You Were There

We've just had a visit from two of our nephews and their young families recently, and the children seemed intrigued by one of my paintings entitled  'Lavender and Dead Bilberries'.
This is a very early family painting and depicts our wedding day in 1969. Hazel wore lavender and my suit was a dead bilberry colour, (a sort of dark purple with dust over it) hence the title.
Infact, my best man was the only one in white - well it was the sixties!
Nancy and Iris thought their father looked cute in the painting but Fred and Francis wondered were their dad was.
I had to explain that he was still in his mummy's tummy (Alyson was heavily pregnant at the time) but was with us in spirit.

Family Secrets

I've just finished reading a  non fiction book entitled 'Family Secrets' which appeared in my Christmas stocking this year. (I think Hazel acquired it from a charity shop).
I was particularly interested in the chapter on illegitimacy, entitled 'Other Peoples Bastards' because after my father died we discovered that he was born out of wedlock. This was considered very shameful and must have been a great burden for him to carry all his life.
I made a painting about it entitled 'Namesake' and tried to demonstrate  that this stigma is now irrelevant and everyone wears their name with pride.
I did this by listing all the members of the family, showing some  who chose to keep their surname even when married and others who have partners and keep the name they were born with.
You can see a section of this painting through on of my 'keyhole' logos on the PRINTS FOR SALE page. And ofcourse you can see the real thing when I reopen in April.

Postcard From Sooty

One of my Christmas presents was a postcard featuring the glove puppet, Sooty. The card had been enlarged from a stamp to commemorate 50 years of Children's T.V. in 1996.
Yve had spotted it as she knew I would want to display it in the 'Sooty Pyramid', as part of my
 Ted Coney's Family Portraits exhibition.
The Pyramid looks almost like an art installation in its own right but  infact  is source material for one of my paintings, entitled 'Offrenda'. The painting was made several years ago, to celebrate my mother's life..
I used Sooty, Sweep and Soo (Sooty's two friends) for the painting to represent my eldest brother, Richard and my parents, whom I felt had a similar relationship to the Sooty creators, Harry and Marjorie Corbett and their son Matthew. They loved each other had but had a rather tense relationship.
You can see the painting in the PRINTS FOR SALE page on my website. 

Not Just Hot Air

We've nearly completed opening the 37 paintings in my picture 'Limners' as we come to the end of the Christmas period.
 It is based on an advent calendar with each painting covered by tiny doors.
I was reminded of one of the pictures recently, when I got a card from one of our old neighbours in Great Shelford. He used to make a hot air balloon out of tissue paper every Christmas, to fly on the recreation ground opposite our houses on Boxing Day. We all used to go out to watch, to give us a bit of fresh air.
 My painting for that day is of a failed balloon as often it wouldn't fly, for various reasons. Or it caught alight and went up like a ball of flame.
You can see the painting on my PRINTS FOR SALE page.