The best laid plans ...

Afraid the small piece of lino I found whilst clearing my studio cupboard isn't up to the task of the design that started out as a tree then grew and grew to include Wentworth Place and a couple of fields. And a couple of birds that from the cut of their jib, to say nothing of their size, couldn't possibly be described as nightingales:

This means a trip to the big city some time in order to track down lino in the only place that I know sells it on this island. And lovely Japanese paper, of course.


Must say it was an unexpected pleasure to return to the limitations (or do I mean tyranny?) and formality of nice thick uncompromising black lines which I seem to have shockingly neglected of late since swishing around with loose images of the sea and shore.

The general design owes a lot to stuff in my London sketchbook such as the garden, reminder scribbles of eighteenth century samplers I spent an hour or so drooling over in the textile department of the V&A and the barley-stick like poles on the merry-go-round in Hyde Park. Funny how things come together when you're not expecting them to.

Here is another photo of Wentworth Place (aka Keats House) as it was just before December. Season of fog and freezing ice more like. I am still in the thrall of the Keats biography which I finished last week and vastly enjoying stumbling upon obscure Keats-and-his-circle-related things on the internet in that one-thing-leads-to-another way which is such a guilty, time-consuming pleasure.

And apropos of nothing, here is another de-cluttering find: a photo of a photo (hence the poor quality and distortion) of a painting, now long lost, I did more years ago than I care to remember and evidence of another long-enduring obsession of mine which is rearing its head again after visiting the Museum of Childhood in December: old dolls. I mean portraits of old dolls ...

Golly, I really should get out more!

Wild Weather Blowing In

is the name of the picture I finished over the weekend.

I had had an idea for doing some local fishing port scenes for a while and have many sketchbook squiggles and snapshots to prove it but meeting up with a fellow naive (wave wave to Judy Joel) down there last week was the push I needed to put brush to canvas.

It's a start. The next one will include the harbourside dogs and pebbly beach. And there is also the old customs house, but that may be for another angle.
First I need a now for something completely different moment to release an idea that's been nagging at the back of my mind for a while: linocuts.

Haven't done any for a while and my fingers are itching after finding an odd piece of lino and inks and being still well an truly immersed in the 18th century thanks to Andrew Motion and my visit to Keats House just before Christmas.

I came across this old print while decluttering the studio (the task that never finishes).

As you see I err on the side of the simple rather than complicated multi-pieced prints. My "naivity" has always been more naturally attracted to ye olde Englishe broadsheet style rather than the slick art deco one. Which is a very happy coincidence given that the technicalities of the latter would be well outside my comfort, skills and, um, patience zone.

Bits, pieces and sticky tape

This is a bit of a mess, I know. 

I painted this picture, see, and after spending about a couple of hours tore it up in disgust and binned it. 

The next day I could be seen picking through the rubbish to retrieve it, cut out the re-usable bits, stick them together mosaic fashion and add bits, subtract bits, until I got an idea of what I wanted.

It is now pinned up for use as a working sketch.

The sea, the sea

Sanctuary

 Last week I went for a trip down to one of this island's most picturesque towns, Garachico. It used to be a big bustling port until lava blocked the harbour and destroyed part of the place back in the seventeenth century. Lots of lovely big traditional mansions, churches and old convents criss-crossed by cobbled streets and alleys.

But for me it is the craggy dark Garachico rock, battered by the elements (and there are an awful lot of elements in this part of the north coast) for thousands of years, home to seabirds and the offshore guardian of the town, that is the star of the show.

Unfortunately on the way I had realised I was sketchbookless. As it was a Sunday and I had to resort to searching a little souvenir shop-cum-mini-market for a notebook and eat my words (further down the blogroll) regarding paper with gridlines on it. Vile stuff.

I think my general distaste for the material I had to work with comes across in this hasty sketch I did as the rain started to sweep in and which formed the basis for the painting I did the next day.

That'll learn me, as they say.

Horses ...

... painted ones.

I just love them. 

Here are a few I have snapped recently which I thought you might like to see.

The magnificent traditional steam-driven ones were in Hyde Park over Christmas. Just contemplating them and their shiny barleystick brass poles gave me a warm glow - despite the minus temperatures and snow.

The one I spotted yesterday outside a Spanish supermarket isn't a patch on them. A pitiful plastic 21st century mass-produced descendant of its Edwardian ancestors.

 

But interesting, for all that. And extremely fierce-looking, with a possible oriental air. Look at those clumpy hooves compared with the elegant lovingly-carved carved ones above! Can't help thinking how very much children are being sold short on their aesthetic experiences these days.

