Studio Notes no. 217

new series & stories

Hello Everyone

I hope you are well. It feels like a ‘just lovely’ morning here - sunny, not hot, the birds singing…..

It’s been a few weeks since I wrote to you about studio matters. Last week I shared my first ‘poetry salon’ with you - and I am so very grateful to everyone who read, participated with leaving thoughtful comments and responses. Thank you! I was nervous about the whole idea but now I am so glad I went for it. As now, apart from anything else, I have so many poets and books to explore in the future. The next poetry salon will be first Saturday in July (4th) - and I’ll be sharing some playful ways into writing poetry.

New Monochrome Paintings

There has been a shift in ideas, just lately. This happens. After a colourful spring I want to now explore some themes and pictures in monochrome - as well as painting in colour for my tiny works.

You may have seen the first five paintings in my poetry series - (they are in my shop currently, with four out of five sold, thanks so much). Alongside this series I am also working on a series of postcard sized works.

Summertime seems like just the right time to work on postcard sized paintings. These will all be 15cm x 10.5cm - gouache on watercolour paper.

So I have started on a series titled: Postcards from a Near But Distant Past.

Exploring the mysteries of our forgotten pasts, untold stories, family histories, dreams and intrigue. Inspired by a long interest in folk art and storytelling but always with an eye on how familiar themes return - ideas on women’s history, a fascination with antique photography and historical grand paintings.

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Shop News

Next update: Wednesday 17th June at 7pm with preview from 4pm

I will be continuing on with offering tiny paintings, alongside other new work (including the two you see above). Thanks always for your kind interest and support.

Free postage within the UK continues throughout June - and as always I try to keep international postage as low as possible. Link to my shop at the end of these notes.

Lucky Dip Drawings

I’ve been busy drawing lucky dip drawings. Here’s one complete (just needs to be trimmed up and packaged) and the right hand drawing is of course still in her early stages….

Here’s a recent drawing that has now gone out into the world. I make a few and then package, wrap in tissue so I don’t know which one I am sending out - that’s the whole idea with a lucky dip. The surprise factor matters to me, so I must make it so that I can’t see what I am sending.

Sculpture

I continue to explore my sculpture ideas. This is something I am particularly interested in, yet I don’t have any exact end result or exhibition, or final ‘product’ or ‘thing’ in mind. I am simply allowing myself the freedom to explore working in a three-dimensional way.

I am not making stand-alone sculptures or vessels. Not for now, anyway. It seems wall pieces are things I want to explore. So here we are, with much time going into the modest scraps of this and that, with painterly ideas. I want to keep things modest. I see various things and yet I want to keep leaning toward the abstract. I don’t want to make travelling altar pieces - even if this, for example, makes me think of such a thing. There’s no temptation to pull in any concrete direction. But I am calling these pieces sculpture however humble their start in life might be.

I feel I have needed to give myself this space for quite a while. The opportunity to explore and handle materials, very humble card, scraps of fabric, and simply manipulate and reshape things into something beyond themselves.

I’m thinking of the sculpture as working in the same way I might work in a sketchbook.

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New Writing

Three Stories

It’s been a while since I shared stories here, so three stories today. I call these stories, but they are, yes, pieces, fragments, ideas - and I hope you enjoy reading. Thanks always for your kind encouragement.

On the Table

A woman walks into a room. There is something wet on the table. She thinks it might be something the cat brought in, so wilted and shabby-looking.

The woman walks nearer and sees it is just a wet piece of paper. She is relieved and then not relieved as she realises this might be a painting. Who has left a painting on her table? A small, shabby painting on her table.

It has been years and years since she held a paintbrush the correct way in art classes. Decades since she attempted to render a jar of wildflowers. A muddy boot. A fellow student’s doleful face.

What is this painting on her table? She looks more carefully. Actually, it’s rather beautiful, in its shabbiness. She will not pick it up. In its wet state anything might happen. Most of her life she has felt to be like this painting. In a state of incompleteness and at the same time just too much going on.

She leaves the room, hoping. Hoping but for what she is not sure. The painting will wait for her, it might dry into something exceptional yet unexplainable, or simply disappear from her afternoon.

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Broken Biscuits

A friend is talking again about her grandmother who worked in a broken biscuit factory. The two women listen attentively, understanding how they must not correct their friend. They know the grandmother worked in a biscuit factory but that their friend has always thought of it as a factory making, purposely, broken biscuits. It is their understanding this is not how things work in life, but to try to put their friend’s story right would be wrong. They have talked about the broken biscuit factory when not with their friend. They seem to understand what might be going on here.

So they listen to their friend talk about her grandmother who worked in the broken biscuit factory. There is something magical about this. Their friend believes there is something magical to this. She has believed since childhood that her grandmother coming home on the last Friday of each month with a box of broken biscuits is indeed magical. They let their friend have her magic. Yes, they say, your gran who worked in the broken biscuit factory. How lovely.

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Orange Books

Most days she walks by the book corner and only notices the smell in a very subtle, fleeting way. Then there are days when she mistakes the book smell for something else, perhaps cigarette smoke rising up from below the building.

There are days when she will stop by the book corner and just stand there, breathing in the books. She is reminded of the times she went book-hunting with her grandfather. He loved to go to the old church in Christchurch with piles and piles of old books. They would spend a happy afternoon just wandering around and never finding anything in particular. Then she is reminded of the tiny secondhand bookshop in the heart of Cambridge with so many learned books all packed tightly on shelves. She could only go there when she did not have a child in a pushchair. She was often afraid to try too hard, to get a certain book from a tightly squeezed stack.

And then she remembers books are individuals with feelings and is troubled for them when she discovers there is not enough order to their display. Despite her dislike of colour-co-ordination, she is mindful of how there is one complete shelf of orange books. But these are Penguin Classics, all together, and are the main reason why her book corner smells so musty. They are all well-read, brown, not yellowed, plain old grubby. She has read most of them. The others are waiting. Altogether her books are indeed very smelly. Secondhand books with mystery histories. Some of them have obviously spent a great many years in the company of smokers. They can fill this part of the room with their stench, especially on a warm day with the window closed. She is not particularly bothered by the smell and no one else who lives here is bothered by the books at all.

photo: a recent tiny painting - portrait of a young woman (sold)

I look forward to continuing to offer tiny paintings to you.

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