shelley scraps

Daiwa Event photos

2008-07-12T10:17:00.003+01:00

Many thanks to the Daiwa Foundation for these snapshots!

Daiwa Foundation thanks

2008-07-05T12:39:00.003+01:00

Many thanks to everyone who attended my talk at the Daiwa Foundation in London on Thursday.

I was greatly surprised by the generous turnout, 71 people signed up to hear my talk, I hope my tales of an illustrator in Japan were of interest.

My deepest thanks to the Daiwa Foundation for organizing the event, to Sue Hudson for arranging things, and to Satoshi Kitamura for chairing.

The event was it seems a great success, I for one certainly enjoyed myself, if I receive any photos I'll post them here.

"Artist in Residence: 20 years as an illustrator in Japan"

2008-06-15T08:59:00.004+01:00

The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation presents an illustrated lecture

Artist in Residence: 20 years as an illustrator in Japan
by John Shelley

Thursday 3 July 2008
6.00pm - 8.00pm
Daiwa Foundation Japan House

This event is free but advanced booking is essential.
Places can be booked at http://www.dajf.org.uk/booking
Illustrations by John Shelley can be viewed at http://www.dajf.org.uk/_pdf/shelley_john_seminar.pdf

John Shelley, an illustrator based in Japan for 20 years, returned to the UK this year. His talk will cover his experience working in Japan as an illustrator and how the Japanese creative market differs from that in the UK.
The chair will be Satoshi Kitamura, a renowned children’s picture book author and illustrator.

Contributors:
John Shelley was born in Birmingham and grew up in Sutton Coldfield. He studied at Bournville School of Art, then at Manchester Polytechnic under children's illustrator Tony Ross. From 1983, he began working as a freelance illustrator in London, and by 1984 had co-founded the artist's collective Facade Studios with designer Andy Royston and illustrators Jane Ray and Willie Ryan. His interest in ukiyo-e prints attracted him towards Japan and in 1987 he moved to Tokyo, making it his home for the following 21 years. The intervening time witnessed an outpouring of commercial illustration for clients in Japan and children's books for publishers across the globe. In Japan, his award-winning commercial art has been used in everything from animated TV ads, poster and newspaper campaigns to character merchandising and editorial illustration. With a unique insight into the Japanese creative market he stood as a committee member of JAGDA (Japan Graphic Designer Association) and presented at colleges across the country. Following his first major picture book, The Secret in the Matchbox (1989, Mother Goose Award runner-up), his children's illustrations have been published in the UK, USA, Europe, Japan and East Asia, and have continued to gain steady recognition across the world. As an author, his published stories include Hoppy’s New House (Fukuinkan Shoten) and The House of the World (Benesse). Shelley is active on the world stage, having run events on children's illustration in Los Angeles, Manila, Paris, Ulaanbaatar (Mongolia) and Bologna, as well as in Tokyo and the UK.
http://www.jshelley.com/

Satoshi Kitamura (chair) is a renowned children’s picture book author and illustrator. Born in Tokyo in 1956, Kitamura enjoyed reading comics and illustrated novels from a young age. Without any formal training, at 19 he started his career working in advertising as an artist, eventually making his way to London. He has written and illustrated over 20 of his own books and worked as illustrator on countless others. He illustrated Angry Arthur (written by Hiawyn Oram), which won the Mother Goose Award and the Japanese Picture Book Award in 1983. He wrote and illustrated UFO Diary, a Smarties Prize finalist in 1989. Having lived in the UK now for over two decades, his illustrations show both Eastern and Western influences and are characterised by moody London streetscapes and wide-eyed expressive 'friends'.
http://www.satoshiland.com/

LOCATION
Daiwa Foundation Japan House is located at 13/14 Cornwall Terrace, London, NW1 4QP.
http://www.dajf.org.uk/location

OTHER EVENTS
For more information of all events organised by The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, see
http://www.dajf.org.uk/events

The Daiwa Anglo Japanese Foundation
Daiwa Foundation Japan House, 13/14 Cornwall Terrace, London, NW1 4QP
Tel : 020 7486 4348 Fax : 020 7486 2914 Website : http://www.dajf.org.uk
Registered Charity No. 299955

More on Bologna

2008-04-17T23:22:00.004+01:00

The Book Fair

SCBWI had a stand at the Fair for the first time this year, and it was a marvellous base of operations for us. Being worn out by the Conference I was quite happy to take things steady at the Fair. I had nine appointments with publishers, but spent a lot of time at the Stand as I had two showcases to run, two portfolio reviews, and two hour long 5-minute portfolio critiques - SCBWI kept me pretty busy.

