Made a lovely discovery yesterday.Finally decided to stop my car and check out a site that I’ve passed a million times before.
I could see from the road that it had been a quarry and fully expected it to be a rubbish tip. To some extent it is; the usual discarded tyres, containers, rusting metalwork. But it’s bigger than I expected, with standing water, creating a wonderful secret nature reserve. I couldn’t get too close – the nettles were as tall as me, and I had open sandals on – not the best footwear for exploring.
But I’ll return today, with camera and machete, to explore. It has wonderful secrets: just the sort of place I love.
Had to judge a school art competition for Margate Civic Society last week: not at all easy! Lots of fantastic drawings and paintings of the Margate Clock Tower, Turner Contemporary, and the Tudor House!
South East Open Studios has finished and by various accounts has been more successful this year, at least in this East Kent area. I wonder if this will be sustainable, or whether it’s a temporary response to the financial crisis? It’s quite an investment of time and energy as well as money, so let’s hope it signals new and positive behaviour: artists need all the help they can get!
Meanwhile I’m still re-orienting myself in my new space: have temporarily mislaid the special rocks that I was working with before the move, and feel lost without them. On the good side, I’m looking back through sketch books and journals, and re-discovering the landscape I was working within.
Today is the first day I’ve been able to walk into my studio and think about work. Hard to believe that things take so long, but I’m in at last, and have my paintings around me, reminding me of where I’d got to…
The past two weeks have been strange: a visit from my oldest sister in America prompted me to want to talk about our father, who died before I was born.
What gaping holes are left in lives where things are covered up, ignored or put away. As a small child growing up I knew that the life I was living was not quite the one I might have had, but no-one talked about our loss.
Our recent conversations, myself and my two sisters (there are two brothers as well) did little to fill in the holes, but it was a glimpse into the life that included my Dad.
He was a POW in North Africa and came home in 1945 tired, thin and almost unrecognisable. He died from an accident at work in March 1949. I was born in June 1949.
Well – it’s seemed a long haul at times, but today I finished putting on the white stuff, and tomorrow I collect my stuff from store.
I have forgotten just how much I have, and some judicious ‘weeding out’ may be necessary: the studio’s not quite as big as my former one. But it’s all mine, and I won’t be paying rent to unreliable landlords any more.
I can’t wait to get back to painting – there are 2 boards all ready and waiting, and more on the way.
I was really disappointed with the 2013 Fine Art Graduate show: too much stuff unfinished or un-thought-out. No bravery, no new ideas. Why is this happening? Especially as the new graduates are supposed to be the ‘hope for the future’. If this is so, something needs to be done: it’s unacceptable that the provincial colleges still languish in the shade of the London art schools as much, or more, than they did 20, 30 , 40 years ago!
Studio progresses – the electrics will go in this weekend and then I can move in.
Meanwhile I continue to research my childrens story about Margate – it has kept me busy and creative in an economical way while all my stuff has been in store.
And I’ve re-engaged with my garden, which I neglected badly last year because I wasn’t around so much.
I’m interested in how the concept of ‘mindfulness’ has recently been circulated and developed as a ‘new’ discovery – anyone who has a garden, and spends time and energy on it, will know that that tending a garden is one time when you are truly concentrated in the present moment!
I’m really looking forward to inviting my friends to my garden studio…
