Thursday 29 September 2016

What A Treat!

I felt slightly apprehensive before last weeks tour of Ted Coney's Family Portraits.
I had a family of four booked in with two teenage children. They turned out to be all very nice but when I learnt that my tour was the daughter's 16th birthday treat, I did feel a bit nervous. She was very interested in Art and was doing GCSE at school so was keen to find out more about the paintings and my ideas behind them.
I am not convinced that the son was so enthusiastic, but as his mother remarked,
 'He has lots of other treats - and it's not his birthday'.

Thursday 22 September 2016

Forget - Me - Nots

I have decided to call the new painting, featuring my grandmother and her four sisters,
 'Forget- me-nots'.
 It is nearly fifty years since I did the last one about them (and my first family painting) and now I am doing a new version - so they are not forgotten!
 Also, the painting will hopefully demonstrate both the power of objects to help reclaim past memories but also  forgetfulness, as we get older.
The objects I will use are those I collected on a recent visit to five sea-side towns in East Yorkshire.
 Quite how I am going to paint the objects remains to be discovered, but I have begun work on the images of the five sisters. I was inspired by some wall paintings  in a church at Winbourne Manor.

Friday 16 September 2016

After I'm Gone

I had four visitors last Sunday who came to Ted Coney's Family Portraits in response to my recent article in the Cantabs. newsletter. (you can read it in my website on the NEWS AND REVIEWS page)
One of them asked me a really good question at the end of their tour. They remarked on how interesting  my ideas were, to make the paintings.
Their questioned however , how  people would  know what these ideas were, after I had died?
Ofcourse, the lucky ones who had bought Tour Guides (50p each or £3 for all eight) will have most of the answers, but I also offered another point of view.
If people still enjoy my paintings in the years to come then it will be a bonus and I don't really mind what interpretation they put upon them.
A good example might be my painting 'Another Year' (which you can see on my PRINTS FOR SALE page). For me it is about the death of two female members of my family and the birth, a year later of two others. Though it  could  merely be seen as dawn and dusk falling on Ely Cathedral. 

Friday 9 September 2016

Almost An Installation

I've shown the five small, battered suitcases to a few friends and relations.
 I laid them out on a table, each suitcase with it's own label, so they could look inside and marvel at what I'd collected.
Each suitcase represented not only one of my great aunts, but also one of the five sea-side towns that I collected the objects from.
Although I intend to do a painting from them eventually (more on that another time) the suitcases themselves did seem almost  like an art installation. At least I thought so.