Steventon Church

Here it is, finished at last:



Jane and Cassandra Austen Walking to Steventon Church, Christmas Morning
 



And, as you see, titled.

And signed.

And now released into the cyberworld.

But only in a highly unprofessional my-own-not-very-good photo form for the present. This was the best I could do. It will be properly scanned ready for printing as Christmas cards later on. So the snow WILL be snow-coloured and not dirty grey!

Appropriately enough this church is dedicated to St Nicholas. Very seasonal!

 

For any history geeks (like me) out there, here is a relevant bit from the church's official guide I dug up while originally researching the idea:

 

"Steventon church is best known for its associations with Jane Austen and is the single most important building left standing in Steventon which relates to her life when she lived here. The rectory is gone, but the church survives. It was an everyday part of the first 25 years of her life.

 

"Her father, George Austen, two of her brothers, James and Henry, and her nephew William Knight were all Rectors of Steventon. Prior to George his cousin Henry had been the Rector. Which is to say members of the Austen family were Rectors of  Steventon from 1759 to 1873, a period of 114 years, more than any other family in the church's history.

 

"Jane was baptised here as were four of her siblings - Henry, Cassandra, Francis and Charles. Her grandmother, her eldest brother James and both his wives, Anne and Mary, are buried here. As are Jane's nephew William Knight, several members of his family and a number of her friends and acquaintances.

 

"Every memorial, bar one, inside the church has a direct connection to Jane Austen. No doubt several of the graves in the churchyard are those of people she knew in the village."

Snow in July ...

Just taking a break here in blogland from the depths of winter:

 

I've got a bit muddled with my trays of sorted clippings and appear to have lost some important bits altogether, so I thought I'd come here then return to the worktable with new eyes. And maybe find those elusive bits. In fact they might be under the table now I come to think of it.

Even worse, they might be underfoot.

 

So, the scene is St Nicholas's in Steventon. The time, Christmas. The protagonists, Jane and Cassandra Austen.

Their father was the vicar there. That's going to be him, at the church door.

 

I have taken a few liberties, as is my wont.

I mean, I don't think a dog would have been allowed into church for one thing. And the spire was added to the building years later, after the Steventon era of Jane. And I'm not religious enough to know whether Anglicans have what looks like it might be a midnight service.

As for Regency guardian angels ... 

But it's the atmosphere that counts, right?

It's going to be a really traditional Christmas card.

 

There's still a long way to go, but consider the initial stage:

I'm nearer the finish than the start.

Portrait of a lady

Or should that be Regency wild child instead of lady?

It's a long time since I did any portraits. I was reading about the Shelley entourage again recently and this was the result - inspired by some cuttings I happened upon in my bits and pieces box and by Claire Clairmont, teen runaway who threw in her lot with Shelley and her half sister Mary when they decamped for France.

Then threw herself at Byron and ended up pregnant and deserted.

 

Here she is, older, wiser and still poor, as a governess in Russia where she did her best to distance herself, geographically and metaphorically, from her scandalous past, though judging by her letters and recently discovered memoir (in which she rages against Byron and Shelley's conduct)she retained her splendidly fierce independence of spirit, in contrast to Mary Shelley whose somewhat prim and proper life-after-Shelley always seems a bit of a disappointing anti-climax.

Had she been born a hundred years later I think she would have made a wonderful suffragette.

Happy Christmas and a Mea Culpa to All My Followers

 

Apologies for my recent neglect, apologies for not having been around to reply to lovely comments, and then catching up a bit late in the day to respond ... I have been a bit overwhelmed by work (and life) just lately. That'll teach me to have overseas exhibitions at Christmas time at the same time as an online shop selling Christmas cards ...

And having a hugely reduced screen so I miss out on blogging interaction since Blogger changed its design.

 

Will try to do better in 2013.

Promise!

Virginia Woolf in the snow

I think this is finished. In fact I will put it away before it gets over fussy.

Virginia Woolf being greeted by the couple's dog, Pinka, the spaniel given to the Woolfs by Vita Sackville-West, the aristocratic writer/poet/gardener who was also at one time the lover of  Virginia and muse for her novel Orlando.

Note her Omega-inspired handbag and Omega-style curtains!

(The Omega Workshops were the artistic wing of the Bloomsbury Group).

I have taken a massive artistic liberty in leaving so many leaves on the plants and trees at Christmas time. My excuse is that they are the ghosts of leaves past.

And I'm sticking to it. Or rather they are if you'll excuse the pun.

This is the fourth in my series of Christmas card designs.

On sale later this year ... watch this (and other) space(s).

A Virginia Woolf Christmas ...

This is what is on my drawing board at the moment. The cottage of the Woolfs.  To add to my Christmas card selection. Very little is stuck down, a slight breeze or a wayward cat could cause a Rodmell earthquake. I get nervous about leaving the studio door open.

