Cold Cuts

Butterfly makes it through the winter.

Money trees, a bright hope for the future?

A little End of Winter number.

 

Escape from the Island of Dreams.
From the Dawn Treader.

Memories from days gone by as a baby boomer,
in the darkness in the deep places in the underground.
Frightened by the sound and condition
as a very small person
-the wind rush and noise

"The wind blows cold in the underground"
A spurious and hysterical comment from Ron Geeson in a performance in a small hall in Ladbroke Grove in the late 60's.
- but that moment covered my experience as a kid.



Start Right Shoes have far to go,
also seen in the Underground many years ago.
This is far from an accurate rendition of this bygone advert.

Rough Seas



Nearest port in a storm.
Any port is any weapon that comes to hand,
the storm is your temper.
The first thing you can find to hurt with,
often racial, sexual or religious slurs.

Still Sailing

 



Beach hero collecting into a dufflebin.
If everybody picked up stray plastic from wherever, maybe it would help to clear up what may turn into a giant problem and also serve to make us all more aware of what the future could hold.

 



Beachscape





Dropping bombs on civilians

  

The Backhanders
Play tonight and get ten pounds free.

A little bird just told him, (about a bribe)

slight gauntlet

Creature enclosed in it's own space

Bird Bath
Cant find my face in the muddy water.

all art is propaganda, says a well known art critic

The all came out converted with spiritual bliss.
A new design for Birmingham New Street Station

I'll walk you half way home

 



The secret life of towels. Hanging from inside a bathroom door.



Bookends or knickers - take your choice

An image I was working on that didn't make onto the trees web site, due to the fact it was free and had gotten filled-up.
I set it up as free because I knew I wouldn't be working on it for years and it seems that the free sites keep on going, whereas the paid ones disappear after a year.



Away in a manger, my second ever nod at Christmas.



 

 



The mighty Tor

The Mighty Tor and offspring
A hybrid of Devonshire Tors.





weird and wonderful beasts coming from the legs of the throne. Maybe this was where it became chic to have royal corgis.





Queen with Corgi
 tongue in cheek rendering of an old master





Same as the other although the images changed drastically as I went through the digital process of representation.

Medieval Ironwork
Ancient tribute to Lord & Lady Gray of Norwich.

Autumns last throws

25 tales

18-1-18



I'm not even sure that Rudyard Kipling actually said that there only 25 stories that can be told.

However, it does sound like a sound theory to me.

However, to try to nail them down would probably require some sort of grant,

(if they exist anymore)



How many songs do we have to sing
Each and every one of us.

To carry on re-composing.





Animal occupying it's own space.

The birds.

A Britannic Saint.

Recently, I haven't been "immediately" creative - I haven't scribbled out ideas / doodled immediate things.
I haven't spent a lot of time "on-line" either.
I suppose this is a good chance to bang out a few underlying compositional challenges.

Entrance to another place.

A walk over the hill.

-and the next year-

Underhand backbiting.

A new morning in the outside world.

The magic far-away tree.

Me now,
mine, all mine.

The lost dog.

Frightened, lonely monsters.

A game of two halves.

Pre-ignition.

The back-handers,
play tonight and get ten pounds free.

Said the very knowledgeable critic. 

Envelope fields,
a pastoral number.

Spiritual bliss.



The home from home.

The end.



  

Surviving butterfly makes it through winter

15-1-18

hard, but it made it

Rudyard Kipling (I believe) wrote that there are only 25 stories that can be written.

Myself, I would rather believe that we each have 25 stories, maybe in different variants that can be told.

and you run from youre own retreating view

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ke27QakSPxM

Beside you, Van Morrison

"you roam from your retreat and view"

It seems I got the lyrics wrong !

So,

going backwards



The secret life of towels

Hopefully the first of a bunch of water colour and line stuff with a bit of back-up and lines.

These are a couple of notes that I made whilst doing the "important water colour"

I began to feel that I was loosing out in the basic compositional line of things and so started banging out little / big paintings.

A spin off from the main theme - in that it didn't cut it so I decided to turn it into something different. ("A Guilty Man")



Yes, I needed to bang out some new fresh compositions - from the heart as it were.

Actually towels hanging from a bathroom door. I loved the cascade of colour.



saving Istanbul?

This means I can simply transfer the original Turkish blog to a new site

Postcards for my Father

A chronological string of postcards that I sent back to the family home, mainly in 1988.
Covering all places visited and commentary.
Based mainly around Archaic Archaeological sites starting in the West of the country and ultimately ending up in Istanbul.

Postcards for my father.

Existing in a page of it's own.

I spent a sizeable chunk of my time whilst in Turkey renting an apartment in Sultan Ahmet, Istanbul. In a local, fairly conservative Street which held a Wednesday market.

It is very different now, full of identical tourist restaurants, it is after all close to the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia.

Which is why this blog is based around Istanbul.

Everywhere was like spokes on a wheel pointing out from Cankurtaran – the actual area where we lived.

It started with a travel grant for Anne to study ancient Archaic Greek sites – this gave us the chance to have a reason to go visiting out of the way places. A reason to actually be on a lane in the middle of nowhere and also the need to communicate with (very) local people. A very good way of getting the feel of a different culture.

Unfortunately,

At the time, my father was dying of cancer.

Apart from phoning as often as I could, I sent postcards home from every place we stayed. Which started to branch out more and more as we covered all the out of the way sites which had to be dealt with.

This is a chance to lay them out (as it were) chronologically with some of the observations printed out as were written on the back.

They are covered on a separate page, along with some photos from the sites. I've put them in a cage, so as not to interfere / confuse /muddy the waters.