Good and Bad News

The Buddhists say you should greet good and bad news in the same way.

After a life time of getting good and bad news one can't be quite sure which is which as anyone who has had a disaster turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to them, will know.

This summer a nasty hornet sting which laid me low for a week may have saved me from electrocution by my iron! That's another story.

The recent good news (or, given the foregoing, is it?) was that, thanks to a kind friend who chivvied me into having a go, one of my pictures was chosen out of over 2000, to be shown an exhibition in London for the EAC Art Awards.

It is a collage of many paintings done, or rather partly done over a period of years, and never finished. Either the subject drooped and died, or I had to leave it for weeks and lost the thread, or made a silly mistake, which, with this sort of painting is difficult to correct, and I would therefore put it into a box and forget about it. (It is called filing.)

When 4 people close to me died within a few years of each other, for a time I rather lost the will to create new pictures, and of course there was a lot of boring administration to deal with.

When clearing out I came upon this box of stored, I mean filed, odds and ends and decided to get to work cutting them up, originally to have a stock of unused paper for sketching. Into one box went the nice clean pieces and into the other the cut out flowers and leaves. There were many different scales and colours, a real hodge podge.

Then the idea came to me to carefully trim them with a fine cutting knife and to put them together in some sort of order, and thus was "Floribunda" created. It took a very, very long time, and a great deal of patience. It was also immensely satisfying to re-cycle things that were apparently useless - something that gave one satisfaction.


Here it is, Floribunda:




Now I am going to hassle and hustle you and ask you to please vote for it on the EAC Art Awards website click on it, and scroll to the 2009, all pictures section.

http://eacartawards.org.uk

Floribunda is number 37 and I need ALL the votes I can get folks! I will let you know what happens, as I am going to the Opening on December 1st...how could I miss it? Thank you so much to all who have already cast a vote for me.

Not all starts get finished....

Not all starts get finished. By that is meant that one, I, often start a picture or a study and then somewhere along I get disturbed and never get back to finish.
Sketches are very useful. I used to sketch travelling in the car (no, not while I was driving although I have often been thinking about HOW I would paint something, particularly mixing a colour in my head, and then missed a turning, and ended up quite lost.)

As I am rather nervous of cattle I always stay outside the field. They can get very silly at times, just like us, and are also curious.



Moving water is a real challenge and endlessly fascinating. Below I am studying the ripples in a fast stream.



Here is one I did coming home late one evening, it was dusk, light was fading fast. I pulled into the side of the road and worked with whatever materials there were to hand, in this case pen and ink with some colour.



And here is one done on the beach. Even people at rest don't keep still for long, very infuriating, but good for practice of quick sketches.



Here is another working drawing, never finished.....late spring in the garden.



Although I do not work with photos as I find it difficult to extract what I want without copying the picture, I do like to take them, especially when I see something as charming as this tiny chapel set amongst the giant stalks of ripe corn. The leaves were rustling in the wind, and the farmer had very kindly cut a small path through the corn to the chapel.



There were many small birds, feasting on the insects droning in the heat, and on the seeds and on these berries hanging bright and shiny off the large plant, with shocking pink stalks. It was taller than I, but then I am quite small. I don't know what it is, does anyone else please?