Tag: Art

I’d Lost My Marbles!

This is not a metaphor, but it’s not necessarily what you’d think either.

I have not been writing much lately. Instead I have been quietly storing away to memory hoping that I will remember it and write it later. I have not even written notes to jog the memory, so I hope that I don’t forget. My partner told me I “had far more important things to do” as he does from time to time when he wants me to stop what I’m doing and do something different. We had storage which needed to be emptied out on a deadline and with it memories of the past, so many moments lost in that room for years and years. Many people  have wondered why I keep stuff, I am sentimental and it started out as a habit. Those who know me have often asked. I used to collect the things that people did not want, or maybe I just found them interesting. I have furniture and things handed down to me by other family members.  I’d also kept all the books which I had as a child, some I had made as projects at school. I did not throw them away, wanting to share their wonders with children of mine some day, or ones I’d been lucky to look after in the early years, waiting for my time to come as a mother. I kept the books and as time went by I stored them away.

When I had to move out of my large flat and had no where to go, many of my belongings went into a storage facility and when I had filled that up, we talked a neighbour into lending us their storeroom, in the basement where I used to live.

And there it has stayed… For several years now, it’s amazing how time flies isn’t it?

For the past three years getting into the building has been impossible. Prior to which we used to go in there get things out and store other stuff, but basically things were left there. Many of them have been quietly rotting away, ravaged by time and flood water. I hoped that some at least could be salvaged before it was too late.

The anticipation of finding things again after all this time, was mounting in my mind.  My partner was dreading the whole process but did it with me. All my toot, as he referred to had to be moved.

So should we have cleared it all out and disposed of it all years ago?  I have to say that there have been times over the past fortnight when we both felt that we should have done, it was a horrible job to do, it was smelly and damp which got right on your chest and everywhere else.   We pulled muscles in the process but it is done and now we are sorting through, having moved what remained.

But there was some good news, there were things that I thought were long gone.  I had assumed that they had been taken when the storage facility moved my belongings leaving them out in a corridor for passers by to walk off with. From the numerous burglaries in the basement, or lost when I could not remember which place they had been put in. I thought I may have got confused and donated the wrong bags to charity shops. I had doubted that I had many of these items still, whilst others I would fondly look forward to finding again.

Unfortunately,  I lost most of my childrens’ books, all of my photograph albums from when I was growing up. During the clearance I picked up a box of books which were stored at floor level, hoping to keep them. They had obviously been placed there hurriedly. It looked fine from the top but as I moved it, the bottom fell out of it and water, so much water.  I took it towards the bin and as I put the box in there, I realised that it held the photos and the children’s books. The photo’s destroyed and the colours running from the pages in multi coloured rivers. These were my first photos from when as a teenager I had saved my pocket money to buy my first camera and develop the film.  I also found my art folder from my school days, the work was damp and mouldy and something I thought was there for years, is not. These were the low points but in the midst of it all, I found other things.

Among them was a bag which had been preserved containing the blue dress I bought when my Nan died and was wearing the first day that I met my partner.  I found the favourite dress which I had when I was 18 and wore on many a night out and other new/old dresses which I had not yet worn.  I found childhood collections, Love letters, letters and cards from friends. So many things, prized sentimental possessions from many years ago and after all these years I found my marbles!

My marble collection was won when I moved to this Southern town, new to the last year at Junior school. I was worried about settling in and making friends having been bullied at my previous school, there was a craze in the new school and I would learn how to play, then win a collection of marbles. I spent my meagre pocket money on marbles from the local toy shop and played every break time.  I won most of the marbles in this container that year.  I thought that the pasta jar (another of the things which had been stored away) was the perfect place in which to store them, on the kitchen windowsill where the light can bounce through them and I can enjoy them again.

Although I am a self-confessed hoarder and it will take me a while to get through it all. I will be working on my clutter and I have realised it is quite exhilarating to throw things out which are broken, or damaged and finding new homes for things which are no longer needed. As I enjoy finding other items from our past, no doubt there will be other things which put a smile on my face.

As I spoke to my oldest friend and also my mother after we had finished. I wondered out loud whether I would finally stop dreaming of the flat I’d had years earlier. Dreaming that I still lived there and that other people had taken over the place and my life along with it, holding parties that I did not want, with people I did not invite. That happened a lot. Mum told me that chapter is now over, now that things have gone from there I can finally stop living in the basement and be free at last. It seemed to mark the turning point, as I have been going through things with fervour throwing out decayed pieces of the past as I look towards the future. Maybe that is my metaphor and meanwhile, the strange dreams seem to have stopped.

 

The Daily Post – Anticipation

Abandoned Buildings, Inspiration Indeed.

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My inspiration for this post comes from this article in my reader.

