Rare Glimpses

For my birthday, Emily gave me a beautiful book which she'd had printed of her photographs of our house and studio.
The pictures were taken about ten years ago - hence the cat bowl and Jasper is long gone!
Most of the photos are close up and she's even made the ironing look interesting.
You can see a selection of them on my Facebook page. Just click on the icon on the left side on any page of my website and scroll down.
When visiting Ted Coney's Family Portraits,  people seem to enjoy seeing the objects just as much as the paintings and I think Emily has captured this.

Come Hail, Rain Or Shine

I eagerly accepted the invitation to promote my up-coming Artist in Residence  event in June,  (See the NEWS AND REVIEWS page on my website for  details) at Eel Day, where the Isle of Ely Arts Festival was  to be launched.
I selected some of my preliminary canvases and drawings for the painting I 'll be working on -
'Who Stole The Toothpaste?' to encourage interest.
 I even brought along my new gift cards, displaying a drawing of my 1931 Morris Minor  (the car appears in the  painting) and hoped to make a few sales.
However, I hadn't bargained for the weather. Every few minutes the sky would turn black and down would come the rain and even hail at  times. I had to retreat with my mini display into a tiny gazebo along with about five other people.
So it wasn't a great success, though we did manage to give out quite a few leaflets as people rushed home.

My Bike, Lollipop

I use my bike both as my main form of transport and also it is an integral part of
Ted Coney's Family Portraits.
 My 1940 bicycle both advertises the pop-up gallery by displaying  information , but is also an object to inspire my paintings.
I used it for 'Bicycle Thieves' which you can see in THE COLLECTION page on my website.
It also took me on my epic 800 mile  journey to Scotland after which I produced the painting 'Diamond Sutra'.
So I am always a bit sad when bits of the bike drop off or have to be replaced. Yesterday I tried to buy a new lollipop to fix on my back wheel as the old one had split in two. The first two bike shops didn't even know what a lollipop was (when you stick it out, it keeps traffic away).
I ended up at my favourite repair shop and although Dougie didn't have a new version he offered to mend the old one by screwing the two bits back together.
 My lollipop lives to see another day.

May Day Alert

I wish I'd bought all the newspapers two years ago on 1st May when my grandson was born.
At that time I didn't know I would want to use them for my next painting, 'The Wasp and the Ring' to include the good and bad headlines within the picture.
I did contemplate trying to buy copies from 2017 over the Internet but decided that I would make do with this years versions instead. As I normally only buy one newspaper a week I did have an interesting morning reading The Times, Sun , Telegraph and Metro without feeling too guilty.

Best Feet Forward

I spent last week getting the collection ready for the reopening of Ted Coney's Family Portraits. This included jobs I'd been meaning to do for a long time but never got around to.
Like giving Peter the Pup, new feet.
Don't worry, he is only a puppet but appears in two of my paintings - 'David's Journey'(which you can see on p.5 of the PRINTS FOR SALE page) and 'Love That Dares' (DISABLED VISITORS page).
I was never happy with the puppet itself, which was made for me several years ago. So I repainted Peter a soft brown colour and using FYMO (a modelling clay you bake in the oven),I modelled some bigger feet.
I had to do them twice but was satisfied in the end.