Work in future progress

More figures are starting to quietly creep into my sketchbooks and the scruffy doodle book (which is just a cheapo spiral bound school exercise book with blank pages, remarkably hard to find in these days when children seem to need to do everything on lines or a grid) that travels around with me in the house.


It is a fairly indecipherable object and full of jotted thumbnail pictures, quick cat poses, food smudges, crossings-out, photos cut from newspapers, book titles, phone numbers and striking sentences from whatever book I'm reading.


A faithful stream-of-consciousness reflection of my bemuddled mind, in fact.

For some reason (which may or may not go back to my convent-school nun-dominated days) the figures that are pushing themselves centre stage, as it were, are all somewhat shrouded.

Or it might be the juxtaposition of the bizarre with the well-known and understood.
Like the two burkha clad women in Hyde Park which I posted earlier, and these two spotted outside a typical Victorian house in Cavendish Road in the depth of winter

Or these Mother Theresa nuns who were incongruously gathered outside a beach hut and picknicking on Wittering beach a couple of years back and who seem to be surfacing to the page at last.

Anyway, they're all very rough at the moment and I'll have to see where they go.

If anywhere.

Last picture of the old year ...

More beach huts I'm afraid. Don't know why they came to me black, must be my end-of-year mood. So I decided to lighten it with some jolly words. Only maybe they could be taken as ironic and thereby emphasize my black dog (or huts) mood.

I've never done lettering on anything of mine before, so a bit of a departure.
I may have started myself on a trend.

Anyway, enough of Mars Black (they were out of Payne's Grey) ... a Cadmium Yellow at the very least Happy New Year to everyone, and a peaceful and prosperous one to boot.

Fleshing up some bare bones

... is how I think of going through some of the more promising pages of my sketchbook with a pen, a big brush and some watercolour sloshings.
It concentrates the mind amazingly to sharpen up some jottings and re-read some reminders.

Some of them were just a few reminder type lines dashed down in the train or bus. Trains, however, are so much more sketchbook friendly than the upstairs of a big red bus. Tubes are to be avoided at all cost except absolute necessity as far as I'm concerned.





 The horse was spotted from the train from Victoria to Chichester, somewhere in Surrey, forlorn on a dazzling carpet of fallen autumn leaves.
Before the snows.


The black-clad women, trailing inches of cloth through the dust, I spied from the top of a bus as we waited at traffic lights near Marble Arch.

I'm waking up to dead silence now (the birds don't get going til sunup which is sooooo late at the moment) and must say, though most will think me mad, I am almost missing hearing the traffic roaring down Kilburn High Road and snatches of conversation as people make their way to work.

To say nothing of the somewhat louder sounds of humanity coming from the North London Tavern at night - particularly memorable were the raucous snatches of Delilah by some merry soul on a pre-Christmas roll one evening.

I daresay I'll acclimatize sooner or later.

A HAPPY CHRISTMAS, ONE AND ALL!

I'm back ...

And it was great. Really great.

Hanging the show

The show was good. Five paintings went to good homes, released into the big wide world. I am so happy that someone likes my work enough to reach into their pockets and pay for it with their hard-earned cash, but I have to say a part of me is always sad to see them go ...

Workaday East Croydon Station in the mother of all blizzards.

 The snow was amazing. The stunning new take on familiar, even mundane places in London is almost worth the cold, the slips and general inconvenience. And the sight of the English rural landscape blanketed in white and swathed in sunlight was simply breathtaking.

The Sussex Downs transformed

 Staying with my crazy daughters was fun, fun, fun and catching up with old friends, new friends and an old new friend was really special.

Then there were the cultural highlights: Gauguin at the TM (absolutely stunning); accidentally stumbling upon a whole roomful of Constable's oil sketches at the V&A (golly, what a find); the 400 Women exhibition at Shoreditch Town Hall (one of the most moving shows I have ever seen); Dame Elizabeth Blackadder in Cork Street and, a few doors down, Miranda Moncrieff's incredible sizzling landscapes, all the more sizzling for coming in from the cold and drizzle. Then there was the cosy afternoon spent roaming around Keat's House in Hampstead Heath as dusk fell  ...

Keat's House in the gloaming.

All in all a memorable and energising fortnight.
Now for something completely different: back down to earth and a bit of work, I think.

Back on December 22 ...

... weather permitting.
That is if I get away tomorrow.
All I can say is thank goodness I opted for no private view. Given the present conditions it'd be so private there'd be no one there.
I'm just hoping I get through with the paintings so there's something hanging on the wall on the 6th.

