HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOZART!

I've been loving the music of Mozart since Radio 3 began the year with their Mozartfest. I'm listening to the Magic Flute and reading the libretto, though Mozart's highly dramatic and emotionally rollercoastering music conveys so much without words.

I'm hoping something musical might infuse my new drawing, as well as the vivid green ink I've stained the watercolour paper with.


I prepared the paper last year, I can't remember why I decided to stain it green, but I'm glad I did now. It was waiting for these lines to grow on it.


This mighty oak tree brings home all the more to me how crass, selfish and utterly immoral the current Government idea to sell off our (note that word 'our' - what the Government plan to do is basically theft) forests. They say it's necessary to plug this deficit, but I don't know. The only certain deficit I can see is the moral one.

If you disagree with what the Government plans to do with Forestry Commission land, please sign one or both of these petitions.

Forestry Commission's petition.

38 Degrees Petition

Telford and Wrekin Open 2011

I spent most of Saturday on the train travelling first to Oakengates to hand in my piece for the Telford and Wrekin Open Exhibition, then travelling back in the other direction to collect PW PW 2001 from the RBSA. The lady was very complimentary about my work when I picked it up, she said that she could imagine working the way I do must be almost a kind of meditation, and I think this was very perceptive. And true.

I had another compliment this week for the piece I exhibited at the RBSA, a note from the artist Rob Perry, to say that he liked my work. It was just a brief note but I was very touched that he had gone to the trouble of sending me his compliments. Rob Perry is a well respected artist who I've been aware of since seeing an exhibition of his work at Dudley Art Gallery back in the late 1980s. He's got a great website.

I've spent the past fortnight emersed in wonderful Mozart. Yesterday was the final day (1791 day) of Radio 3's broadcast of all of his work. The word genius is spoken too often these days, true genius is a very rare thing and Mozart was definitely it.