Studio notes no.131

a few small stories from the archives

Hello Everyone, after a week of  rain and chilly weather I can see the sun shining. If only for one day….

This weekend is my sketchbook weekend - a group of us have set up a virtual camp site over on ye olde Flickr, where many are sharing their new sketchbook pages, thoughts on why we keep sketchbooks etc… I will share more about this next week. Thanks to everyone who is participating.

photo: sketchbook pages I made this weekend - I am keeping things loose and quickity-quick with the paint. Layering up.

Keeping things a little briefer here, but I still wanted to say hello and share a few stories etc.. This week I am sharing a few stories from my archives - these from other times, rather than recent moments. I hope you enjoy reading and maybe I will share more archives writing in the future. 

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Yesterday I launched (like pushing a very small paper boat into a river) my summer landscape lucky dip paintings.

These will be available from now until the end of August. I am keeping the price as for the spring landscapes - that’s £32 for an original small artwork.

I have three works on paper to add to my shop this evening and they will be offered with free postage to everywhere.  So just a smaller update this Sunday. A few people have asked me about tiny portraits - yes, there will be more and I hope to have a selection next Sunday. Thanks always for your interest.

One of three new still life works on paper - this one is titled: houseplant with paintings and cotton reels (measures 20cm x 14cm).

I hope to have another small group of dolls in my shop this coming Wednesday. I have had requests for ladies! I am glad people have been enjoying the various characters and am most grateful to you.

I feel very textiles-minded at the moment and have many ideas for future things - to go alongside my dolls. Last Wednesday I offered the first in a series of doll sized quilts. I hope to have more, as and when, along with other playful textile pieces.

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A few small stories - from the archives

Meeting

When I meet a new person that is interesting to me, for some small or big reason, I want to know everything about them. Over time I have taught myself to hold back, because I have a tendency to question and question, as if interviewing. Someone kind once said: I feel I am in a therapy session! They did not mean this in a bad way and later sent me a kind card with a handwritten note saying: thank you for the free therapy, I felt a lot of what I told you about myself made little sense but I enjoyed our chat.

I cannot promise to be so helpful to everyone I meet. Of course there are people I find so, so interesting and I become overwhelmed by my need to know them. I hold myself tightly inward. Often this is when I meet someone I think I have known for years, through someone else - or their fame. Meeting a famous person does not happen very often. Nowadays, since I no longer watch television, I could meet someone famous without even knowing they are a name, a face. 

I remember meeting B and feeling so tightly held into my own shadow, all I could do was look at his eyes and think: he’s so much taller and his head is never that shape in photographs. He must have felt I was aloof and indifferent. Later, he took me to one side (we were at a mutual friend’s house, having lunch). He said to me: there’s something I want to ask you. And then asked me question after question about myself. It was almost like being interviewed. I just kept talking and felt a pathetic joy in being able to express myself, with something like genuine insight. He was not chatting me up. He wanted to know about how things worked in my world. Later, at home, I thought: I must write a card and thank him for his time and free therapy. I walked round and round the garden, like a lost doll. In love with someone I would never see again. I would not know where to send the card. I would not send one.

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Egg

I happened to see, not for the first time, someone steal an egg. It was not the gentle egg- lifting that caught my attention, but the sound of keys stirring in the man’s hand. 

I turned into the supermarket aisle looking for noodles and the bunch of large keys in a fist flashed and rattled. It seemed a clumsy thing to be holding the keys. Then I knew he was walking away with the keys in his hand because he had made room in his pocket for at least one but perhaps more than one egg because why just one. It would be foolish, potentially unpleasant, to put an egg in a pocket that also contained keys. Then again, maybe the keys would have made some kind of nest or fortress, but he had decided to hold the keys.

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Meat

I had been vegetarian for years and then I was in a new relationship and suddenly adapting to living with this person who liked to cook. He liked to cook meat. I was too fragile and too frantic to please, so I ate anything he cooked. I even ate lamb - the meat that was always a threat, if my sister and I were naughty children: you’ll get lamb stew for dinner!

I even ate lamb and pretended I liked it. Just about keeping my dignity, as I pretended to not be too hungry to later take an apple into the garden. I was not being honest with myself, of course, of course. The meat was just one signifier. The real meat of the relationship was all gristle and off-smelling. When a friend said to me later: the one thing that upset me the most about it was you eating meat. I knew exactly what she meant.

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And Did Those Feet

I am sitting on the tube and admiring the shoes of my fellow passengers. There are painted doc martens, scruffy sandals and the sensible tourist sneakers of eternity. Some shoes are flashier than others. One man wears the most pointed brown shoes any man might wear - and why do that to himself? Of course women have shoved their feet into ridiculously shaped constructions to please their taste of fashion for years and years. Somehow I have always worn sensible shoes and still have a bunion. 

I have only been to a few life drawing lessons but I know I will always avoid drawing bare feet. Is the drawing of feet necessary in life? 

Just thinking about my ex-husband’s feet makes me wretched. I was a terrible person for not loving his feet. They were fine, boney feet. I have a low threshold for feet. I cannot bear anyone touching my feet. I would much rather a man keep his socks on. I will never trust a man who wears brown pointy shoes.

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Photo: a favourite painting from my archives - this one is from 2018 and measures 12cm x 9cm

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Thank you for reading here, for your kind comments always. If you would like to support my writing by buying me a coffee this is much appreciated.

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