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.

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.

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.

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'

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..