Looking up..."Above us only sky."

 I've stolen a John Lennon line....

The skies this week have been wonderful....

The blue is so blue ...

The  clouds scurry across the horizon...chasing one another...

The birch trees flaunt their elegant tresses...

...in the spring winds...

...birds swoop and glide on the strength of these messengers...

Have a good weekend.....

Sketch and paint...right handed.

I haven't sketched anything since I broke my left wrist...

well if I'm honest..

I haven't sketched or painted anything since last August in Donegal with Rosie's Art Group sketching holiday.

So the wrist has been a good excuse!!

I keep telling the family to stay creative...I thought it's about time I did something for myself!

So I dug around in my studio and found a sketch book..sorted the desk easel and opened up my paints.

Right handed drawing is so hard!!

I'm in awe of those artists who do it!

The weather is warm

The flowers are beautiful.

I chose these auriculas for the first tentative go.

Forbade the potter from saying.."that's good".

Daft...isn't it...just feeling my way back in.

The Inbetween Saturday...Stations of the Cross

Raffael painted ..."The Deposition of Christ"

A graissaille.

It's sort of the inbetween day in Easter Week.

Not Easter Sunday celebration 

Not Holy Friday and sorrow...

The day the disciples may have spent either hiding or crying.

I would have!

When I was still at Wirral Art College...Birkenhead..I chose Raffael's graissaille of the Deposition for a transcription.

I had been to Florence with a dear friend Ann ..and we went as did most tourists to The Uffizzi Galleries. This was not there!..but inspired by the renaissance art I saw and encouraged by our tutor...Ed...I took charcoal, inks, boot polish and paint and poured my heart into my interpretation of Raffael.

It hangs now mainly out of sight on a high wall in Penketh.

Today is the day I think of his mother taking him down off the cross.

Maybe dark times today... but a light to come.

Keep hopeful.

Berliner Walls

Our accomodation was in East Berlin. We went into the West side a few times but the East is the all singing, all dancing part of Berlin!
I have taken some pics of the posters that abound everywhere and the graffiti painted on every space available.

A plethora of official and unofficial wall paintings.

 

...and those wonderful round "pill-box" poster stands seen everywhere.

Love them !

I thought that this one had an irony to it....

...above an ad. for family entertainment and pasted over that...

one for international revolution.

Maybe the family will go to both?!

 

Just look at the number of bits of paper stuck on top of each other!

If I were young again and living there...I would take them as they fall off and soak them apart and paper my walls with them...

...as it was I took one informing me that a rally was to be held that day to support the "Pussy Riot"...

...the three young Russian women jailed by the Putin regime for singing in the cathedral.

It hangs proudly in our dining room reminding me that actually, revolution is never far away!

The one that really got me was very simple...

"War

is

coming"

We were walking through one of the few up market streets...but round the corner was a squat and 

perhaps they had pasted it up.

[not much happening on the blogging front....a new computer and new photo shop and I'm regularly flummoxed by them both...so posts will be few and far between for a while]!

Palette Knives at Dawn.

A palette knife workshop at The Potters House today, with the potter as chef du jour in the kitchen.

To start the group off on a positive note...

I explained that if you can butter bread or ice a cake, you are on a winner, using a palette knife for painting.

So with that "great" explanation under their belts...they  set forth with their boards and canvases.

Brave women!

Margaret...

Dot...

Denise...

Angela...

Gwen...

and Norma.

I love the way each person's work is so different...just as each of us differ...it makes life more colourful.

The food was excellent ...of course...and the rain dried up long enough for us to sit out at the garden table.

Then the day was brought to a grand finale with the entrance of the potter's chocolate cake to be taken up with a refreshing cup of tea.

We had a critique on the art...and all said they enjoyed the day.

In my defense...I had prepared a document for each of them re. equipment and techniques so they knew a little bit more than...

....buttering bread...but the metaphor helped!

So I bid a good bye to most of them until September.

"Goodbyee

goodbyee

wipe the tear baby dear from your eyee!"

