Sleepy and busy bees

It's been a lovely spring like day today and G & I drove to Lower Brockampton, a beautiful NT property in Herefordshire. It was really quiet, I took lots of photographs and my shoulder, which has been causing me problems since last autumn, felt a little easier at last.

It's so difficult to get away from the din of traffic, even on NT properties. But there were moments today where the traffic dimmed to a distant drone. Even busy bees could get some sleep, like this one I noticed curled up fast asleep in a daffodil.


Yellow really was the colour of the day.


I'm progressing on May Gate at last. I hope to finish it this week.

Wightwick Manor

On Sunday G and I went to Wightwick Manor in Wolverhampton.

Wightwick was featured on a recent television progamme about the Pre-Raphelites, Andrew Lloyd Webber was brought close to tears by this wonderful house which displays many artworks and applied art by or inspired by the Pre-Raphelites. There are paintings and drawings by Rossetti, Millais, a beautiful Burne Jones painting (borrowed from another National Trust property Upton House), ceramics by William de Morgan and fabrics and wallpapers by William Morris. There's a room devoted to William Morris, and the shop has many William Morris inspired pieces. The reason I went to Wightwick this Sunday however, was to see an art exhibition someone mentioned to me, organised by Wolverhampton College as part of their Enter Arts course. Making Art History nicely presents contemporary art and craft pieces amongst the antique pieces of Wightwick Manor.


Not an exhibit by the way (at least I don't think it is), but it deserves to be. This is in Wightwick's fruit and vegetable garden. Lots of crawl spacdes for insects to make homes in.

The National Trust are undertaking a number of contemporary art exhibitions this year, as they have often done in recent years, for instance 'Gimme Shelter' an exhibition of sculpture in the grounds of Attingham on the theme of habitats and housing. My favourite piece was a huge African style mud hut that was constructed in the woods. The first year we visited (about 3 years ago, I think) it was freshly built and you were able to walk inside. Now, the construction is slowly decaying, crumbling, sinking in on itself. I take photographs of it every time I visit. The decay, for all that, is not sad really, but a new stage in the building's development.


And here's a photograph of me...


...actually not, it's a scarecrow standing guard in Wightwick's vegetable garden.

Another National Trust property that juxtaposeds modern art with its permanent exhibit is A La Ronde. Like Wightwick Manor, A La Ronde is a fascinating place crammed with wonderful object' d' art and curios, and both there and at Wightwick it's nice to see the contrast between craft and artwork which may be separted by centuries, but which is united by the passion and imagination and the urge to create something original and beautiful.

Searching for links about the Wightwick exhibition I found this blog by one of the contributing artists.

I've begun a small drawing, on Ingres paper again, as before I've drawn in horizonal lines and given a few white gouache splats to animate the space before I begin.

Black and White

I've been busy getting pictures ready for competitions and open exhibitions I'm hoping to enter. One pen and ink piece I'm just about finishing, based on a photograph I took back in 2004 (5 years ago! Time frightens me) of a Cornish NT garden called Glendurgan, a beautiful sub tropical garden that leads down to the sea.

There's a place in the drawing that troubles me where the detail's got a bit fuzzy and any defining contrast has become lost. I'm thinking of trying to add a bit of definition with white body colour, but I'm afraid of causing more harm than good, so although my deadline is next week, I'm trying not to be too hasty. Once the deed is done there will be no turning back. That's the one thing about pen and ink, you have to get it right first time more or less, it's very difficult to right your wrongs.

I'm ever aware of the lack of colour in my work, and yet at the moment, just as the impulse is to draw instead of write, it is also to work in black and white as opposed to colour. So far my attempts to buck the trend have fizzled out as my enthusiasm fails me. One attempt, the Neolithic barrow I posted last month, is unfinished, though there are things I like about it. Another, below, in coloured pencil, has failed to spark my enthusiasm. Here's the work in progress then, but I'm not promising that I will ever finish it.