SCBWI Stand in Hall 26

There was always something going on at the Stand, the constant crowd of members hovering around in front of it tended to attract other passers-by and was a great way to generate interest in SCBWI. As every showcase ended the card, posters and books at the stand multiplied, until by the end it was starting to look pretty messy, something I'd like to address in future, but the overall impression was very good. To my knowledge we sold the rights to two books directly from visitors to the stand - an Australian author and Babette Cole both had books that were seen on the stand and subsequently picked up for foreign editions.

I ran a presentation on SCBWI Tokyo and another on my own work, both seemed to go down well.
During my showcase presentation

Perhaps the most interesting event was a sketching "duel" between Doug Cushman, Paul Zelinsky and Bridget Strevens-Marzo, who all illustrated live a picture book text written and read aloud by Erzsi, line by line. The repeated readings were particularly effective in drawing in an audience (pardon the pun).
The Illustrator's Duel

Erzsi reciting her story
We also ran two hour-long 5-minute speed portfolio reviews which were well subscribed to. Doug and myself were the main reviewers, seeing some 20 portfolios each overall, some of the work was pretty good and deserved longer than 5 minutes for comment, but I think the attendees went away satisfied and with a good impression of SCBWI.

By the end of the Fair we were all pretty exhausted, but well satisfied that the Conference and Fair stand had been a great success.

The biggest lesson for me was that the market in most countries is becoming more and more geared towards bright, simpler, commercial images, and not the more laboured traditional work I often was approached to do in Japan.

Outside the Fair. L to R: Paul O. Zelinsky, Bridget Strevens-Marzo, Me, Erzsi Deak, Doug Cushman, Leonard Marcus

Bologna Snapshots

2008-04-17T14:41:00.000+01:00

Every Bologna is different they say, and so it proved this year. It was the second time I'd been to the Book Fair, the last visit being in 2004. Then I was merely a visitor, this time I was associated with the SCBWI Stand. Because of my recent disrupted circumstances for a long time I wasn't sure I'd even be able go, but the organizers were very understanding and accomodating, not least the main organizer, SCBWI International head, and friend Erzsi Deak, to whom I extend my deepest thanks .

I stayed with my good friend Doug Cushman, Paris-based US picture book author/artist. He'd reserved an apartment right under the twin towers and generously saved me a room which I ended up sharing with Leonard Marcus, the children's book writer, historian and critic. This turned out to be a great arrangement, we had plenty to talk about and stuck together quite a lot throughout the Fair. Leonard has recently completed a new book Golden Legacy, a history of Golden Books in the US.

First up was the 2-day Biennial SCBWI Conference.

This took placed within the Fair facilities on 29th and 30th March, just before the Fair opened. There were more people attending than I'd expected, over 150 I believe, ranging from pro's to newbies. The speakers were largely very competent (with the exception of me perhaps). There were 2 rooms, one main and a smaller room where the illustrator events were held. Catering was very well arranged, using an outside catering service, if anything there was more food than could be eaten and snacks provided throughout the 2 days. The bookshop desk sold copies of titles by attendees and the faculty.

Writer/Illustrator Talks
I can only comment on those events I sat in on, which naturally leaned towards the Illustrator-focused talks, so apologies to the agents, and writers who ran sessions in the other room - there's a good coverage of these on other blogs.

Doug Cushman, Paul Zelinsky and Jan Ormerod
Picture-Book illustrator Paul O. Zelinsky started the show and gave an excellent and amusing powerpoint presentation of his work, showcasing his astounding stylistic versatility from his first very tight work on Rumplestilskin through The Wheels on the Bus to his expressive recent books like The Shivers in the Fridge.

Following him web designer and writer Candy Gourlay gave an authorative talk on how writers can engage with the internet, full of amusing detail, anecdotes and information. She managed to cover a great deal of ground, with websites remember “It’s not about you it’s about them” (the visitors)... So know your audience.

Jana Novotny Hunter in the main room.
Jana Hunter’s talk covered the history of picture books and the lessons we can learn from them as authors and artists, and was very thorough, especially for those who may not have a solid grounding in the subject.

Pat Cummings' workshop for illustrators.
I particularly enjoyed Pat Cummings' confident and friendly picture book workshop, I'd seen her in action last year in New York and she was just as good here, critiquing submitted work from established pro's as well as newcomers.

