Studio Notes no. 207

new sketchbook, landscapes & writing

Hello Everyone

I just sewed the pages of a new sketchbook. I used to buy ready-made books and still use these, but I am making an attempt to use the paper that I have - so making books with this paper is a way of doing this. And then I can decide how many pages etc… To be honest I don’t know how many pages are in my new book, all I know is I folded up and stitched and now I am itching to put together the first collaged pages. But time has run out and I don’t want to rush this - so I will show you here the several bits and bobs, alongside another handmade book that is still in progress. Hopefully I will share new completed pages next week.

This week’s studio notes is number 207 - and 207 is a number etched into my memory as the bus I got to and from school, so many times. The route that runs from Uxbridge to Ealing Broadway, if you know that part of London. So I was going to devote this week’s post to things to do with buses and travel - but I then got sidetracked by not painting or writing about buses, or people travelling - those birds keep flying into my paintings!

Let me know what number bus you got to school, if you like and if you still have dreams about falling off the bus (I got the 207 when it was a jump-on style, routemaster bus with a conductor. And smoking. Oh I don’t miss those days….

Anyway, the birds….

Before the birds arrive, I paint - as if to ensnare them - no, I just paint washes toward a landscape. This one above is still waiting for further development. I like it - and will then ask it to guide me without too much quibbling over areas that might get painted over.

Here’s a crow and blossom - I like this combination of one of my favourite birds that is always to be seen, year round, with something so incidental as blossom. I considered having drifting blossom but decided to keep this to the very start of the flowering season, as if the crow has arrived at that spot on the morning the blossom opened…

Here the birds are singing, or at least enjoying the bright singing of the daffodils - I wanted to suggest the ‘breaking open’ of spring here

These paintings will both be in my next shop update - they are in gouache on paper.

Shop News

I will be updating my shop this coming Wednesday 11th March at 7pm UK time with preview from 4pm

I hope to share with you a mix of new pieces including paintings and new book page artworks.

There is a link to my shop at the end of these notes - I have a small selection of work available at the moment.

**

Wool Embroidery

I am still in the making stages of so many pieces - I am going to give myself more time to create several before offering any for sale, or writing up my notes for an e-booklet. I realise now this is going to take much more time than I had first anticipated. Of course, I should have realised, but somehow when it comes to the amount of hours in a week I am forever optimistic…

Wool embroidery in progress

New Writing

Here are several pieces of new writing - new poems and stories. I hope you enjoy reading and am grateful for your encouragement. Thank you.

Forsythia

Yellow Forsythia at garden’s edge,

the wild eyes of a garden almost entirely

alone with its grubby thoughts,

becoming new, all now begatting and betwixting.

Away from senseless disaster,

pleasure is in what might never be

but comes back anyway with furious

blossom, more dazzling this year

and the next, with or without us.

***

Any man may close his eyes

but still the flower opens

(Penelope Shuttle ‘Things’)

Another Green

I am painting in semi-darkness

again, taking an odd moment

of crows and ticking flowers to make,

with bright stitches, a new crop of songs.

I am painting as the day closes

but, wait for it, another green -

another green man’s eyes without me.

*

A Blue Tit

I see her from a bridge, the blue tit

is a wandering woman and the stream-less

stream her pilgrimage track. I see her before,

muttering over mud as a bundle

of feathers becomes her.

Beside her path, a ragged robin seedlings

waiting in the wayside for their spring.

She wanders but does not fly,

caught in her dreaming of nests

and last summer’s broken smile of twigs.

*

Urgent Swearing

Urgent swearing of crows

in soft graphite, not a smudge

of decorum this misty morning.

Arriving beak-first,

in green stars of before-spring,

crows fold and press themselves

into wet paintings

of a world before sun.

Work in Progress

I will patch a path across a fleeting sky.

A woman walks with her dog thinking of knitting

him a bow-tie. She stops by hawthorn blossom

and smiles at me. We exchange pleasantries

regarding the clear blue sky of now.

She takes a pair of scissors from her pocket

and snips wands of hawthorn -

for the church, she says.

*

Yellow on my Table

Grateful for the frilly daffodils

with no message;  their critical thinking

skills are a pleasant remedy for lunacy.

Grateful for the frilly daffo-dillies, yes,

for the sun within their eyes.

Huge bees tap at my window,

woken by the charms of yellow on my table.

All the yellow of the world, right now

so full it sings and sighs.

**

Good morning, Callum

Good morning, Callum, quite a morning for us! A man says to his phone. The man is dressed in heavy woolen suit and boots. Terribly well-spoken. He walks ahead of me in the rain and we slow as the cobble path becomes slippery. Now Callum, the man continues, have you revamped the tables and chairs, as per? No? Never mind the hand-outs Callum, stop printing the hand-outs! Tables and chairs, for goodnesssakesyoungmanwhatareyouthinking. Yes, I am talking to you Callum.

**

Socks at the Table

In a coffee shop, a woman who is sitting close by thinks it is quite alright to swing her legs toward us and change her socks. I am, as ever, reassured by my sister’s glare of disapproval at this. It is, yes, almost like looking in a mirror, to see the expression on my sister’s younger face. As I was saying, my sister says, which is, as we both know, code for: what the bloody hell is that woman doing with her feet.

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Thanks always for reading. If you enjoyed this post please click the heart button, it helps me out. I look forward to sharing more with you soon.

A coffee is always welcome, thank you.