Hello Everyone, I hope you have been well over these past few weeks.
photo: favourite sketchbook pages from 2022
I will be honest with you here, I have struggled with low days and I know some of you may be struggling too. It is that time of year but it does not have to be ‘that time’ and depression can nudge its way in when you least expect. There does not have to be a reason. I am sharing this here because I appreciate how common this is. I was a depressed child who grew into a depressed adult but I am not always depressed. Just now though the black dog is curled at my feet. But soon we will be able to get out and go for lots of long walks and he will get lost in the woods for a while, maybe a long while. I am grateful to have my creative work as this helps so very much to focus my mind and give purpose. I find light and playfulness again when I am working. But I must always get a balance. I am grateful to you for simply having an interest in my creative world.
If you are struggling please know you are not alone. Simplify things, if you can. One task at a time. Write your thoughts out, or paint/draw anything in a sketchbook. All of this, any of this can help though none of it is an exact cure. There is no cure for being human so be gentle and kind to yourself (written as a note to myself as much as to anyone reading).
photo: sketchbook pages from 2019 - trees help me and somehow drawing networks of trees and branches help me feel connected with a good world
**
Shop News
I have more rabbits - tiny paintings, a group of seven. Each has such a different rabbity personality, I am pleased with them. They will be in my shop later today, Sunday 25th Feb at 7pm UK time.
photo: one of the seven new rabbit portraits
During this past week I put a poll in my Instagram stories re: offering lucky dip rabbits. I thought a lucky dip would help because people have told me they have missed out. The response to the poll was very much in favour. But after careful consideration I have decided to put the idea on hold. I have new spring landscape lucky dips coming from 1st March and must be realistic with how much I can take on. Thank you for your understanding.
Wednesday 28th Feb at 8pm UK time - I will have a mix of new artwork available.
Friday 1st Match - from 9am onward and until the end of May - new spring landscape lucky dips!
I have enjoyed painting winter landscapes as lucky dip paintings over these past months. Thank you, thank you for all your orders. If you are not familiar with the lucky dip idea then let me explain: I have for several years now offered lucky dip paintings, seasonal landscapes. These are all tiny works in gouache on handmade supports of mount board, linen scraps and primed with gesso primer. When I began painting these I had no idea I would still be painting them today - but I am grateful for this ongoing journey around the seasons.
photo: a recent winter landscape - lucky dip
And so, I will miss painting snowy evenings and wintry trees, figures in wintry attire and stormy skies. But onward now to spring. Blossoms a plenty. Also please note: I am keeping the price at just £32 for spring - which is a modest price for an original little painting but I want to be able to do this. Thank you.
Winter lucky dips are still available until this coming Friday.
**
Ain’t That Peculiar?
I love words, the complexity and playfulness of language. This is why I began writing poetry years ago and despite not writing so much these days I am forever in thrall to words and their playfulness, and power. Words take hold in my head as I paint and draw, and I ask myself questions about meanings.
Recently, I overheard myself saying: there is a lot of peculiar art in this world. Maybe peculiar is the new normal. I wondered what I meant by peculiar and could not grasp any clear idea. Do I mean art that is representational but only just, psychological in its distortions and colours? Or do I mean something else? But what? Inner child playfulness. What does it all mean?
photo: favourite sketchbook pages from 2017
Then I got on with the dishes and forgot about my grand art analysis for a few days.
Then I came back to thinking about what I might mean by peculiar art. Peculiar is such a particular sort of word. Culturally, forever in flux. Peculiar is just as complex as beautiful. And then of course you can have peculiarly beautiful or beautiful in a peculiar way. The latter has been a phrase used by others to describe my artwork.
Beautiful in a peculiar way is fine by me.
But Beautiful, oh dear the guilt! Beautiful, my English teacher Mrs Taylor said: please girls use any other word, but beautiful is lazy!
Perhaps I am being lazy in casually deciding there is peculiar art and so much of it in the world. And what world am I talking about anyway? The world of Instagram or the much wider world of art and art history. Thinking about the much wider and lived experience of art through the ages…. peculiar is not a word that fits. So I must be talking about a particular art that I am seeing in a particular way.