Kathleen Duey was also full of strong advice for writers, though I unfortunately missed the beginning of her talk. Points I picked up on: Get the reader to care about the central character; the less narration the better; viewpoint is powerful; set your stage from the beginning.
Kathleen Duey

Official star of the show was picture-book author/illustrator Babette Cole (sorry, no pictures!), who had the whole room rolling in laughter. She talked a lot about the history of her career and love of horses, but ended on promoting efforts in the UK to regenerate interest in picture books through an event The Big Picture. As I was on the faculty I got to know these people very well, all of them were great to meet, many new friendships forged. Unfortunately I missed the agents and the writers talks as I was in the other room, but I heard they were all solid.

The illustrated talk on the character strip Ariol by comic artist and illustrator Mark Boutavant and his editor Pauline Mermet was absolutely fascinating despite the unfortunate non-show of the strip writer Emmanuel Guibert. In a series of powerpoint slides Mark showed his awesome talent and some rare insights into the working methods used by comic artists in France. Interestingly he insisted he hated doing comics and would much prefer single images, I know how he feels.

Editor/AD talks
The Editors gave robust talks. Scholastic Editor David Saylor's talk on graphic novels was inspiring enough to persuade me to dig out my old web-comics created in Japan. He talked a lot about the recent Bone comic he’d worked on, saying for submissions he’d like to see at least 32 pages of dummy plus a synopsis of the whole text. 6 x 9 trim is apparently the standard for Scholastic.

In the International Books for Pre-Readers talk British editors from Bloomsbury and Scholastic UK several times refered to the current predominant use of "blim" (use of sparkly glitter, silver laminate etc on covers) to sell books in the UK now.
Editors discuss their recent book projects - Sarah Odedina (Bloomsbury) and Catherine Halligan (Scholastic).
The illustration First Look critiques were interesting, consisting of a desk full of editors giving 3 minute comments on submitted artwork displayed on a screen.

On day 2 I gave my Illustrators International presentation, sharing the bench with veteran international Marie Wabbes, who formerly lived in Africa now based in Belgium, and Bridget Strevens-Marzo, the SCBWI International Illustrator Coordinator, who works for publishers in many countries while being based in France for many years. We each had just 15 minutes to run through our careers, I spoke of my 21 years in Japan and experiences working internationally for the US and UK. It wasn't really long enough to expand in any detail, but my current circumstances led me to be grateful for the conciseness. I had some good feedback from it anyway, some people thought my talk was too short and wanted to hear a lot more.

In the final event Why I Love this Book & Published It, chaired by Leonard Marcus, each editor chose a favorite book to talk about. It was interesting to see the difference in taste and opinion between editors of different countries.

At the end of the conference there was a closing party held at a bookshop in town. As it was the night before the Fair opened there were many publishers present, it spilled out into the street and went on to the early hours, with the bookshop owners husband dj'ing classic garage surf rock'n roll tunes.

Sorry I've no photos for a lot of the events mentioned, but Erzsi's Facebook page lists many more.

Bologna Book Fair

2008-04-12T11:52:00.002+01:00

I've recently returned from the Bologna Book Fair, where I was one of the speakers at the SCBWI Biennial Conference. This was scheduled a long time ago, and despite my change in circumstances I was loathe to cancel, as it gave me something solid to focus on during this period of adjustment. I also needed to seriously re-connect with publishing in the West!

I'll post a report if I'm able, but for snapshots of the proceedings go to the organizer Erzsi Deak's Facebook page.

In addition to the Conference this was the first year SCBWI had a stand at the Book Fair.

Moving on

2008-04-12T11:22:00.001+01:00

My deepest thanks to everyone who has supported me and daughter Seren during these past months. It's been tough adjusting to the UK after so many years, but we're beginning to find our feet now, thanks to the wonderful assistance of family and friends around us.

Whatever happens, life goes on. As this is an art blog I'll speak no more on the subject of my grief, our circumstances etc. They really deserve a blog of their own... if I only had the time!

Once again, thank you everyone.

New year, new life

2008-01-01T07:42:00.000Z

2007 was a hell of a year. I can confidently say the most unforgetable year of my life. I wasn't going to spell everything out in the blog, but hell with it, here we go. You'll understand why there have not been any blog entries lately shortly. Read on.

The first six months were full of hope and promise. Work was looking good, in February I was in New York for the SCBWI Conference and had a very promising reception from American publishers. This was followed by successful workshop tours to Manila in May, and Mongolia in June. Things were cooking. My wife Makiko moved into higher echelons of responsibility within her company, and was entering her stride as a manager. These things alone would have made it a memorable year.

But then my mother in the UK suddenly died in August from food poisoning. Soon after, my darling wife Makiko, my idol, died tragically in November at just 31 years old. Two of the most important women in my life were taken from me in the space of just three months. All I have left now is my 4 year old daughter Seren. After my wife's passing my former in-laws however attempted to abduct Seren, obliging the two of us to suddenly drop everything and leave Japan at short notice in December.