But the table is full of offcuts from my magazine cuttings box which may be substituted before anything gets glued. And Pinka Woolf, the spaniel, has to be fitted into the picture too.

All in all it's a bit up in the air (though thankfully not literally) right now.

Meanwhile, outside the heatwave continues to swelter.

And our mad neighbour continues to play at earth moving...

Dust and deafening noise ... thank goodness I can concentrate on tranquil snowy Sussex.

Christmas thoughts in July

It's that time again ....a deadly suffocating heatwave.

Lovely for sunworshippers but not my sort of weather at all.

And, as usual, every July our lovely neighbour Juan decides he really has to plough up the field outside the back door and envelop us with dust.

To say nothing of stirring up the flies.

And giving me the grumps.

So, also as usual, at this sweltering juncture my thoughts turn to winter - and Christmas cards.

I wasn't terribly sure that my Bronte themed Winter Foxes which I did earlier this year was finished. It seemed a bit empty. But a couple more foxes, more snowflakes and frozen vegetation has done the trick, I think.

More lively and appropriate for a Christmas card as well.

The colours aren't quite right on this photograph but it was the best I could do.  

Now it's off to the printer this week for scanning and samples.

I'll put up the professionally done image at some point.

One good thing about this time of year though ... my beautiful jacaranda tree is in full bloom.

Such glorious colour.

Such a lovely name.

Such a sense of insufferable pride on my part too - this tree (which would be way taller than the house had it not been drastically pruned back) started out as a seed in a packet I bought at a local newstand as an afterthought. One of those garish packets aimed at tourists I half thought of as scams.

So here is the living proof they aren't.

That'll teach my cynical self to think better of things labelled "A Souvenir From Tenerife" .

Simply black and white

I really DO love black ink and white paper!

And I also love the beautifully ever so subtly mottled shades of Canson paper. I get crazes on certain Canson colours. At one time it was the dusty blue one. Right now it's the greys and fawns.

These two collages were made from chopped up monoprints. The effect is a bit like a linoprint but with none of that medium's restrictions. Or (let's face it) time consumption. I like playing around with the pieces and moving them around. Which is one thing you can't do with a linocut.

I had Flora and the arrival of spring in the back of my mind as I assembled this image. Somehow it didn't seem finished until I put her in this paper mount with a primitive sort of frame. Gives it the folksy feel I was after.

Previously I made this other collaged monoprint inspired by my finishing off the Haworth paper cut - I obviously wasn't ready to leave the Brontës behind. I took a line from Emily as a point of departure: 

Lone, among the mountains cold ...

which is now the title.

I will be putting them in my Etsy shop when I next feel in an uploading kinda mood!

In the meantime I am going to clean up the ink trails left by one of the cats after he nonchalantly sauntered across the inked up glass sheet. Here are Freddo's paw marks on my desk. Nice monoprint! Don't even start me on the ones on my beige leather sofa .... 

Lucky I'm not a houseproud maruja!

Little Brontë foxes

Finished at last!

It's been a long time coming, mainly because of other stuff, as I mentioned before. Can't be doing with distracting background noise, literal or metaphorical, brings out the worst kind of procrastination in me.

Anyway, here it is, Haworth Parsonage in the snow (despite the fact that we have been experiencing summertime temperatures over here for the last few days).

The snowmen, which started out more prominent, have been relegated to watchers - watching the three sisters watching them from inside. So they retain their sinister, gothicky aspect even if somewhat watered down. The foxes were introduced as a splash of colour (I just knew that National Geographic portrait of an orange-haired kabuki actor would come in useful one day!) and movement. Three sisters ... three foxes ... mmmmm. Three snowmen if it comes to that. Obviously highly significant.

Or maybe not.

As is often the case with these house portraits it was a piece of the occupants' writings that settled me on the final image.

In this case a poem by Emily which starts:

The moon is full this winter night;

The stars are clear though few;

And every window glistens bright

With leaves of frozen dew ...

Well okay, lots of snowflakes rather than a few stars and lamplight rather than leaves of frozen dew.

Big full moon though.

 

Anyway, it is ready in time for my Christmas 2012 greeting card collection.

Method in my madness.

I'm back ... with naive Christmas cards

I didn't realise how long it has been since I had posted anything.

Daughter has been visiting and I have had lots of bureaucratic stuff to do. 

Then running around to the printer.

Anyway, that's my excuse.

My creativity was zapped - or do I mean sapped - by it all.

But as you see, I haven't been entirely idle. 

More presents have arrived on the steps of Wentworth Place and some new shoots of grass are showing!

This is one of my beautiful (if I do say so myself!) Christmas cards - hooray - which will be in my shop this week.

Watch this space.

Or even THAT space.

Christmas cards

I have been tweaking my Winter Snows image. 

