Studio Notes no. 212

Bluebells & poems

Hello Everyone

I hope you are well and enjoying a little spring (or autumn) sunshine. It is a bright start here. The blackbirds seem to be busy elsewhere at the moment and have moved on from the trees nearby.

I am still so inspired by birds and especially the smaller sparrows and other ‘hedge birds’ that find themselves a home around town, maybe in a garden or a municipal hedge, by the river or in the park….

Here’s a new book page artwork - with bluebells.

A new book page painting - I create a collage of papers from old Penguin paperbacks as my starting point. Then I paint scenes within scenes…

I thought I would share with you a painting yet to be completed. This is a larger one in progress - another in my series of wild gardens with visiting birds. I am inspired by all the wilder spaces that I see on walks. My preference for wilder gardens is something that has come about in recent years from living in town without a garden. It’s seeing those ‘untouched’ corners and spaces that do their own thing with opportunist flowers and visiting birds, as well as other creatures such as bees and butterflies - those otherwise little scrappy bits of ‘not gardened too much’. The churchyard is good at offering inspiration, as is a local meadow walk and seeing the back-end of gardens.

Here you can see the beginnings of a painting - the main structure is there, to some extent. I wish I had taken a first photo earlier in the process.

Here you can see how I have developed my ideas. I’ve layered up and found room for a few bluebells. We have peak bluebell season going on at the moment. They are popping up all around (see my poem ‘Grey Area’ below).

Here’s a detailed view of the bluebells.

I will share a photo of the completed painting in my substack notes - sometime in the next few days.

I want to keep this painting free, lively in its brushstrokes - I don’t want it to get muddy. And I was so tempted to paint at least one visiting bird - but I told myself: don’t you dare! There’s always this tendency, when sharing work online, to have to make sure you have the completed thing - to rush to the end is never a good idea! So, yes, I do have to rein myself in a bit and will be stern. Or I will allow myself the opportunity to shift my energy to something else - put the thing I want to finish because I want to see the complete thing to one side - and then work on something else. That is why I nearly always have more than one painting in the go. I don’t have the space for many paintings in progress, but I have enough to juggle a few. And it’s that juggling that saves the paintings (I hope) from being rushed or overworked.

This is always why I don’t have so many photos of completed paintings to show you today. It is now a rule for me not to rush things just because I am sending my studio notes to you - and I hope this makes sense.

Gone are the days when I would worry about having something to post on Instagram each day. That place has become less interesting to me. Hectic, or just plain weird to me reels - not my cup of tea. Anything sped-up just prompts me to move on. But I will continue to share my work there because I have a following that I have worked hard to build and maintain, and I’m not about to let that just slip. I am grateful for people being interested in my work and what suits one person (reading here) may not suit someone else who enjoys the fast-pace scroll. I often get told by people ‘I am not seeing your posts on Instagram’ - and I understand this frustration. The ‘favourites’ feature is erratic or simply disallows over a certain number. Sigh.

But instead of bemoaning the state of social media for too long - I thought I would show you these tremendously frilly daffodils. They were a reduced bunch from the supermarket. Quite honestly, if I thought they were going to be this frilly I might have not purchased them but - you just can’t argue with a bunch of daffs can you?! They are lovely because they make me smile. I will keep on painting daffodils until they are no longer around. My painting does shift with the seasons but saying that I am wondering if I might do a ‘Christmas in July’ small collection this year. It might be an interesting challenge?

Shop News

My next update will be this coming Wednesday, 22nd April at 7pm UK - preview from 4pm.

Thanks to everyone who has purchased artwork recently, your support and interest is much appreciated. Free postage to UK customers continues….

There is a link to my shop at the end of those notes. I have just a few artworks available at the moment.

**

New Writing

Three new poems for you this week. I hope you enjoy reading and thanks always for your kind encouragement and comments.

One Duck

The river is a blank and then

just one duck comes along.

One small wren bounces from

the nettled hedge. One small blue

butterfly settles momentarily

on the corner of my paperback

with blue flowers on the cover.

The weather is pleasant.

We could hope for more, always more.

A magpie inspects papery daffodils.

An elderly woman on the bridge

nods at the one duck.

**

Just a Bit More Yellow

Just enough yellow becoming

ochre soon. Just enough

yellow for a fistful of leaves.

Just enough yellow to brighten a room.

Last chance for a chartreuse mood.

Just enough white to make a lemon smile.

**

Grey Area

Bluebells by the door

in amongst chickweed

and rat traps and late daffodils -

the man who comes to bait

the traps has trampled down

the comfrey and I’m angry.

I enjoyed the sudden pearly flowers

and so did the bees.

This courtyard is a bit of a

grey area, not maintained

but sometimes disturbed.

I plant quiet things in corners,

tuck in bulbs. When we first

moved here I worried about

the weediness of it all

and gave a Sunday to tidying but

now I leave it be.

I watch the wrens, clematis grow

through rusted stones,

smaller unknowns flowering

between centuries-old brick.

I take bits of moss upstairs,

put them in pots to turn gold.

**

Reading

Here is the book I mentioned in the first poem above. Seeing this cover artwork reminded me to look again at the painting of Suzanne Valadon, whose work this is. As for the book - I am really enjoying this one. I have not read anything by Mary Hocking before now and when I read the back blurb that said ‘Mary Hocking is confirmed the successor to Elizabeth Taylor and Barbara Pym’ I felt I should read. A lucky find for me as I looked through the shelves of a local secondhand bookshop for older Penguins (to pull apart).

**

Thanks always for reading here. Please do leave a comment, say hello. Tell me what flowers are blooming in your part of the world.

A coffee is always welcome

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