Ghost ship on the Horizon

Well that's what it looked like anyway. It is always such a time-jolting surprise to see a vessel like this out at sea and it was so far out and I had to zoom so far in that I knew it would come out blurry, misty and Ancient Mariner-like. So no apologies this time for the poor quality of image. 

Purely deliberate. 

I love the timeless stamp of these traditional sailing ships. 

It could have been sailing out of another age.

There are some rocks up at the Santa Cruz end of the island with crude carvings of galleons - just a few lines but recognisable, nevertheless - made by someone among the race of people who inhabited these islands before the Spanish conquered them. Their amazement at just such a scene and the need to record it lived on in me in a diluted form. Only I opted to snatch up my Ricoh and press a button in preference to a primitive implement and get stuck into a piece of rock. 

I was at a bit of a loose end over the last image in my four seasons series but have now found a hook as I describe it to myself, a way in (a canine one), and I am looking forward to starting that today. 

While still carving away bit by bit at the lino, worrying at the island-wide dearth of Japanese paper, making soup and potting up the last of the plants I bought on an unintended spree at the garden centre a couple of days ago...

Mmm .............. where to start?

Keats House in Winter

So ... that wasn't my last word on Keats House at all apparently.

Well, I decided as I had already done summer and autumn I may as well go for the complete set and snip away at winter and spring and do a four seasons thing.

I also thought as cats hadn't featured in either of my two efforts so far and as they seemed to be cherished residents of Wentworth Place, with the Dilkes and Brawnes being cat lovers all (George Keats, in a rather wistful letter home from the comfortless wilds of the New World, recalled the Brawne residence thus: "I remember the curtains, the chairs and the cats ..."), I had to include some somewhere. 

Cats are, after all, Very Important Animals.

So here they are, running harum scarum through the winter snow, the very last vestiges of which were melting away when I visited in December, so I have had to imagine the carpet effect of a thick fall.

If nothing else I now have the satisfaction of knowing I won't have to cope with the traditional, God-awful last minute panic of having to dream up and print out my cards for Christmas this year! 

Hey, Amanda is ahead of the game, for once.

(Yeah, but they will still arrive late as usual, I hear my friends say).

Back to boats

Okay, so I was struggling with this house portrait and couldn't find any paper in my not exactly wide-ranging hoard of magazine pages and clippings and these colours kind of came together into these shapes to make this design.

The local harbour is after all second uppermost in my mind these days.

Something tells me it's going to be hard to find stand-ins for Lake District slate roofs within the pages of Vogue, Glamour and Cosmo. Even though I have some fine potential sheep-y clippings. 

What I really need is a windfall of architectural magazines ...

Purely decorative

There is so much birdsong at the moment, blackbirds and blue tits mainly, so they must have been on my mind when I started messing about with paper yesterday. And this design for a card surfaced.

The colours and lighting is bad - the background is more of a lovely warm Naples yellow and the rest of the colours are much brighter - but I was battling against the combined effects of an overcast day and my not terribly good camera. Oh, and fears that the cats might stroll across it with their muddy paws, poised as I was with the picture on the floor in the doorway and me hovering over it trying to snap it.

Once I get a better photo, which I'll have to do for printing out, I'll probably replace the above.

More poetic birds ...

Autumn Days

... which is my last word on this particular subject.
For now anyway.

Now off to review what I might describe as the housing situation re Wordsworth, Shelley and Beatrix Potter ...

And a nightingale in a plum tree ...

In a Poet's Garden

still snipping away ...

at Keats House. 

And now trying to decide between different backgrounds:

 and leaving this design as it stands.

Or adding the garden. 

Or a song thrush. 

Or doing those separately. 

Decisions, decisions.

Portraits of houses is something I've had in mind for some time but couldn't find the way in ... now I've found it. 

Ha ha, Eureka!

Two awkward nuns and two bouncing dogs

= two recent bits and bobs.

The nun painting, the sketchbook idea of which I posted earlier, is finished.

 

They are two of a group who all looked really seriously out of place among the desporting semi-naked bodies on the beach at the Witterings on a bank holiday a few summers ago.

The bouncing dogs emerged from something rather more problematic.

It's a fragment of a painting I sat up late into the night doing. My only excuse for this aberration is that I must have been hallucinating. The next day, thinking better of the rubbishy result I chopped it up in disgust and cut out the only bit I was even vaguely happy with. That'll teach me. Too much detail. So I've stripped what was a complicated image of the local port back to a couple of bouncing dogs on the sea wall. And will put it behind my ear for reference for a future minimalist painting.

Why oh why

Do I paint deep into the night and not-so-early early morning when I know I will feel knocked for six the next morning?

Anyway, I'm not sure how that particular painting is panning out yet.

In the meantime I have done a collage, after thinking twice about throwing out a pile of my daughters' fashionista magazines, which is a variation on the linocut design (still haven't got to Santa Cruz for lino) of Wentworth Place which is such a perfect Regency doll's house of a building.

collage detail (1)

It was ages since I had done a collage and it was great fun. I even managed to downsize the nightingale and put some more authentic plums (rather than pears) on the tree under which the ode was written. Had it not taken the best part of an hour to pay the wretched water bill this morning I would have been in time to buy a selection of coloured papers to use as backing for more.

Collage detail (2)

I find it very therapeutic cutting, sticking and listening to Radio 3 ...

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.