No, what am I saying? 

I have redone it completely to give it a more decoratively Christmasy feel. 

Wentworth Place with silhouetted inhabitants (Keats and Fanny?), the dashing Dilke cats, some seasonal robins and a gift on the doorstep ...

White is EXTREMELY hard to photograph.

I'm still searching for the definitive shot (this needs more to the left and less to the right) but thought I'd put this one up anyway to prove I haven't been slacking after a week's absence.

Each one of those snowflakes has been lovingly (what?) and individually cut and stuck down.

I think I may be suffering from snow blindness ...

Out of season's greetings from Miss Austen ...

I glued in the last snowflake (which all look suspiciously like the cotton wool balls my dad and I used to make for the Christmas tree when I was really small) this afternoon.

 

The light wasn't very good so it's a bit dark and there is about 3 and a half centimetres chopped off on either side because my camera doesn't do nice slimline rectangles, only dumpy ones. When I have better images on the Canon I will replace all the duff photos I have taken of late. As it is there are just one-and-a-half robins on either side of the house instead of two.
But I wanted to upload it because I then feel it is done and out there and I am freed to start on something else.

Mrs Austen in her pyjamas has gone. And that may or may not be Martha Lloyd in the doorway putting out the cat. The swirly lines have writing on. Which may or may not (ambiguous moi?) be words written by Jane Austen, a Christmas carol or just a simple swirl of seasonal fog. Or all three. I gave the neighbour bearing holly a black dog. The Dilke's refugee cat is back in the scraps box.

Christmas always reminds me of childhood. And one of the things I loved most in the run up was opening envelopes from aged relatives containing those dated (even then) cheapo cards with cheesy scenes of coaches and four, snow, glowing mullioned windows and rosy cheeked people in strange old-fashioned clothes. Often liberally sprinkled in glitter. I thought they were wonderful and would wish myself into the jolly scenes. As I got older and more sophisticated (who am I kidding?) I would outwardly make fun of them while still sneakily getting a thrill if one came through the post.

So now I produce this design. I think there are some echoes in there. My past is catching up on me ...

Beavering away on Chawton Cottage

Okay, so some of this is stuck down and some is in a state of flux. Is this a metaphor for my life I ask myself in ironic tone.

I am afraid it is becoming a bit unwieldy. For a "cottage" Jane Austen's was a bit of a humdinger as far as size goes. I have had to add on more at the sides as I go along to try to approximate to the rather grand proportions.

Looks like the turkey might be squeezed out. But there goes Jane Austen crossing the street. And her mum is at the door. Though she looks a wee bit too much like she is in her pyjamas at the moment so that will have to be changed.

I have been mugging up on Chawton Cottage for some background info: It was already 120 years old when the Austens moved in, part of Jane's brother Edward's estate. He improved it quite a lot for them, adding on more rooms at the back, apparently. Jane, her mother, her sister and their friend Martha Lloyd were not the only inhabitants, there were several servants. No wonder the place is a bit of a sprawler rather than a poky two up two downer with roses round the door traditional building associated with the word "cottage".

And it must have had an interesting view, looking out as it did over the main road to Winchester with all the comings and goings of the coaches that that implies. And the clatter. In fact in one of her letters Jane describes looking out of the front window and seeing the face of one of her nephews inside a passing coach.

Anyway, enough of this and back to the drawing board. I am setting myself a this week deadline for this larger-than-usual piece.

A Happy Christmas in July ...

I always did prefer cold to heat so what better time to put together my Jane Austen Christmas card design?

As the petunias wilt, brittle rubber tree leaves clatter to the ground and the cats sprawl in the shade, here am I in the cool and clutter of the studio moving bits of paper around the drawing board and trying to imagine myself into a Regency December in Hampshire kinda mood.

The idea came to me when I stumbled upon a contemporary engraving of holly sellers. I don't know if that's a holly seller approaching Chawton Cottage or one of the neighbours, but either way he gave me the way in to the picture: Probably not raggety enough for a seller now I come to think of it. A neighbour then. With a gift of holly and fir from his fields to deck the Chawton Cottage halls.

On the left is a refugee - surplus cat from the Dilke tribe in Keats House I found in my box of unused bits and pieces.

He may yet be transformed into a turkey. I am not sure that turkeys had got their feet on the Christmas traditions ladder or do I mean under the traditional Christmas meal table at that time, probably not, but I will conveniently ignore the fact. I fancy doing a turkey.

In the meantime I am pleased to announce the unveiling yesterday of my (still under construction) new website:

http://www.amandawhite-contemporarynaiveart.com/

Please drop by and have a look if you have the time, as I say I am still faffing around with it so there are lots of blanks and things that probably need blanking come to that. Golly I am getting so au fait with technology I can't believe it.

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).

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.