could to share it with you.
Enjoy (as they say).

To Autumn, printed

Okay, okay: impatience got the better of me.

I knew some more cutting was necessary.

I knew the paper was rubbish.

And I hadn't inked it enough.

So it was always going to be a rough.

But I just had to have a looky-looky.

So here it is in that rough state.

I had forgotten how much I love the magic of pulling a print and seeing the result. Really exciting. Takes me back to my childhood when a John Bull printing set was always on my Christmas list.

I had also forgotten how messy it is. Or rather how messy I am.

Anyway, now to finish the cutting - only a few tweaks - and track down some decent paper. And that will be the hard part, I fear.

The Pot of Basil

I finished it this morning:

A bit of a sad one that started as a thumbnail sketch related to a poem, Her Posthumous Life, about Fanny, and looking at illustrations and paintings of Isabella and the Pot of Basil, and family talk about a relative who I remembered dimly as being dressed in beatnik (now there's a word) black, and family farewells .... and all the while in the background there was the dreadful rolling news of tragedy in Japan (hence the oriental-looking pot) ....

It's all in there.

For me it is, anyway.

Work in progress ...

This is the state of play (and never a truer word!) at present on my desk, though minus the cat who had made a rapid (and assisted) exit just before I shot this.

I thought I'd take a photo to remind me of where everything (roughly) goes before transferring and glueing the bits to another piece of paper. And possibly before the cat scatters everything to the four winds in her unstoppable quest to be the absolute centre of attention. Under my nose.

And at the risk of being a bore (for anyone out there who has read of this elsewhere, like on my FaceyB pages) may I say Suzie Grogan has kindly posted some images of my Keats House collages today on her brilliant blog, No More Wriggling Out of Writing Woman, a link for which I would post right here but I have tried and the feat appears to be way beyond my technical expertise at present. But the whole blog link is on my list down on the left, if you see what I mean.
Goodness, this post is straying into gobbledegook...

Anyway, please take a peek - then carry on grazing among all the other interesting nuggets Suzie has posted.

Birdsong

Birdsong

Still kicking Carlo around in my mind. Here he is in the garden, being deafened by the birds. Once I am back on track with a visitorless spell, sometime next week, I think I will tackle the Staffordshire Pair.
In paint.
On canvas.
Time to ease myself back into some painting, after all this paper-work, though I still have a lot of collage ideas so will have to try to concentrate and multi-task.
The linocut is nearly finished. But I still don't have the right paper to print on. I may even have to send off overseas for some.
Deep, deep sigh (tempered by the knowledge that this is such a little, miniscule inconvenience on the grand scale of current events and tragedies ...).

A Staffordshire Pair

A Staffordshire Pair

I did this today and thought I'd just put it up now before I toddle off to bed and while I'm still on a computer roll.
It's a collage (yep, those old Vogues definitely came in useful) which was sparked from doing Carlo. I really love the idea of mirror images.
Well, almost mirror images.
And I adore this sort of English pottery.
You can keep your Meissens!

The Four Seasons

Right, here is the full 4 season set as photographed with my daughter's Canon. A nice hefty proper camera that you can actually look through a viewfinder (is that the word I am casting around for?) with, instead of squinting at a stupid tiny reflecting screen and pressing the button on a wing and a prayer. 

Thus spake a confirmed Luddite...

Spring

Summer

 

Autumn

Winter

I am rather pleased with them and the fact that I think I pulled off the idea of capturing a separate and distinct atmosphere in each one. 

Reading the Gittings biography of Keats and the letters between his friends and relatives helped with details to create a little world in each: Carlo the dog; the writing of the Ode to a Nightingale under the plum tree; the "fine fellow" that was the song thrush watched by Keats and Fanny Brawne, and lastly the Wentworth Place cats and the denuded plum tree recalling "In a drear-nighted December/ Too happy, happy tree/ Thy branches ne'er remember/ Their green felicity ...."

It's not often things turn out the way I mean them to, but on this occasion they did and I am satisfied. Good feeling. What was it that Vaughan-Williams said about "I don't know whether it's any good, but it's what I meant". Probably entirely misquoted, but a good maxim to (creatively) live by.

Keats House in Spring

Well, it was certainly the most fiddly of the four but I stuck down the very last leaves this morning:

For some technical reason I have not yet (if I ever will) fathomed there is a distinct distortion on vertical images. To be rectified when I finally persuade my daughter to get out her Canon this week and take a swatch of proper photographs.

Spring, snipping and Staffordshire spaniels

Introducing Carlo Keats...
The dog the poet's young sister wasn't allowed to keep by her guardian and which found a home at Wentworth Place with the Brawnes. I like a backstory, it helps to trigger an image. I have taken a bit of a liberty though by turning him into a native of Staffordshire.
Carlo is the way in to my spring collage which as you can see from the state of my big fat messy desk is at a preliminary stage still, but I think he also works as this minimalist image. Or perhaps, in future, as a still life ...