After the Final Curtain a post by Cheri Lucas Rowlands which shows some wonderful photographs by Matt Lambros.

I often see whilst perusing social media the shots of ancient places and abandoned buildings throughout our world and curiosity encourages me to take a look.   A part of me thinks that one day I would love to do a tour of such places, but then reality hits and it occurs to me that I don’t think I could cope with the sadness it would bring me.

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You see I have a love of old buildings and architecture in general and have always been able to see the possibilities in a place.  When I was younger, I found that by finding derelict buildings by the road whilst on holiday, churches, schools, old houses. It didn’t matter what the building’s previous use had been.  I always imagined it as a place to make a home.

It really fires the imagination for me, gets the cogs whirring and clicking and excitement builds.  That part of the process I would love.  But then the sadness when it had been left for so very long, I don’t know what effect that would have on my psyche, but I suspect not  a good one.  The fact that it had gone to waste for so many years for whatever reason, war, famine, time, recession and may not be able to be restored to it’s former glory hits home. These buildings, particularly the Theatres and Cinemas were built for the community and so many communities have suffered when these and other public buildings have been closed down.

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I guess that’s why when it came to finding our home, that’s why it was always going to be a doer upper.  It was never going to be a pristine box, with white walls and minimalist fixtures.  Give me a place with character, knocks, grazes, a history and somewhere that speaks to you, pulls at the emotions when you walk in and I am happy.  My place needs to be lived in, that is what makes it home to me.  If I ever came into a lot of money, then it would be one of the first things that I would search for, a lovely old building to breathe new life into. Of all the possible styles it would probably have a Deco feel to it, now that’s a tour I’d be tempted to do which would really inspire me.

The Daily Post – Transformation

Images: Morguefile.com

Some Things ARE Better in Colour.

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This follows on from my post about painting from the other week. Here’s the link so that it makes more sense…

About Some Things, I don’t have a Clue!

Ok I admit it that I didn’t quite get around to “painting” a picture during this trip, however I did sketch something with the intention of adding colour or paint and even got around to colouring it, just to see what it would look like. The colours were from watercolour pencils mainly except there are never enough of the colours to go round, especially the different shades of green to colour the woodland so I had to add in some normal pencils too.

The end result… Ta Da!

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Getting Creative Again- Making and Photographing Driftwood Sculptures.

26/10/16

img_2926Yesterday evening as the sun was setting we went for a drive to Largo. It was where we spent a lovely Christmas & New Year in a rented cottage after the roof came in up here.  I have fond memories of us all three, running along the beach. Kato skipping over the huge rocks like a mountain goat, when in other places he could trip on a pebble.  My partner and I hand in hand walking along the sand.

I have a photo I took of them when I wrote Happy New Year in the sand on the beach when the tide was out. Yesterday was different, I wrote a tribute to our Kato in the sand as the sun had gone down and the houses in the background were lit up like Christmas. We still walked hand in hand and combed the beach for driftwood.  I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it, but I felt like being creative.

So this afternoon, with a couple of hours to spare, I decided that I would make beach combed sculptures. You know the type that rely upon gravity to hold them into place.  Inspired by the stone sculptures held together just by their position in river beds, with the water gushing past.

We have a wonderful brook alongside our house, my partner built it for me and lined it with stones, so that Kato could play safely in the water of what was once a mosquito infested ditch. It is now a pretty stream thanks to his efforts.

So I set about positioning the driftwood and a few beach pebbles that we collected yesterday, I also found a few interesting shells.

I wondered how I would leave them, but knew that I would have to photograph them.  The mantelpiece seemed like the perfect place.  It is a stained hardwood top with a rough plastered white painted chimney breast behind it, which I thought might make a good backdrop.  Unfortunately I didn’t do this until the evening, so the only light in here is from an overhead bulb which created some shadows which I wasn’t always grateful for.  However generally I was pleased with the end result.

The one thing that was unexpected was that it got the imagination going, I could the shapes like animals in the wood, an alligator, a sheep, a whale, a Dragon, can you see any of them too?

I thought I saw a wolf,  a man showing you something inside a hole and some strange sea creature.

I saw a strange lizard and there is a shell, which has almost worn away, which has a small pebble firmly lodged inside it.

I left the sand on the shells and the logs, the logs were still damp from the beach and were drying out when I brought them back.  I tried to Balance some and was intrigued by the wormholes.

This was my drift pile before I assembled them, pretty uninspiring and it’s surprising what you can do when you make the effort.

The photos below were just the same one piece of driftwood.

When I came to position the stones, I hung them precariously over the edge, they did not fall, I stood a family on the top, I imagined a mother, a father and a dog, at first it looked a little like the third person, but I repositioned it to better signify our family.

I looked at the father stone, a close up of this showed a mournful face, as though crying out. It signified to me the grief Kato’s Dad has experienced in the past three months since we lost him.

