Wednesday 26 August 2015

Flying High

We have been making a few changes, so that visitors to Ted Coney's Family Portraits website will see information about my new virtual tour on the HOME page, straight away.
On the virtual tour (just to wet you appetite) I get to fly back in time in my Morris Minor to 1930s Hollywood. You will see me talking about four of my paintings, all on the theme of Simultaneity.
 There is also a new article about it, near the top of the NEWS AND REVIEWS page - in the Hills Road Sixth Form College Staff Newsletter.
 

Thursday 20 August 2015

Sweet Surprises

Last week I took a booking from the website for a tour of Ted Coney's Family Portraits from someone whose name I did not recognise. When she and her partner turned up I realised it was one of my lovely Chinese students whom I had taught about four years ago. She had been studying fashion in Paris and bought me a beautiful box of chocolates from Zurich. A very nice surprise.
This week I received a postcard from Grayson Perry (the Turner Prize potter) who was responding to my letter which I had only written a few days ago. He was giving me some advice on how to get another exhibition. It will probably take me another twenty years, but I'm determined. 

Wednesday 12 August 2015

Royal Archive

Daniel has finally managed to put the video clips of my meetings with the Queen and Prince Philip onto my website. You can view them on the NEWS AND REVIEWS page.
Prince Philip came to visit Hills Road Sixth Form College in 1991 when I was working in the Art Department there and said  'and do you ever throw anything away?' I remember trudging through the snow at 4am in the morning to get there, to meet Security and  their sniffer dogs. They said the art dept. was a security nightmare as there was so much stuff.
I met the Queen in 2003 in the rather grander surroundings of Buckingham Palace. The department had been awarded one of the Queens Anniversary Prizes For Education and it was my job to introduce the students and staff we had chosen to bring. We also met Princess Ann, who when she learnt we were the 'art group', insisted that we should visit the Queens Gallery next door, as soon as we left the Palace. As the admission fees would have come to £100 it was jolly nice of her to get us in for free.
I was too shy to tell her that she was in one of my family paintings entitled 'The Puppets Dream', though. I'd actually  dreamt that the princess had been reviewing the Navy and fallen overboard. Seconds later she appears again, hat intact and still waiving out of the spout of a whale. You can see it when you next visit.

Thursday 6 August 2015

Chosen The Cake

I've ordered the wedding cake. No, I'm not getting married again (at least, I don't think so) but needed a replica of a 1940s cake for my next painting 'Bicycle Thieves'.
Yvonne, from the Hubb Teashop is going to make it  and I went to look at designs, the other day.
It is going to be a modest two tier affair in an old fashioned peppermint green (I think)
with three brides on the top (you can read more about my ideas in a previous  blog from July). Each bride will be holding a different bunch of flowers and the same flowers will decorate the cake.
It won't be ready until September, so I am currently making drawings of the three none brides instead, using the sports trophies I have acquired.
I'll tell you about them, another time.