Friday 26 April 2019

Pot Luck

My new painting 'Who Stole The Toothpaste?' is about an ancestor of mine who owned a pharmaceutical company over a hundred years ago. When he died leaving no direct heir, the business was mismanaged and his fortune was lost.
The company made among other things, toothpaste, hence the title of my painting.
In those days, toothpaste came in ceramic pots, not tubes as we have today. Although I would love to get hold of one with the family name on, I did manage to find a picture on the internet to use as a reference for the painting.
However I saw a pot very similar  in an antique shop recently and as it was very cheap, I bought it.
 I can show this object to visitors when they come on a tour, to help  explain the story behind the picture.

Friday 19 April 2019

Be Prepared

Ted Coney's Family Portraits reopens for it's eleventh season on Sunday 28th April.
Now the family have gone  I've been getting the upstairs rooms ready to show pictures and reorganising the display of related objects.
I found one of the sugar skulls (Mexican Day of the Dead) had melted slightly, so I have had to swop things around so they are out of the sun.
Simon came yesterday and he is going to help me rehang some of the paintings and of course I've got my new picture 'Hinaki' coming back soon, after its been framed
Don't forget to book (details on my website) , preferably a few days before you hope to come.

Friday 12 April 2019

The Romans Are Coming

At Christmas I got my first model roman soldier . Recently, I  managed to buy another one which was really a pencil sharpener but was quite detailed and only one colour. This will be useful when I come to paint from them because I want the figures to look very much like models rather than real people
For my birthday, at my request, Max managed to track down two more soldiers from Amazon, .
so I now have an army of four!
I want to use them to represent the difficult side of life in a painting inspired by my grandson, Sebastian,  entitled 'The Wasp and the Ring'

Friday 5 April 2019

A Little Bit ( More) Of England

Visitors to Ted Coney's Family Portraits and readers of my blog will know that I have been trying to create more space in the gallery for the past six years. Although the collection of paintings and related objects are growing slowly - luckily I average only one new painting a year - There reaches a point where I need more walls.
I tried buying the room directly under our 'flying freehold' when they were reshaping the house next door, but no luck
I investigated the possibility of opening up the loft (It's got fabulous beams) but H. and S. wouldn't allow it. I even explored  building a new room over the garage and studio, but this seemed very expensive for the space we would gain.
However, we have just acquired a very small strip of land which runs along the end of our garden so hope this will give me what I need..