6 December 2017

Been ages since I've posted anything here.  Here are two more garden flower paintings: October and November.  I'm trying to decide how and if to frame them - want them to be shown somewhere together with the sacks of dead flowers lurking about from the ceiling like spider egg sacks or pupae. Was going to frame the paintings in a motley assortment of second hand frames and have been collecting them over the past few months but now that they are growing in number I am having second thoughts - might make simple white box frames for them - feels like the second hand frame idea might be too distracting for this - not certain yet but I like the idea of simple white sides with the right number of red dots for the month on the side of the paintings (like the embroidered red dots on the pupae bags).

Been making books all day and most of last week to sell at The House of Illustration's Illustrators' Fair.  This year I'm concentrating on small things suitable for stocking fillers so tiny books and tiny paper dolls with cut out clothes.  I am hoping it won't be too cold on Saturday although if it snowed I honestly would quite like it as long as I have warm coat and boots and perhaps a hat and gloves too.  And a scarf.

4th October 2017

I am spending this year making work about my life before and with our eldest daughter Bronwen and how she continues to be a huge influence on my life, long after she died.

Here's a picture based on my memory of Bronwen's kindergarten.

And here's a picture of our wedding day complete with baby Bronwen, aged one.

2 October 2017

Been ages since I've written anything here.  Here's a picture of an oil painting I made a couple of days ago for September:

and here's one I made a month ago for August:

Here's a photograph of the flowers drying on the table so that I can sew them into a bag and keep them safe.  I want to keep each of the bunches of flowers in its own bubble for as long as possible.  I now have a white bag of dead flowers for each of the flower paintings.  Not sure what for - at the moment all the flower bags are in a carrier bag labelled "Please do not throw away these dead flowers."

I'm also saving all the jugs and keeping them apart from the rest of the household vases.  Not sure whether anybody in the family will notice that all the vases are slowly disappearing - I'm trying to leave a few obvious ones but they are looking very tempting. 

A small selection of limited edition prints of flowers are available here:

I am still writing and drawing about my childhood and early life, including our daughter Bronwen who died a few days before her sixth birthday many years ago.  I'm hoping to acknowledge and celebrate her and also to examine some of the ways that her life changed our lives. I am fascinated by the way memory is fluid and I am sure that my childhood memories have been affected by my experiences with my own children.   

19th July 2017

Here's another oil painting of flowers from our garden.  Making one painting a month as part of a 2017 diary - you can see all the pictures and buy limited edition prints here:

Flower Print Shop 2017

Friday 23rd June 2017

Family Garden

Been a long time since I posted anything here.  This is a picture I painted today of roses from our garden.

I'm making a painting for each month of this year of flowers picked from the garden.

I'm also writing/drawing daily about my childhood and my children's early lives - I like the way different memories pop up, partly because of family anniversaries and seasonal reminders, but also because of my ever changing personal preoccupations - I am allowing myself to write whatever comes to mind - I hope to find some patterns later and expect it to fall neatly into chapters when I analyse it at the end of the year!

Here is a picture of a pull string strawberry music box that our daughter Bronwen played with when she was a toddler.  She could hum the song before she could talk: the verse of "It's a Small World" by the Sherman Brothers.  I have no idea what happened to it - it was very popular in 1983.

Friday 21st April 2017

Digswell Arts Trust has been in existence for 60 years, supporting Hertfordshire artists in the first few years of their practice.  I am now nearing the end of my time with Digswell and am very grateful for all their support first at Fenners in Letchworth and now at the Forge in Digswell.  I'm delighted that we'll be opening our studios at the Forge again on the 6th and 7th May.  There will be exciting work from all the artists and printmakers currently working at the Forge and I am very pleased to be part of this years celebrations.
I'll be showing some of the work in progress of my visual and written diaries and memories.