Hurricane-like winds at this end and Arctic blizzards at the other, oh deary me.

Posters!

Picked up the posters from the printer, very exciting. Though I must say I was disappointed that my final instruction: please delete thick black border round picture (which was him slavishly following and amplifying my thin black biro drawing of where to place what) and make my name much smaller, lower case, had only been half followed.

Never mind.
Too late, too late will be the cry.
Rather the shouty name than the funereal border which looked as if someone, possibly the dogs in the picture, had popped their clogs.

A Run On the Beach: Exhibition by Amanda White

A Run On the Beach: Exhibition by Amanda White
Here's a link to the upcoming show.
Click to read.

I must say CCN is a wonderful site, a brilliant ragbag of arts news both local and national. I definitely recommend a browse.

A FEW PHOTOS TO GIVE YOU AN IDEA OF PRE-EXHIBITION PACKING CHAOS!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Slowly, slowly catchee ...

...website!
The reason for the lull in my postings now becomes clear as mud - much grimacing, much swearing and much cold sweating when I press the wrong button - but I really think this time I have cracked it and it may be a question of all systems go on the website front:

 Wooohoooo, that is one scarey looming-out-of-the-ether photo!
So here's another to put it into my habitually cluttered mess of a context, albeit still glowing eerily:

So far I have three-quarters assembled 3 pages and hope to have it ready before I jet off to the UK. I must say I would recommend Weebly to absolutely anyone who is clueless on the technical front, it really is a build-your-own-site-for dummies and looks pretty good into the bargain. Though I could doubtless improve things even more were I to go from Basics to Advanced.
And the great thing is it's FREE!

Five gold stars to Weebly. Even if it is a bit of a "zany funster" word and I have to tag it onto my domain name.

Reality re-ordered

Sometimes, just stumbling around from site to site on the Wonderful World of Internet apart from wasting precious time, you come across somewhere really exciting and thought provoking that sets you off on another series of stepping stones. In the end you forget where you were, which in the case of the interesting blog I came across this morning I have. I shall try hard to retrace my footsteps later on.

But I did note down a quotation that popped up on the first page:
"Art, no matter how minimalist, is never simply design. It is always a ritualistic re-ordering of reality."
I love that. I have inscribed it into my sketchbook
Camille Paglia came up with that gem. I had never heard of her before but will now make it a mission to find out more about her.

In the meantime here is one of my re-orderings of reality, a largish (for me!) (21x26 cms) mixed media on paper which was a take on a tiny (7x10) fragment of another.

My kitchen table industry

I spent part of yesterday resurrecting my cards which had been placed on a very slow back burner some time ago when Life and other things intervened.

It was most enjoyable sitting at the table in the kitchen with my feline helper and my mini guillotine, slicing away at photographs of my paintings, sticking them onto the cards then placing them between books to well and truly stick and flatten them.
Then bagging them up with their envelopes.

My little helper

 A nice shop down in town that sells local produce has agreed to take a pilot selection and I have other outlets in mind.

The trouble is the perplexity with which many (though not all) Spanish people greet the basic idea of a card. Any card. It is still a surprisingly alien concept compared with the UK. The girl on the counter at the shop sounded almost suspicious, as if I were proferring a clutch of hand grenades. "What are they? ... Are they like ... postcards?"

I fear cards, though slowly making inroads, still have a long way to go here before reaching the saturation point long passed in England.

Gulls and Bunting ...

and stress.
A lot of stress.
I am eating too many biscuits.
This must mean something.
It does.
I am stressed.....
About the exhibition.
So of course I paint a jokey picture.
It must be a compensatory mechanism of some sort.
There is probably a word for it of which I am unaware.
Golly, what a miserable post.
I'll shut up now and roll myself up into a biscuit-eating ball.

Bloomin' bougainvillea and some black cats

Lovely isn't it?

There seems to be quite a blossom bonanza going on with this plant round these parts right now, masses of flowers, masses of colour.
Anyway, I took this photo of the overgrown one outside my studio door about ten minutes ago.
A cheery sight in November.
And talking of bougainvillea (however you spell it), here's a picture (getting back to things arty) I did a few years back which features the stuff. And a family of black cats ....

Fun Run

Flat Out, Bracklesham Bay

This is a larger version of a painting I put up here a while back. It was very small and on paper.
This is larger (well 21x27 cms, so you can judge how small the first one was!) and on canvas.

No deep meanings, just hell-for-leather canine fun.

The whippets got their spots ...

They look less ghostly now.