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It’s strange how the imagination can bring emotions to the fore.  As we have almost come to the end of our break here, we are not looking forward to returning South. It has been hard to be in our house without our Little Bear here in the flesh, remembering all of the things that previously we enjoyed as a family here.  But, we are planning things for our future however long or short that may be.  We are planning a future in Scotland.  More time spent with the friends we have made there, would be a blessing.  We have met some lovely people on this trip, spent time with old friends who have been pleased to see us and made some new ones along the way.

The Daily Post – Rearrange

About Some Things, I don’t have a Clue!

img_7568It’s funny how some things you just know, deep down whilst other things you don’t have a clue about despite thinking that you do.

I was thinking this morning about the process of painting a picture. Something was a bit of a revelation about when people are up on hillsides looking at pretty things, with their easels and paint looking out over it all and deciding which bit of a wonderful landscape they will choose to paint.

Clearly I was not paying attention to things in my art class years ago, because it hadn’t occurred to me what happens first and it has held me back over the years, now as it turns out unnecessarily.

Faced with the blank page in front of me and thinking, Where do I start? What if I make a mistake? Will I mess it up? All these thoughts and many more have held me back from actually doing that thing, getting the paper, paints etc out. From creating a lovely picture to hang upon the wall. Of course it might not be lovely IF I actually mess it up, but the truth is I haven’t tried, through fear of failure. My art has suffered and with it, my creativity. Who holds me back, well yes the truth is it’s usually me.

I dreamed as a child of being a ballet dancer, where I danced beautifully on stage but in reality I cannot dance. I don’t have the confidence or coordination required.  I also dream of painting or drawing wonderful images, but settle for photography as the reality is so very different from my attempts.

But then a few weeks ago I was watching something on the TV, Grand Designs, (Well it is almost Autumn again and I will have to find something to watch on the television) Kevin McCloud, the presenter was up on a hillside with the man who was building his house. He had taken him there for inspiration, declaring that it would be time out from the build and since they both paint they would each do that. Watching them sitting there, they started to sketch out the view which reached out in front of them, on paper and sat there talking. And there is was… It must have sat in my subconscious after that until now. Later in the program, they showed the reveal of the almost finished house and hanging on the wall was the painted picture that the man had done. Of course it was beautiful, but then again he painted regularly.

I also noticed another painting where you could see the lines underneath the paint, why had I never thought about this before. Well, somehow it seemed as though I had a light bulb moment and when I come to think of it, it seems rather silly that I have never done this since leaving school. I quite often sketch pictures, usually of houses or landscapes and think, I only wish that I’d put more colour on there, but something more than colouring pencils. My painting fear does not extend to painting the house, objects etc it’s just when faced with the blank page.

So all of this time, I have only been seeing something half finished, it’s time to change that.

I have also sat down and thought about painting on many occasions, only to stop for fear of putting a brush stroke in the wrong place and having to turn it into something different. Paint seems to be such a permanent thing. I know that if I had to do that then that would be the one thing that would annoy me in the finished painting, the one thing that I could see that was wrong. So I didn’t. I guess as they say in America I have issues and somewhere in there is bound to be another metaphor. As I will be heading on up the hill at sometime soon, where I will be surrounded by the beauty and the scenery for a little while at least, when I finally get there, I may just take my sketch pad some paint and finally colour my world a little bit brighter.

Images: Morguefile & My Own

The Blank Canvas

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The Blank Canvas

When she moved away from her previous life, she bought the biggest one she could find and hung the blank canvas upon the wall.

And there it was….

Proudly displayed, her new life in her new home. Away from the hurt, anguish and resentment of the old one, a new beginning for her.
Still wrapped in plastic, a grubby mark in one corner, smudged, dirtied in transit.

It waited.

Not knowing what would be thrown in it’s direction, where the paint would land.
What would become of it?
What image would appear and how would it be received by those who saw it?
Three years later, she unwrapped it.

At last ready to begin, only to find that the smudge was not there at all. The outer packaging, peeled back to reveal the unblemished canvas underneath it all that time.

What will she fill the space with?

Words will come, songs of the heart. Raw emotions apparent, new memories created there and then.

The Blank Canvas is no more…

Filled with a new story, which has now begun.

 

The Daily Post – Transformation

This is about the Blank Canvas which hangs in my Mother’s home. It is her Birthday today, which is why I have chosen to post this now.  #Happy Birthday! Bizarrely though I wrote this and when I spoke with my mother two days later she told me that the very same day, she had begun painting her words on her Blank Canvas.

Photo: http://www.morguefile.com

Bear River and the Diamond in the Rough

Some years ago, before Scotland or the Puppy even came into the equation about 2008, I was looking at property in a much more interesting place, to the one we inhabit.

