photo: recent sketchbook pages
Hello Everyone, I hope the start of January is treating you kindly and you are keeping well. It has been a busy week for me. I have been painting a great deal but also stitching.
I have a large group of tiny paintings to go into my shop later today - Sunday 7th Jan at 7pm UK time and I hope you may enjoy seeing this first collection of the year.
I’ve also spent some time at my sewing machine. I am aiming to add just a few new pieces to my shop this coming Wednesday at 8pm UK time.
My plan for the year ahead is to continue to update my shop with new embroidery on Wednesdays and new paintings/drawings on Sundays. Might not be every Wednesday and Sunday - I will let you know here.
photos: two of several tiny paintings coming to my shop
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As we begin a new year, one might feel prompted to set new goals. I try not to make too many grand plans. This year will be a continuation of ideas, part of a much longer story. As much as I sincerely enjoy seeing what other artists are making, I am very much involved in my own world. I am grateful for the years I have spent imagining, reinventing and establishing my creative world.
There is a theory I am attempting to grasp: do less to make more. It sounds enticing, doesn’t it? But it is not as simple as it sounds. The ‘do less’ means you work in a concentrated way. You prepare space and time, your working time is focused. It might all seem a bit woolly, perhaps it is, but this year I want to be more mindful of how I spend my time. I would like to enjoy just being in the moment and being less anxious. 2023 was a really very anxious year, for various big reasons. So, I am hoping very much 2024 is the year of quiet focus and balance.
Top of my creative list for this year is to spend more time working within my sketchbooks. It used to be that I devoted several hours a week to sketchbooks and maybe I cannot always do that now, but I still need - really do need rather than just want - to give time to my books. They are at the core of what I do creatively, the main room from which I can explore the rest of my imaginative home. So here is to keeping the hearth well tended.
And a new community sketchbook project - I would like to do this in the spring. Look out for more details.
photo: recent sketchbook pages
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Thanks to everyone who purchased postcard sets for my new ‘postcard club’ in December. These sold well and I would like to continue with the idea. But I have decided to make this a bi-monthly thing - so I will be offering a new postcard set for Feb/March, April/May and so on. The new Feb/March set will be available at the start of February. Thank you again for your interest.
As for my lucky dip paintings - you may know I offer seasonal tiny landscapes - the winter ones were in great demand during December and I am so very grateful. Yes, I will be continuing on with these. Spring will come toward the end of February! (If only)
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A Few Small Stories
Just before Christmas my favourite coffee shop closed its doors for the last time. I did not go very often but the place was always busy, with people happily seated outside on sunny days. I don’t know why it has closed and I, like many local people, mourn the passing of another cake-related dream. They come and go quite a bit, these sorts of places.
Despite this, I can’t help dreaming about the shop I might like to open one day (if someone else did all the financing and business side of things). A small gallery, a bookshop - but lately I have been thinking about a place called Polly Put The Kettle On - not a cafe but a tea-related shop that would sell tea in tins and packets, yes, but also studio pottery cups and jugs and of course tea pots, tea-related books (could be quite broad), vintage tea cups, tea towels, tea-themed art, children’s tea sets - yes I have been thinking about it - and despite this never ever happening in reality, in my mind’s eye I can see it all. This would be a family business. I can see my son helping a customer and talking enthusiastically about a fruity tea blend. I can imagine my daughter not letting on to customers that she never actually drinks tea but being very good at arranging window displays. The tea shop in my head is a place I go to when I am feeling a bit stressed or cannot drift back to sleep. It’s a place where customers are always pleasant, breakages never happen and new boxes of tea mugs sell out as soon as they arrive.
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I am looking down from the kitchen window, watching a man setting traps. At least, I think he is setting up traps. I am pretty sure. He is kneeling down, fiddling about with the black boxes whilst wearing blue disposable gloves but is also talking on his phone. I cannot help but worry about the possible germs on that phone, or poison. But I am sure he knows what he is doing.
Later on, walking in the park, I stop to drink my flask of coffee. There’s a large mass of tumbled together branches and twigs, and suddenly a rat pokes its head out. The rat looks, scurries into fallen leaves, scuffs about before going back into its nest. I wait, intrigued. It's a big rat, the size of a squirrel. An older woman steps toward me and gives an inquiring look. A rat’s nest, I say, pointing, and we both watch as the rat pokes its head out again, moves furtively across leaves, hooks up something that might be a mushroom or a baby rat, then returns into its nest. Well, I don’t know, the woman says. What was that? We cannot decide if it was a baby rat or a mushroom, or possibly who-knows-what. I don’t mind them here, the woman tells me, just not in my garden! I finish my coffee and walk home, wondering if anything has been trapped downstairs.
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I look out at the tree tops. The winter silhouettes upon a pale pink-orange sky. I have to put my book to one side and go and draw. The tree tops can make this place feel like a tree house. It feels cosy up here, watching the branches. I look forward to watching the trees over the weeks to come, the ever so slight suggestion of spring ahead.
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photo: recent sketchbook pages
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I do like that tea shop. I would like to send you some of my handwoven tea towels to place there. Some day.
I have been thinking similar thoughts about art making and will put the “less is more” idea into the mix. I work full-time in the corporate world and find it incredibly difficult to get to my art - and when I do, I feel I’ve missed the important step of <thinking> about my art, specifically what I want to do and how. That seems to result in not doing much and/or doing the same thing over and over. Looking to leave the corporate world in 2024.