Studio Notes no. 206
End of an Era, March plans & poems
Hello March, happy St David’s day
I hope you are well. We are moving from winter into spring here…
A new painting - two birds by old orchard cottage - I love to paint houses and especially older places. Sometimes they have more of a lived-in feel, but this place feels like its waiting for you to arrive and make it a home again. If it could whisper stories about the past, it might. I am exploring landscapes in various sizes and this will be something for March - alongside painting everything else!
Here’s a smaller painting - not super-tiny but still quiet small. Note how I am thinking about the proportions of landscapes. I used to keep to a set size when painting these works on linen/mount board. But now I am experimenting more with all shapes and sizes, with so many possibilities. Here I am working on a wider view of the land.
It’s not all landscapes though. I plan to continue on with my book page series through March. This painting above has sold (many thanks). I felt I had to share daffodils with you today, as it is St David’s Day - and daffodils are the flower of now. Sound the trumpets!
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End of an Era
By mid-morning Monday I knew it. The decision had been made for me, with me, and I was not sad. I took the thread from the machine. Margery was no longer Margery - she is now a machine again. I dusted her hood and put her away.
I always knew there would be only so much stitching to be done. Eventually, the basic sewing machine would give up. I had come to know her as Margery and yes we had a special relationship. But I knew she could not go on forever making many, many tiny stitches, making her particular dancing stitches - and neither could I. So, I had always said: eventually, when I have made a trillion stitches or more, there will come a time…. I never wanted to be too reliant on a machine and so, gratefully, I never did, always having other things on the go.
Last Sunday, when I shared with you a photo of a portrait brooch and suggested I would be stitching a new collection of smaller brooches, I did not know the decision that would be made just the next day. That’s the thing about machines - and creativity. So I am sorry for any disappointment. There will be no more embroidery from Margery and myself. Her retirement does not come as a shock, to everyone, I don’t suppose. I still have pieces half-made and these will remain as they are.
I have taken breaks from embroidery before now but this is not a break. I will not be buying a new machine. I don’t need to or want to spend the money I don’t have on something I now won’t use. Yes, I do want to stitch and have always, alongside my machine stitching, enjoyed hand stitchwork. So I am shifting my focus to my wool embroidery and patchwork. This will be very different. I’ll take my time, tidy my sewing desk and organise my wool and other threads. It’s exciting but won’t ever replace the intense work Margery and I made. It will be a different era, one of humble ideas and quiet evolution. I look forward to sharing more with you.
Coincidentally, I have been enjoying a series on BBC Radio 3, hosted by Tasmin Little. The series is called Turning The Page and discusses how musicians decide to give up their careers as professional performers. I am, not for a moment, comparing my giving up of machine embroidery to concert playing! But I have found listening to this insightful. Tasmin Little was a violinist who made a decision to quit when she was at her peak, at the top of her game, as she explains. She made the decision years before quitting and knew when the time was right, and has not picked up a violin to play since. I do recommend you listen to this ongoing series, via BBC Sounds. It is helpful for anyone interested in creative careers.
Of course, I am not giving up my career - I am still very much continuing on with all the other aspects of what I do, happily so. I don’t have any intention of ever stopping until I stop.
French knots in progress - I look forward to sharing more soon. Sorry the light was so poor when I took this photo - we are still struggling with the dark days…
I particularly enjoy making abstract designs in stitch. So I am looking forward to playing with colour, exploring new ideas and taking my stitches in gentle new directions.
Thanks always to everyone who has purchased my machine embroidery pieces over the years. It has been an evolution over many years. Your support has been immense, so very much appreciated. I am glad I got the opportunity to show my work, to share it to a wider world and now it is in collections near and far. Strangely or otherwise, I don’t have many pieces myself - not a huge stash. My sister has quite a few pieces I gave her over the years and it is always humbling to see them displayed in her home. I am grateful. It’s time now….
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Shop News
I look forward to sharing a new collection of work with you this coming Wednesday - all new artworks will be available from 7pm with a preview from 4pm (UK time)
There is a link to my shop at the end of these notes.
I hope to have a mix of paintings and drawings. I will be including these three green man portraits. They are quite tiny but characterful.
photo: three green man portraits - each time I paint a green man he wants to be his own spirit in leafy green! Some thoughtful, others a little trickster-looking…. I will be continuing on with these, as inspiration comes to me
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Six small poems/stories
Thank you for taking the time to read my creative writing. I appreciate your encouragement and hope you enjoy these pieces.
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The News Makes her Shivery
The news makes her shivery. The dog has shaken old bits of wintry moss all over the kitchen floor, but she doesn’t have a dog. The woman gathers bits of aching green and puts them back on the roof tiles for the birds to do whatever they can. There is a plaintive bird that comes each early morning, sounds like a rusty bicycle, the one she had as a child, only good for going downhill. The news makes her flipping angry. Now the ghost of a cat has walked across her very best painting. Thankfully, the cat has very nice, forgivable eyes.
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O Blackbird
O blackbird, my parents are gone,
will you be my kin?
O yes child, so long as you don’t mind
my 4am singing.
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A Green Man
He’s a flashy sort of green, just beyond the gate. He’s leapt
into her garden, coughed up a thrush-sized frog
to be his spokesperson. It’s been that kind of winter,
he can’t help himself, makes the plot thickening
with vine and fern - but it’s the brambles she curses.
Why everything at once? She asks.
You’ll have to excuse me, he says,
I like to keep my socks on.
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Pollen Yellow
Can a painting be like a cake -
sunk in the middle yet still tastes nice?
I am stuck at the tentative stages,
waving my brush in the air as if conducting
waking bees, diverting hazards.
Too much pollen yellow
is not good for anyone, yet
the slightest music on the radio
has me reaching for more and more
of anything yellow.
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Estrangement
She seemed like a person just gone,
dress still on its hanger,
hands clasped to grip the day’s rain.
She was not the kind of person I could talk with.
Her eyes asked to be painted over.
I hid her in a flock of birds,
green and waiting,
becoming meadow later.
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No Longer
The little girl sitting crossed-legged in the library looks up from her book and says: I need to read a lot for my job! I put a pack of tampons in the donation box, hoping this means I won’t need them. Later, in the supermarket, two men are discussing the library - how they no longer have a telephone line. They won’t let you renew your books unless you go online or visit in person! It’s like that poem by Yeats, one of the men says, the centre collapsing*, or something. I wouldn’t know about that, the other man says, even more enraged now he has to discuss poetry!
(I looked it up to remind myself: Yeat’s poem ‘The Second Coming’ - ‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;’)
Thank you for reading my studio notes. Please can I encourage you to click the heart on this post if you enjoyed it - this really helps me. I am grateful to everyone who subscribes. I am particularly grateful to my paid subscribers for their extra support.
I am so glad to have one of your / Margery’s beautiful small, brooches. I have her in an old silver frame under a small glass dome and I look at it every day. It was a present from my partner of 25 years who sadly passed away last May. This gift is also a memory of love, endings, beginnings and all the threads that punctuate a life well lived.❤️
I admire your moving on when the time is right. Your beautiful brooches are now a record of an artistic phase, gone but never to be forgotten. Don't throw Margery away! One day she will be in an art museum, next to the incredible variety of your work. I think I would like to write a book about you for the art world. And for the children...💙