Just a quickie...

I've just entered a wee poem at Christine's Poetry Party, on the theme The Centre and the Edges inspired by this image of one of the doors of Notre Dame cathedral...

... the first 25 entries get a signed copy of one of Christine's books, so get inspired and join the party :)

What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday No. 151

Well... I'm waiting for inspiration to strike... hence there's lots of space... :o)

I'm taking part in Inspiration Avenue's Postcard Swap - there's a button on my right side bar to read all about it...

We're to make five postcards this week *gulp* and next week we'll get the recipients' mailing details...

This is my first swap post-stroke, and I admit I'm rather apprehensive... 

I used to be an avid ATC maker and swapper, but i simply can't work that small any more - my left hand is simply not that dexterous!

The dimensions of a postcard - 4"x6" - are quite a challenge, but my daughter has kindly gessoed 5 cards to get me going... i'm thinking I may just tape them to my messy mat to keep them secure while I work...

I'm hoping to do a different medium for each - painting, stamping, sketching, collage...

Anyway, I have done one already...

I cheated rather - I did a sketch of the young Virginia Woolf in my sketchbook, then tore out the page, cut it to size and stuck it on...

She's one of my all-time favourite authors, and I just love this photo of her, which was on a bookmark :)

So one down, four to go...

And I can't wait to see what you wonderfully creative bods have going on...

and thank you so much for all the lovely comments from last week!!

PS
For those who wanted to see the finished piece from last week, you can see it's creation here :)

IA Challenge - Inspired by Words...

Well, I just HAD to participate in this week's challenge, being a poetry lover/geek...

And it was a no-brainer as to which poet (I've loved John Keats since I first studied him at school...), and which poem (the only poem I could ever recite verbatim...), written in 1817/18, when he was about 22, and was already starting to display the symptoms of consumption, having nursed his brother Tom till his death from the disease...

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charact'ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love!—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to Nothingness do sink.

So I began by photocopying the poem from a favourite edition (yes, I have several Keats books...), and coffee-staining it...

Then I made a charcoal sketch of the famous Keats portrait by his friend Charles Brown which you can see on the bookcover in the lower-left corner of the pic above, and tore round it...

...no mean feat one-handed, I can tell you!

Then I found images in various magazines to illustrate different lines...

The 'high-piled books' you can just see along the left-hand edge of the above image...

An image of 'the night's starr'd face' and 'Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance'...

And an image of a woman standing alone 'on the shore/Of the wide world'...

Then, I added, what I think is one of the loveliest epitaphs I've ever read...

... 'Here lies one whose name was writ in water'.

John Keats died of TB, aged only 26...

And here's the whole journal page...

As always, it's never as good as I imagined...

in part, due to my lack of finesse, working one-handed, my frustratingly bad left-handed writing, and using poor-quality adhesive...

But, it is what it is...

the representation of a deep love for a particular piece of poetry, and an abiding admiration for a wonderfully gifted man, who died way too young, almost two centuries ago...

Wow!! The power of art, eh????





What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday No. 150

I missed WOYWW last week - it's been a tough week healthwise - so I wanted to participate this week.

This is the beginnings of my entry for this week's IA Challenge - Inspired by Words...

To celebrate April being National Poetry month, we're to make art around a favourite piece of poetry...

For me, this is a no-brainer - I have loved John Keats since I studied the Romantic poets at school. You can just see my well-loved, well-worn copy of Robert Gittings' Selected Poems and Letters of Keats in the bottom left of the photo. Next to it is a lovely little edition of Keats' Poetical Works given to me by a dear friend, when I was in hospital after the stroke. I couldn't read for several months, but she would sit and read Keats to me whenever she visited.

It's from this little edition I've photocopied my all-time favourite Keats' poem 'When I have fears...', and I'm staining it with yesterday's coffee grounds...

I'm not exactly sure what will happen next... I'm thinking I may draw Keat's portrait... paint and/or collage a suitable background... apply the copies of the poem... who knows???

