Late Christmas Present?

Daniel has now put all my preliminary studies for my latest painting, ' Bicycle Thieves' on the website. The price and size of each one are directly underneath.
 I don't make them to sell, but to  try and solve problems. However, people seem to like them and I've sold most of the canvases over the years.
They could make a late Christmas present for someone - or even an early New Year one?!
Best Wishes for 2017

The Christmas Blog

The other week I sat for four hours outside in a Gazebo in freezing weather, dressed as Father Christmas.
I gave out over 250 presents and talked to many children about what they hoped to get for on the big day.
As their parents and grandparents hovered around, I felt tempted to also give out my flyers advertising
 Ted Coney's Family Portraits.
But never fear, I know there is a sacred trust when taking on this role, and I took it very seriously.
Happy Christmas!

Let Them Eat Cake

I got quite excited recently, when I received an invitation to be part of the Hull City of Culture at the Central Library.
Although I have still no  public funding for my project 'Families Matter', I was tempted, as the Library is within spitting distance of where the Turner Prize is going to be held next year.
That was until I found out that the gallery is also the café! So no room to run workshops and the paintings displayed would have to be very small.
 I also pointed out that as I would be working in oil paint on my picture, 'Forget-Me-Nots', this was hardly conducive to eating fish and chips etc.
So no, I'm not going - unless they come up with a better offer.

Another Country

Hazel and I managed to get the Christmas tree set up in time, even though the pot it was standing  up in, leaked and the lights didn't all work.
I had advertised my last  Ted Coney's Family Portraits tour as having a seasonal theme and showed my paintings 'A Christmas Carol' and 'Limners' (about the 37 days of Christmas) as part of the visit. I also made sure that the dolls house lights were switched on, to demonstrate that it was  Christmas in there, too.
However, I knew that among todays guests were some film buffs, so I decided to include in my tour,  paintings which were influenced by two foreign films I had seen recently.
'Bicycle Thieves' was a film made about Italy just after the second World War when everyone was starving and the theft of the bicycle was a symbol for their depravation.
'Rashomon' was a Japanese film depicting four people recalling the same events but from very different viewpoints. My painting 'The Rashomon Effect' does the same sort of thing while looking into various rooms in the dolls house.
Luckily, I had mugged up on both stories before my visitors arrived, as I had mistakenly thought  the first film was made in Poland and the second in India.
I can relax now until I reopen next April.

Not A Switch Off

Last Sunday I had some visitors to Ted Coney's Family Portraits who were particularly interested in my painting 'Dear Reginald Owen' (who was a film actor from 1917 - 1973 and was the brother-in-law of my cousin, Tom)

They particularly wanted to know what happened to Tom after he went out to work in Hollywood in the 1930s to seek employment in the movie business. Sadly, Reginald wasn't much help to him (after moving onto his next wife) and Tom returned to the UK.. Eventually he became an editor of a jazz magazine.

The visitors seemed interested and the wife remarked at the end of the tour that her husband hadn't looked at his phone once during the hour.

Praise indeed.

Not A Switch Off