Thursday 20 August 2015

Self publishing and wet Wales

Whilst investigating self publishing I came accross this charming book featuring the work of Sid Burnard. A sculptor living in Borth - West Wales - a place I used to spend a lot of time as a child. Coincidentally he is married to a second cousin of mine, who I have never met ! I love Sid's use of driftwood and how he can turn not very inspiring peices of flotsom into something truly lovely and often whimsical. 
The photographs are particularly lovely and reminiscent of fabulous holidays spent wrapped in blankets, sheltering  in the dunes on a windy Welsh summer's day. 
You can also watch a video of Sid on youtube.... here
A wonderful story of how to use your eyes and see creative potential in everything. Nice. Very inspiring. 



Tuesday 18 August 2015

Where am I going ?

This question was posed by one of the posts in my blog list (left hand bar),
Good question. Does it matter that I don't know right now ?
My days generally start with an early morning dog walk, If I have anything pressing to be done in the day I like to get it done first thing. The rest of the day is dominated by moving my painting or creative work forward. The day usually culminates in more dog walking or swimming and a catch up with friends. That's it.
I try not to plan too much and like to allow the day to sort itself out, itself. My life to sort itself out. It usually does.

So here we go, a morning of playing arounsd with glazes.

Out to sea


Xwejni bay



Looking to Libya


Under Xlendi Tower


Saturday 15 August 2015

Chicken memories

Santa Marija, mama mia !    For two weeks in August the whole of Malta is on holiday, 90% (slight exaggeration but you get my drift) of them come to Gozo for the biggest festa of the year. Two weeks of fireworks and celaebration culminates in this weekend. The highlight for me is a small agricultural show. Not quite the Royal Suffolk but a pretty good turn out of all the local breeders and jam makers.
I used to love the shows in the UK, the kids were always very excited about the unusual animals and birds on show. We usually found something to take home. As a result we had many chickens, ducks, ferrets etc on the farm. It was  joy this morning to kind of relive that. My daughter used to keep a diary of the many chickens we had, she called it 'Chicken memories' and it was full of their unusual names, feathers, photos and descriptions. Joy.







 Held in the Villa Rundel gardens in Victoria.


There were prizes for the best jams, fruit, veg, basket making, wine making, traditional tools and all the things you would expect a farming community to produce. There was also an art exhibition with paintings on many different subjects. 
These two caught my eye, first and second prize in what I can only think must be the 'Weird subject matter' category !!



Lots of livestock competitions and much disputing over the prize winners. 
All good fun. 





Thursday 13 August 2015

Day one

Starting a new series of mixed media paintings. Starting with random layering tissue and newsprint and putting down layers of paint.


Rough shapes.


End of the first day.  Quite happy with the way this is going. Tomorrow when these layers are properly dry, I can start lightening it all up so that the whole painting is very pale in colour.


Wednesday 12 August 2015

Back to some mixed media




Getting back into some mixed media by trying out some ideas in my journal. A morning spent gathering skyline info and rock formation, to use as subject matter for some new work.










Monday 3 August 2015

People who knew

More moon inspired journal pages.
Interesting symbolism in this first one. Hmmm !