I have till Sunday to complete it, so plenty of time to mull it over...

And for those who asked to see my finished Frida painting from the other week's WOYWW, the post is here :)

I'm looking forward to dropping by your various workdesks in the coming days - it's amazing how many busy, talented people there are in the world...

Take care xx

Virtual Coffee Tuesday - Easter Goodness...

Hello again!

I hope you had a very lovely Easter weekend...

In the UK, we get a very long weekend to celebrate, including Friday and Monday, and as per usual, it poured with rain for the whole holiday... :(

Though Nick picked up these pretties from the market, to brighten our table :)

And the sun is shining today, but it's still chilly and windy, so I think we'll snuggle up inside... and I can offer lots of naughties to enjoy with your beverage of choice...

... a slice of Easter cake or an individual mini-cake?

or a piece of the VERY indulgent, grown-up Easter egg my Dad gave Nick and me to share...?

And yes, those are liqueur chocolates! But I bag the cointreau one... :)

On Friday, I finished the Frida painting for the Inspiration Avenue Challenge (you can see the results here) with Molly-cat's help... the green paw-prints lend a certain je ne sais pas...

You can see how the painting developed here...

On Saturday, I settled down to watch the Boat race... what an absolute shambles!!



Then, when they finally restarted, the oars clashed, an Oxford oar broke, and Cambridge sped away... adding insult to injury... *sigh*

All this caused by one man's absolute idiocy!!!

Sunday saw an early start for Nick and me - we went to the local church's sunrise service, but because of the rain, we gathered in the porchway, rather than outside. There were 17 people in the congregation, which I thought was very impressive, and we all enjoyed coffee and croissants together after the service.

Nick prepared a favourite meal for lunch - Jamie Oliver's lamb shanks - we'd had them for christmas lunch too :)

Then it was time to watch a DVD together, while our delicious lunch digested...

Everyone enjoyed this!! Great story with great actors :)

Yes, we had quite a weekend!!

And now, I'll leave you to enjoy Seth Lakeman, whose new album arrived today - he's a favourite in our house, with kids and parents alike :)

This is my favourite track...




With love xxx


Joining up with Amy at...

Easter Saturday thoughts...

... over on my other blog The Leave-Taking...

And sending gentle love to all those struggling physically, emotionally, spiritually today...

IA Challenge - Frida Fiesta

Well, what a wonderful Inspiration Avenue Challenge this week!!

Using my much-loved Taschen book on Frida, I decided to attempt this Frida self-portrait...

... called Thinking Abour Death, painted in 1943, which I thought was a very approprate topic for Holy Week...

I shared the beginnings of the process here for my first ever WOYWW post on Wednesday... Here's a close up of the first sketch...

And here's after I'd just finished painting the background and putting a light wash over Frida's face...

While I was getting the camera, Molly cat decided she wanted to investigate what I'd been doing... And you just cannot miss the green pawprints on Frida's decolletage... *sigh*

But if you have such a beautiful, inquisitive pussycat, you simply cannot be too precious about your artwork...
 :)
Sadly, I'm not a skilled enough painter to know what to do with dark green splodges on a skin-coloured area, so I just had to leave it... 

I used gouache for the background, because I love the strong pigmentation, and watercolour for Frida, for the subtle, blendable qualities, but once gouache hits the paper, that's it! It just doesn't budge...

*ho hum*

Anyway, the point of the exercise is to celebrate the continuing inspiration of a wonderfully talented artist, and a strong, brave woman...

To me, Frida encapsulates the essence of the Easter message - human life is hard, and some people suffer cruelly, but the human spirit is stronger than the suffering... True beauty will always shine through even the darkest of experiences...

Long Live Frida Kahlo!!

What's On Your Workdesk? Wednesday (No. 148)

I've wanted to join in with this for the longest time... and thanks to Elizabeth at Altered Booklover, I've found Julia (the host of WOYWW), and I've added a button to my sidebar...