A Poem for Thursday

Vincent van Gogh

Graeme Roberts sat in his usual chair

And I sat nearby in mine.

And behind his head it was always there

The van Gogh in the frame of pine.

 He lulled my brain with his smokey words

And the passion in all that he said.

But the thing I remembered was Vincent's art

On the wall - behind his head.

It was only a print of course , I knew

As I sat in the Georgian room.

But I longed to see more of the painter’s skill

Of the joy, in the clouds and the moon.

And I did one day in the Amsterdam

In the gallery given his name.

And the shock of the real as I stood in front

Of the scene in it’s golden frame...

Left me weeping and moved, though I couldn’t say why.

Did it take me back to that room?

To the girl and the man and the frame of pine

And the trees and the clouds and the moon.

This poem is for Poetry Jam...they wanted a poem about an artist...well Vincent is always my darling!..even if I wander away to other poets ..I eventually come back to all that he was and is! so thankyou Poetry Jam for inspiring me to go back to that place and remember my feelings!

Sweet Memories

I had such a good weekend up in the house in Morecambe.

The bay was at it's most glamorous......

.......that's Morecambe Bay for anyone new to my ramblings.

I said to the potter, that it was a watercolour day.

The lake district mountains in the distance looked as if the painter had turned them upside down and let the wash of colour settle in the top of the hills and the valleys were lost in a sweet mist.

Eric was his usual smiling self.

I never go past him but he is surrounded by happy people raising their left leg!

We sat outside at the Midland Hotel one evening.

The day was still warm,

and we drank our Guinness and watched the sun go down.

Old friends from Co. Down came by

so we sat in the lounge at the house and drank tea

and put the world gently to rights.

The fire was lit in the big hearth

and being old friends

we all but fell asleep.

Sheep graze on the salt marshes around the Bay.

Red Bank Farm have opened a little eaterie there.

 And they sell their home grown and home cooked Lamb Henry

with heaps of fluffy mash and petit pois and yummy gravy.

And then all that is left to do is have a walk along the salt marshes,

while happy dogs romp

 and kites are flown.

And travel back down the M6 for another week's work.

Weekend Cache.

A piece of drift wood

An Edwardian mirror from my favourite charity shop...

And a painting from the weekend workshop.

Successful three days.

I'll clean up the frame of the mirror and patch the broken bits.

Mount and frame the painting.

And add the driftwood to the ever growing collection of wonderful shapes.

Happiness doesn't take much...does it?

Classes at the Potters House.

Back from India a week now. It takes a while to get back into the work again . This time it's really hard, what with the time change and the funny tummy that we both have had.
But classes started last Monday once again and so this is already the second week.
We have super people in our classes and it's great to see someone with no prior knowledge of either paint or clay start to gain confidence in what they are doing.
Although many have been coming to us for years, others have recently joined.
So I'm going to put up a few photos of recent work still unfinished .

Still life based on the work of Morandi and executed in graphite.

Ceramics in the leather hard state.

And ceramics waiting for the glaze firing.

Studio groups.

All the classes are now full which is a very good position to be in!

Irrelevancies

I saw this quote from the Times at the weekend.  Tutor to Paloma Faith [singer], " The medium in which you express yourself is irrelevant. What is important is what you are trying to say." 

When I was at college working towards my B.A. in Fine Art, my struggle was to narrow down the ideas coming from my butterfly mind.
Whether to paint or collage, to use ceramics, installation art or performance.

Then as now the theme running through it all was, the human race on the edge. A place that I knew so well growing up, edge where sea meets land. A very edgy place yet also comforting in the eternal movement of time and tide. I have always been a gatherer of stuff thrown up by the waves. These are often bits thrown overboard, abandoned then changed by the water and salt and continual movement of wind and weather.

These pieces of work are the result of my years of looking and making. they are often a statement of relationships and family trauma and joy.                                                                  

                                 

              

       Sometimes they are just themselves!  

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Together they make a statement about life and family and all those ordinary things that are really 

extra-ordinary!