Keep It In The Family

 I was interviewed last week on Ely Radio  (it should be available on my website soon) about my Cambridge Open Studios event which is still open next weekend.

It took the form of Dessert Island Discs with my chat being interspersed with five pieces of music which were significant to my life. As the programme was pre-recorded I was able to ask for my fifteen year  old grandson's group, Room 3 as one of my requests. They played music/words they had written and I felt very proud of them.

The programme was called Isle of Ely Discs and was on at 6pm on Wednesday 12th July.

Quizzer

 I had 98 visitors to my first Cambridge Open Studios event this weekend so am feeling a bit exhausted!

One couple were intrigued by my grandmother's quizzer and how I had used it to tell the story in the painting 'The Rashomon Effect'.

A quizzer is a type of magnifying glass and she used it towards the end of her life. I portrayed it in the painting to represent my grandmother's view of a life that might have been. 

Window Shopping

 I start my three Cambridge Open Studio weekends- this weekend! For more details go to the NEWS AND REVIEWS page on my website.

I loaned one of my EGGHEADS preliminary canvases to a display advertising the open studios event, in the window of Tindalls art shop.  During July,  thirteen artists in Ely have their studios open to the public and there are 170 studios open across Cambridgeshire.

 Photos of the window display can be seen on my Facebook and Instagram posts.

Toothpaste Stolen

 You may already have seen the latest photograph on my Instagram and Facebook posts. It's of my great, great, Uncle Tom, who's fortune was squandered by his nephews after he died. He owned a large pharmaceutical company that made among other things, toothpaste.

It  inspired my painting 'WHO STOLE THE TOOTHPASTE?' which you can see  with  other  work at my Cambridge Open Studio during the 2nd, 3rd and 4th weekends in July.

I've also devised a temporary installation of the story under the same title.

All At Sea

 Do you remember the old musical hall sketch where the man couldn't put up the deckchair?

Well, it felt a bit like that when I came to put together a table top easel I had just bought. It seemed simple enough but as there were no instructions I started to put it together the wrong way. To my horror the more I pushed the more it split!

As I needed it for my display for the up-coming open studio weekends, I rang the local art shop from where it came and arranged to take it back. Luckily, I was given a new one but I insisted it was  assembled before I left and carried it home in one piece.

Finding The Magic

 ' Magical ' was how one kind person described my latest painting DREAMTIME when I put it on Instagram and Facebook this week.

I was showing it off again because it had just come back from the framers and I was particularly pleased with my choice of colour for the frame - dark red and old gold.

The painting is very theatrical in theme (trying to escape a collapsing Victorian puppet theatre) and I felt  these colours really suited that.

Anyway, one fan obviously thought the same.

Travellers Tales

 I'm currently waiting for parts to dry on my painting 'THE COUNSELLOR' so am also starting a new work which I'm calling 'TRAVELLERS TALES'.

I'm making five A2 charcoal drawings of the dolls house from different angles. I want the drawings to be out of focus except for one tiny detail in each one. The object which is clearer will give a clue as to what the painting is about. More on that, later.

My latest Facebook and Instagram posts show the start of this project