A Small Birthday

Just back from New Zealand, where we have been visiting Leo and Paul.
 I spent my birthday evening in Wellington, in a lovely apartment overlooking the harbour. We had earlier walked along the quayside and I do remember Hazel diving into a shop while I sipped my coffee.
Later, they gave me a miniature birthday cake, which Hazel had managed to find.
Now we are back in the UK, I have put it into the dolls house as a reminder of our stay. It is now part of the Ted Coney's Family Portraits collection for others to enjoy.

Return Of A Hero

The Morris is back. It's been away at the garage having the brakes and steering improved. I am so glad it's been returned for the reopening of
Ted Coney's Family Portraits as it is usually one of the stars of the show. It certainly looks very smart with it's new/old Camping Club badge from the 1950s.
The gallery reopens on 26th April by the way, with bookings taken from 18th. I can only take six visitors at a time so maybe you had better get organised! You can book online, by Email or phone.
Which reminds me, I must start getting the rooms ready, as having the Morris back on site, is only the beginning of all the jobs I need to do.

Bicycle Thieves

I like to keep thinking about the subject of my next painting, while working on the current one.
Although I had already had thought of a title - 'War Babes', the story has now moved on, and I'm thinking of changing it.
Originally, I was going to depict three female victims of the second world war, my mother and her two cousins who were all pregnant and had to get married because of the conventions at the time.
I wanted to contrast them with three newer, female family members who aren't married and see no reason to be, but have children, to show how things have changed.
I then saw a film entitled 'Bicycle Thieves', set in Italy in 1948, which gave my idea a further twist. As well as telling the story of an actual bicycle theft and its aftermath, the film is also trying to get across how a whole nation's lives have been stolen, by the events of the war.
I feel my six relatives, by not being married but having children, may, in their different ways have had their lives stolen, too. Much more so than their male partners.
And the theft of a bicycle in my painting? Well, my 1940 bicycle has been stolen, but luckily I got it back.  

The Long View

I've tentatively started working on my new canvas for the current painting
 'Against The Light'. It's a long, thin painting, displayed horizontally. I started by dividing it up into different sections, so the two sides of my relative's natures can be shown.
I've stained parts of the canvas with a warm, reddish brown colour to show the jollier side of their personalities and the other, a colder blue, to represent their darker side.
Although I will be tracing some of the design onto the canvas, I also want to try and capture some of the softer, more translucent shadows by working directly from the real thing, to give it a feeling of spontaneity.
You'll be able to see the results of how I am progressing ( I'll keep photographing it at regular intervals ) in a few weeks time on the NEWS AND REVIEWS page of my website. I'll keep you posted.

Wire and Lollipop Sticks

I am experimenting with how to paint parts of my new work 'Against The Light '.
I've already discussed ways of painting the shadows of Laurel and Hardy using soft brushes and shapers (wedges of rubber to replace the bristles) in an earlier blog.
For the  shadow puppets (the real puppets, not the shadows) I wanted something harder and more clearly defined. On a recent visit to Brussels we saw an interesting exhibition of  alter paintings from Siena and I marvelled at the way the gold leaf patterns had been pieced through.
As the Javanese puppets also have intricate 'punched out' patterns I needed to think of a way I could do it in the painting.
I have painted the puppets in two layers. I left the first one, more heavily patterned, to dry. For the second coat, in a contrasting colour, I worked into while still wet. I scratched through with an old bit of wire (for harsher shapes) and a lollipop stick (for softer, less defined shapes) to reveal the  patterns underneath.
Yes, I can use less expensive tools when it suits the project. 

PayPal, Please

The virtual tour is nearly ready! Daniel is getting to grips with how visitors will pay and installing a new page on my website to make it all work.
He is using Paypal as the system to channel the money from the public to me, to obtain the twelve minute tour online, for up to two hours viewing. Lets hope it is simple and hassle free to use.
As it only costs 99p to watch, I hope you will be taking advantage of this fabulous offer. Sounds very cheap to me, but then I am biased.

Henrietta and Mr.Turnip

Apologies. Last week I led you to believe that you could see my painting 'Encore!' on the PRINTS FOR SALE page in my website. Well I was wrong, it isn't there!
You can see it though, (it's a cross shaped picture) in the collection of photographs taken at my retrospective exhibition at the Babylon Gallery last March. They appear on
 Ted Coney's Family Portraits Facebook page.
Talking of exhibitions, I have just pitched another idea for a selling show at the Babylon entitled 'Henrietta and Mr Turnip'. This would centre around a series of observational drawings and paintings in preparation for two paintings I made about thirty years ago.
'Henrietta'  (the name for my 1931 Morris Minor) was used for a painting to mark her 50th birthday, entitled 'Golden Jubilee Ride' and involved a series of studies made in Constable Country.
'Mr Turnip' was a TV puppet from 1950s and I used him to represent my childhood in a painting called 'Diamonds'. I made the series of observational studies in the house where my family had lived for sixty years.
You can see all these studies on the PRINTS FOR SALE page. Honest !