Many Things

It has been a long time since my last update. I hadn't realised how long it had been.

Well since that last update many things have happened and if you follow me on Twitter or Facebook you may have heard something about them all.

Soon I will be jetting off to the exotic east coast. Southwold on the Suffolk coast of England to be exact. I visited once before but as I was a tiny tiny child I really don't remember it at all. All the evidence that remains is of me, a push chair and some brightly coloured beach huts in a faded photo.

I am really looking forward to it, it will be a massive change of scene with lots of photographic/artistic potential. I've been doing a little research to make the most of my week as I imagine getting hold of a computer and an internet connection might be a tricky undertaking. Places including the lighthouse, amber museum (the only one in the world!), Electric Picture Palace (with working electric organ that rises out of the floor) and Maize Maze all sound suitably intriguing and fun in a very stereotypical Britain in the 50's/60's way. I will be going with my parents and my sister and her boyfriend but I imagine I will be spending quite a lot of time on my lonesome. This I also don't mind as long as we get together in the evenings. I'm almost considering it some kind of residency, unofficial it might be and I can see myself continuing this current thing with sea related paintings.

I have been doing lots of sea related paintings recently. Since finishing the elephant (more on that later) I have completed the Cowes paintings for the ReOrsa project space installation. I have also completed another smaller work of Cowes. Additionally to that I also painted a work on Cardiff (surprisingly no sea in that one). There's also been a flurry of drawings and as always am continuing the photography. In fact things have been moving so fast that I'm no longer up to date with the website. I think it must be something to do with the themes of my work but the Summer continues to be my busiest time of year unlike, as I am given to understand, most artists.


I have recently been accepted to show my work at the Crocus Gallery in Nottingham and Atelier-East showing in the Wisbech and Fenland Museum, Wisbech.

The Crocus Gallery is a volunteer run community space. It runs using an empty shop and does a wonderful job brightening and livening up the local area. The exhibition “Summer” is running from 17^th July until the 7^th August. I'm also getting to show for the first time “London Landmarks” a four canvas work that was one of my most ambitious works in some time.

Atelier-East organises and supports local artists, putting on shows in local spaces including the Wisbech and Fenland Museum. This is also the location of the 5^th Annual Summer show (open, in my favour , to non local artists) in which my work “Greetings” is being shown from the 7^th August until the 18^th September.

As to the elephant, well he did really well. After the miniatures he is also in a book about the London Elephant parade along with all his chums and makes an appearance on t-shirts. Hopefully these links will continue to work for some time.

Book:http://shop.elephantparade.com/

T-shirts: http://elephantparadelondon.spreadshirt.co.uk/greetings-from-the-jungle-I11936293

I went to the herding when they were mostly all together in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea. I say mostly because a select few were deemed too valuable or delicate to be left outside and needed to remain inside. They resided at Westfield, London for the duration. Unfortunately this meant I didn't quite get to meet all of them but I was more than happy with the ones I did.

In the end the elephant went for £12500 at auction, helping to raise money for the Elephant Family. The whole event was a huge success with the target of 2 million to be raised from the parade being absolutely smashed, in the end the parade made 4 million quid for Asian elephant conservation.

Whooooo!

Cardiff - 26th September 2009

I like travelling by rail and while cars and even buses have their own appeal there is still something to be said for a good train journey.

I guess I can understand why people want to read on trains, I have done so on many an occasion when I am on a route I frequently travel. But today when I am travelling into new and unknown pastures it seems needless to bring anything more for the journey than my Ipod. I wanted to use the opportunity to soak up where I was going and even now as I draft parts of this entry on the train, I am glancing up more at the passing scenery than I am writing. Soon enough I will put paper down and watch the landscape roll by.

All around me adults are sleeping (it is 8:30am on a Saturday morning and I have been up since 6!) or are reading newspapers. Most are also hidden in plain sight by a pair of headphones much like I am. Only the small child sitting in front of me is taking in the joy of a journey and a landscape never seen before and not seen for long. I find this kind of sad yet endemic of life today. People are so intent to get to where they are going that they forget to just enjoy the journey. I'm not saying I am not also prone to this but I guess this journey today brought that little snippet of thought to the surface.

The only thing that would make it better would be for the train to have a steam engine.


As to Cardiff itself, well the weather took a while to improve. After starting out beautiful and sunny the clouds rolled in while in the Swindon area and stayed until midday in Cardiff. I was somewhat upset to see the bright morning skies disappear under cloud and the wide flat fields and gently rolling hills of western England become that little bit murky. It was defiantly autumnal weather. I had been 'promised' excellent sunshine and I was keen to steal a last bright and sunny day before winter set in. While the morning was less than perfect It did improve markedly. In fact as soon as the sun came out it became very hot, almost unseasonable.


Cardiff struck me as very quiet for a Saturday, I soon found out that that was due to two things. The cheese festival in the Castle and the newly opened 'largest John Lewis store in Wales' absorbing the majority of the population. Now while I had first hand experience of the packed John Lewis store (I went in there to look for a loose leaf tea strainer device and yes it really really was a mistake) seeing the quantity of people in the cheese festival was coincidental.


After walking around Cardiff and the bay all day I had got most of the photographs that I wanted including images of the Castle, Millennium Stadium and an unrelated to my practice yet amusing shot of the closed up entrance to 'Torchwood's Hub' by about 4pm. While wandering through the city centre in the last of the decent light I came across a church that I had tried to get a photograph of earlier. While trying again (with much better light this time) I spotted people on the tower top. I decide to investigate further and found for the small donation of a pound I could also go up for as long as I liked. It was a long climb on very steep winding stairs and included an angry buzzing insect of some kind (I assumed it was a wasp but was paying more attention to my steps that whatever it was I had just disturbed) but I got some excellent views of Cardiff, including into the grounds of the Castle and of the sheer numbers of people milling around for cheese.


These days out are all about the exploration, the journey. Granted there are rules and ways in which the day can be made preferential but most of these you cannot control nor should you worry about trying to do so. The final product, the goal, is the collection of postcards and photographs from the day, but to get there you must enjoy the journey, let your day unfurl as it wants to, embrace the oddities, unusual occurrences and strange urgings you get to investigate places that may or may not end up being interesting and give you that one photo you want to make into a work of art.

Relish the meandering path.