What A Treat!

I felt slightly apprehensive before last weeks tour of Ted Coney's Family Portraits.
I had a family of four booked in with two teenage children. They turned out to be all very nice but when I learnt that my tour was the daughter's 16th birthday treat, I did feel a bit nervous. She was very interested in Art and was doing GCSE at school so was keen to find out more about the paintings and my ideas behind them.
I am not convinced that the son was so enthusiastic, but as his mother remarked,
 'He has lots of other treats - and it's not his birthday'.

Forget - Me - Nots

I have decided to call the new painting, featuring my grandmother and her four sisters,
 'Forget- me-nots'.
 It is nearly fifty years since I did the last one about them (and my first family painting) and now I am doing a new version - so they are not forgotten!
 Also, the painting will hopefully demonstrate both the power of objects to help reclaim past memories but also  forgetfulness, as we get older.
The objects I will use are those I collected on a recent visit to five sea-side towns in East Yorkshire.
 Quite how I am going to paint the objects remains to be discovered, but I have begun work on the images of the five sisters. I was inspired by some wall paintings  in a church at Winbourne Manor.

After I'm Gone

I had four visitors last Sunday who came to Ted Coney's Family Portraits in response to my recent article in the Cantabs. newsletter. (you can read it in my website on the NEWS AND REVIEWS page)
One of them asked me a really good question at the end of their tour. They remarked on how interesting  my ideas were, to make the paintings.
Their questioned however , how  people would  know what these ideas were, after I had died?
Ofcourse, the lucky ones who had bought Tour Guides (50p each or £3 for all eight) will have most of the answers, but I also offered another point of view.
If people still enjoy my paintings in the years to come then it will be a bonus and I don't really mind what interpretation they put upon them.
A good example might be my painting 'Another Year' (which you can see on my PRINTS FOR SALE page). For me it is about the death of two female members of my family and the birth, a year later of two others. Though it  could  merely be seen as dawn and dusk falling on Ely Cathedral. 

Almost An Installation

I've shown the five small, battered suitcases to a few friends and relations.
 I laid them out on a table, each suitcase with it's own label, so they could look inside and marvel at what I'd collected.
Each suitcase represented not only one of my great aunts, but also one of the five sea-side towns that I collected the objects from.
Although I intend to do a painting from them eventually (more on that another time) the suitcases themselves did seem almost  like an art installation. At least I thought so.

Finished?

I've been working alot on my current painting 'Bicycle Thieves' over the summer and it may be finished - or maybe not?
My method of working is to leave the piece for a while and then see how I feel. I glance at it occasionally and see if I get any fresh ideas to improve the image. An unexpected glance surprises me sometimes into making another mark (or rubbing one down) which hopefully improves the look of the painting.
To see my progress so far, go to the NEWS AND REVIEWS page on my website, where you will see my progress.
Underneath, in the Reviews and Articles section, there are also two press stories. 

Brief Encounter

Last word (for now) on my East Yorkshire trip. After our visits to the five sea-side towns, we spent the last two nights at the Royal Station Hotel in Hull. Although we had always thought of this as very upmarket  (Queen Victoria had stayed there), it had obviously seen better days. It was also incredibly cheap.
I was reminded of the last time I was there some fifty years ago when my grandmother reluctantly arranged to meet an old flame she had been engaged to, seventy years previous. My mother had accompanied her and I called in to get a lift home.
I used this story as the basis for a painting entitled 'The Rashomon Effect', where each of the people involved looked at what might happen if the old couple had got back together again.
You can see the painting on my Ted Coney's Family Portraits website, on the CONTACT US page.

Feeling Blue

I had a suspicion that I was not going to be successful.
When I read  that one of the grants awarded by 'Hull-  City of Culture'  had gone to an artist who  persuaded 1,000 people to strip naked and paint themselves blue to create a large sculpture, I knew it was going to be difficult.
And so it proved. 670 people had applied for grants and only a fraction of them received any money, and then only for large community projects. I can quite understand why, because Hull needs to make an impact during 2017.
What was disappointing was that I had already managed to bag a venue - Hull University, for my month long residency.
I can apply for funding elsewhere, but I expect it will be very competitive.