Yes, I had itchy feet and thought about what it would be like to live in a different country. So a quick search for property abroad threw some interesting places into my thoughts. I thought about France, an awful lot.  I have always wanted a place in France….

But I also thought about somewhere farther afield where I might be able to get some land and make a beautiful place for holidays and could rent out.  It has always been something that is in the grand plan.

That was when I spotted it, a place which by name alone, fired the imagination and I began my research into this wonderful sounding place.

Bear River, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Now, it’s a bit of a way away from the folks if we were to up sticks and head off there, but it would be a fantastic adventure I’m sure and might be an ideal place to open a business of some sort at the time and is a tidal river which means it’s most likely to have a good availability for Seafood, which is important to me.

So what could go wrong, there were relatively cheap flights to Canada from the UK accessible airports to us and the very sound of the place sounded idyllic. The exchange rate of the Canadian Dollar meant that there was 2.3 dollars against the British Pound at the time.  Which was pretty darn good.

I had cousins which emigrated to Canada about 30 years ago, never to be seen again, they loved it so much there that they have not returned to the UK.  And trust me, when you have got the getaways, then that sounds just far enough away to do it.  I tried to research the area as much as possible.  It ticked a lot of boxes for me at the time. The area is not far from the ferry crossing from Digby to Maine, in the US which is another place I have longed to see, for many years.  Lobster and Scallops are readily available on the Canadian side near to Bear River and since I have a love of Bears, it seemed the perfect place to take my partner.  It is after all his nickname.  Apparently it is a haven for artists and there are boats nearby whilst being surrounded by wonderful forests and mountains, which you could access to ski all within about an hours travelling time.  The nearest airport, Halifax was also about an hour away.  See, I am painting a beautiful picture.

There was a house there which was not furnished, which means that my imagination could furnish it at the same time, with endless possibilities.  A timber clad house in a slightly New England style built in the early 1900’s. I wish that I still had the file with the photos which I had saved of it (but the loss of a hard drive put pay to that).  It had everything that I wanted in a house, huge space, a porch going around the outside.  A utility room, basement and attic, more space than I could think to fill and was described as a “Diamond in the Rough” by the agent selling it.  The rooms were painted in bright colours, it had huge windows which overlooked a massive garden of at least a couple of acres and was on the outskirts of town.  So it was rural enough but still had facilities nearby.  The rooms lent themselves to antique furniture and the whole place reminded me of a huge American or Scandinavian Lake house, the type I would love to live in.  It had four large bedrooms and 2 bathrooms and large receptions, more than enough space to do the entertaining that I thought I would get the opportunity to do once all our friends came out to visit us there for holidays, the parties we would have there. Oh Boy, Christmas would be just amazing in a place like that.  Yes, I had imagined the Christmas Tree in the hallway.

Alas, It was not meant to be…  I looked into selling most of our worldly goods to get the place and thought about what our new life there might bring.

Then two things brought me back to earth with a bump.  Or more like a thud actually.  At the time I was in touch with Wilf, someone I was connected with on MySpace, (Oh the early days of ancient social media, before Myspace became a bit sordid).  He was a DJ who built Kayaks in his spare time, they were beautiful, real pieces of art.  It turned out that he knew the area and when I mentioned that I had been looking at properties there, advised me against it. Wilf told me that it used to be lovely, just like I had imagined, but in recent years the place had gone downhill and there was now a crime and drug problem there due to the closure of an industry and the mass unemployment that followed.

Just to add water to the fire, my partner also scuppered the plan completely after lengthy discussions about the possibility of living there.  He agreed that it sounded great, but said that I could not anticipate how cold the winter months would be.  Having travelled a bit and spent some time in Canada he was ahead of me and recalled just how low the temperatures are.  The fact that you can be cut off from civilisation for weeks, sometimes months.  He asked how would I feel about that? Hmm I thought, perhaps it would make a good summer residence then? (I wasn’t giving up hope) But summer is going to be colder than here in the UK too possibly.  My bones and joints ached at the mere thought of it so I resigned myself to the fact, that it could be lonely and cold there.

But after all that the memory of the place, specifically the house, that “Diamond in the Rough” has returned in my thoughts for several years, like a wonderful place on my wish list.  I think of what I would have done to that house and how living surrounded by the mountains and Bears near to a river, in a town filled with Artists and Artisans could fire the imagination.

A quick return via Google takes me to a wonderful article, Welcome to Bear River – Huffpost  which was written in 2014 and sums up exactly what I thought the place could be and how it might have become that special place for us. At the time when we were looking the country was apparently in deep recession as the UK was about to be too and I was to find out. Clearly the time was not right for us, but never say never, after all we now have a puppy who would love the cold, and there is always a log burner to keep us warm.

Oh Daydreamer, when will you learn…