So here's my desk...

... where you can see I've made a start on this week's IA Challenge - Frida Fiesta, celebrating Frida Kahlo - a life-long favourite :)

I've chosen to recreate one of her many self-portraits...

... in this one her thoughts are about death, while surrounded by lush vegetation...

I know she isn't everyone's favourite - a lot of her paintings are very dark, or even morbid, but when you have suffered as she did - physically and emotionally - and think her often brutal honesty has real power!

Frida has helped me through a lot since I first discovered her work over 30 years ago... through my miscarriages...

... and more recently, through my stroke recovery...

Her brokenness made her strong, and she continues to inspire such vulnerable strength in others...

VIVA LA FRIDA!!

Virtual Coffee Tuesday - Ups and downs...

Tuesday again??? Oh my....

And it's Easter on Sunday... eeek!

How did we get here so quickly??? Only seems a couple of weeks since Christmas!!

Still, hopefully we can find a few minutes to catch our breath, and catch up...

And today, I can offer you some scrummy coffee and walnut birthday cake :)

It's my Dad's super birthday cake from Friday...

Now, does this lovely man look 70??? I think not...

My brother got the cake made depicting Dad's favourite aeroplane - a Vulcan (click on the image to see all the hand-iced detail) and coffee and walnut is his favourite variety of cake :)

We had a lovely family dinner at a local pub, which was my Dad's watering hole when he was stationed here at Spitalgate camp many moons ago... needless to say, it's been spruced up since then :)

I just love this picture... my daddy sharing a joke with my gorgeous boy while my beautiful daughter poses serenely...

Then on Saturday, Dad and E left - she's spending her first week of the Easter hols at Grandpa's - and I went to a follow-up appointment at the hospital... They found an anomaly during the diabetic screening in February, and the specialist confirmed it's a bleed in the left eye - again!! So I now await an appointment (at Boston hospital - an hour's drive away!!) to cauterize it by laser, as they did 3 years ago *sigh*

Sometimes, it's just a struggle...

~*~*~*~*~

But, as the new month dawned on Sunday, I decided to try and stay positive, and painted this for the week's IA Challenge 'Stormy Weather'...

You can see the post here...

I find it interesting that several people saw it as a galleon on the ocean... It's actually 'meant' to be a lone tree, with houses in the distance, as the stormclouds roll in...

Isn't art interesting?? Who's to say what the artist intended is more 'right' than what the viewer sees?? I'm a great believer in there being no 'right' or 'wrong' in art...

And to keep up the positive vibe, I painted this yesterday...

It's based on the quote that arrived in my email box yesterday from The Happiness Project... I get such upbeat quotes every day...

And while I cannot say I felt the slightest exuberance while I painted it (I'm still struggling with the hayfever...), clearly there's some part of me which connected with the quote...

Art therapy in action, I guess :)

And it got me thinking... when was the last time I felt exuberant? It's not a word I use, let alone feel... How about you??

I think children are naturally exuberant - as this pic of my babies from 14 years ago shows...

This photo's on the bookcase in the hallway, and always makes me smile... the sheer delight on E's face... Sam could always make her giggle.... :)

So how, why, do we lose this exuberance as we get older???

I guess 'LIFE' just gets in the way...

But, I hope, we can manage to keep our eyes open for glimmers of it... in our children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, our pets, in spring blossoms...

And, I guess, this is what the age-old Easter message is about...

I hope you have a lovely, blessed Easter weekend, and we'll catch up again next Tuesday...

Much love xxxx

image copyright of www.allsouls.net.au

Joining up with Amy at...

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IA Challenge - Stormy Weather

Phew! Just made it to enter this week's Inspiration Avenue Challenge...

It's not the greatest watercolour, but hopefully you get the idea...

I think this is an excellent challenge for Palm Sunday, as the political stormclouds gathered around Jesus all those years ago...

Faith is a journey into darkness, into not-knowing. 

 

Richard Rohr