I would not expect to take a friend to the National Gallery, for example, and show them around and say yes here’s another peculiar painting and yes, here’s another peculiar painting.
photo: an embroidery piece I made in 2018
Then again, this imaginary friend might find everything quite overwhelmingly peculiar because they have never visited such a grand gallery before and their experience of art is very different from my own.
But then the next day I wonder: If a lot of the art I see on Instagram is lovely is it because it is made by lovely people?
And then I wonder what lovely art really is. So very subjective, of course. And then I think perhaps it is even harder to come up with an idea of what lovely means. It is harder than peculiar. It is all so tricky!
Best do the dishes. Play some Scrabble on my phone and cut back on the art scrolling. Just paint pictures that feel right to me. No one, I tell myself, is going to knock on the door and ask you to defend loveliness, you just know it when you see it and you value it. Just as you place a certain value on peculiar. Because I do enjoy peculiar, peculiarity, peculiarly, particularly in my own peculiar way.
**
A Few Small Stories
It is a busy morning in the cafe and I cannot tune into just one conversation. There are two women with sunglasses perched on their immaculate blonde heads talking about a recent skiing holiday that involved twelve hours of driving but was really, really worth it. Meanwhile, at another table, a man is fiddling with his wristwatch in a way that could suggest it is new and must be noticed by his female companion. Ever so slightly bored by what I can pick up from here and there, even a group of women shouting a cryptic Twenty Six! several times, my eyes wander and inspect the portrait paintings on the walls. There are two I can see clearly. One looks a little like Sophia Loren, a spoon reflection of. The other is of a balding man with spectacles, who might be a headteacher, a learned poet, a psychopath or all three. They are not good or bad paintings but they are at least actual paintings, and they somehow work in the rustic with an industrial vibe interior. Two young guys sitting next to me are debating whether to walk round ‘the field’ or whether it might rain. It will rain of course. It takes a while but they come to that conclusion. The spoon version of Sophia Loren appears to raise one eyebrow ever so slightly.
**
Good boy Percy for stopping! A bright young woman says and the small boy on a scooter looks at me from beneath his large helmet with a gaze of deep and earnest seriousness. Let the lady walk by. As I do so, I can see Percy’s whole future ahead of him: Maths prizes, Oxford degree, civil service then jacking it all in and buying a canal boat. I don’t know how or why I get to see this flash of Percy’s future, and of course I don’t believe any of it.
Percy is not an uncommon name these days. This town seems to be populated by young children with Victorian and Edwardian names. Nothing too biblical, though. There are quite a few Arthurs, Alberts and for girls I keep hearing Ida and Clara.
My great-grandfather was Percy. A widower, he lived alone in his time capsule of a house in Rayners Lane. He spent those long summers we used to have sitting beneath an apple tree in his garden and listening to the cricket on the radio, tobacco pipe in mouth. I will always be grateful to him for how he brought the family together once a year to celebrate his birthday with a meal out. I got to meet great uncles and second cousins I would have otherwise never have known. Sadly, our family seems so much smaller these days.
This new generation of Percy's will find their own ways and I hope they become great-grandfathers too.
photo: favourite sketchbook from 2019
**
Thanks always for reading here. Please subscribe! Also do leave a comment and share your thoughts. If you would like to buy me a coffee to support my writing then this is much appreciated. As always I am grateful for your support in all ways.
What a delightful read, as always, Cathy. I so enjoy your paintings. I've just read Miss Peregrine's Home for peculiar children and your comments on the word have made me think of how it has a connotation of being outside of what is expected. I can only feel that this is a good thing, as far as creative activities are concerned. But then if everything were peculiar, nothing would stand out. What is peculiar is also very much an individual perception.
Love your little stories especially when you describe the Sophia Loren painting.
Percy is an interesting name. My neighbour calls our pet pheasant Percy. I imagine your grandfather was a very influential person in your life, how could any Percy not be.
Thank you for the notes, Cathy. I really enjoyed them.