There is much much more on these events I could write about, but not today. The personal nature of the tragedy stays my hand.

The lives of Seren and myself have been irrevocably changed. We're no longer in Japan, my home for the last 21 years, and are instead about to re-settle into the UK. It's a bewildering reverse culture-shock after all this time. I'm now a single parent of a four year old, with no strong connections to this country and a freelance illustration business to somehow re-establish. It's not going to be easy.

And yet I have faith that with the dawn of a new year things will begin to look up for us, it's best to be philosophical about our position. I've always been a fatalist, I can't help but believe that this series of great upheavals were somehow meant to be. Seren and I are now entering a new stage in our lives, with new challenges, but also new opportunities. Despite the uncertainty of our future, our spirits are unbroken. With the support and generosity of wonderful friends and my family we've been able to remain strong. Battered by the seemingly unending series of traumas yes, but we are intact.

I've no idea what 2008 has in store for us, but things will move on for the better. With the new year a certain weight has been lifted. The nightmare of 2007 is over and good riddance. Roll on 2008, year of hope and fresh beginning.

No Tricks, but a Treat for Halloween

2007-10-29T05:33:00.000Z

This image is so old I'm quite embarassed to post it, a portfolio piece right from the beginning of my career when I was fresh out of college. Nevertheless it seems to fit the occasion, and has never been seen before in public, so there's the treat!

Happy Halloween!

Exhibition piece - "Hope"

2007-10-12T07:42:00.000+01:00

This was submitted to a charity exhibition for victims of the war in Iraq.

Monday morning sketch

2007-10-01T05:48:00.000+01:00

Is this someone I've met? I'm not altogether sure. The memory can play funny tricks on you.

today's doodle

2007-09-30T08:16:00.000+01:00

on your bike.

couple of figures

2007-09-28T17:31:00.000+01:00

Things are getting seriously busy now as deadlines approach, so in the absence of words here are some more sketchbook grabs to amuse.

Digging up old work (an occasional slot)

2007-09-22T07:08:00.000+01:00

I've been rummaging through some of my old work looking for material to show my agent. Often I end up getting distracted by the pieces that I turn up and forget what I was looking for in the first place.

This is one example, an exhibition piece from several years ago which I've always had a soft spot for. The tree was actually in my local park, I did an on-the-spot sketch and developed it into this illustration.

Tea Pot Torment

2007-09-19T01:47:00.001+01:00

Why can't you find as decent western tea pot in Japan (or suburban Yokohama to be more specific)? Could this be a rant coming on? Yes it is.

So the story's this. My old tea pot broke it's spout in the dishwasher, so the missus and I set out to buy a new one. Off we marched to new town shopping mall paradise "Center Kita" with our hopes high.

Center Kita - the very name ("Center North") conjures up images of modern Japanese blandness. Twenty years ago it was nothing but rice paddies, now it's the home to not one, but three air-conditioned mega indoor malls, and all of them are filled with the same old chain-shops you'll find everywhere else around the city - Starbucks, Gap, Sanrio, Orange House, etc etc. Together with the next station down the line (the equally imaginatively named Center Minami (you guessed it - "Center South"), where there's yet another big duplicate shopping mall, the area is a stark example of the Japanese fixation on shopping. For there is utterly nothing else to do there, outside the malls the land is a windswept concrete nightmare of train lines, dual carriageways and stark apartment blocks. I dread to think what would happen to the area if people stopped shopping, it's a disaster waiting to happen.

Anyway, back to story. I'm looking for a large, 4 to 6 cup traditional teapot, but can we find one? No. In all these vast palaces of retail overindulgence there's not one shop that sells a good sized, well designed teapot. What do I mean exactly by "well designed"? This:

Yes we found teapots - we found square ones and we found triangular ones. We found glass ones and aluminium ones. Pots without steam holes, pots with big fat bases that will render the contents cold within minutes. Maybe fine for sticking flowers in, but useless for making tea. I found one teapot which had the shop/company logo emblazoned all over it, but I will not have my kitchen turned into free advertising space for some chain conglomerate company. Most frustratingly we actually found a lot of good miniature teapots - good for two cups, but nothing bigger. And that's where the crunch of realization finally hit me.

Shops don't sell larger teapots than two cups because, according to the rules of fashion, black tea is something for trendy housewives to occasionally sip with a girlfriend, consumption is not the cultural cornerstone multi-cup guzzling of your average Brit.

For all Japan's obsession with accumulating things foreign, western lifestyles are a different thing. Tea-drinking culture in Japan is focused on green tea, not black. These department-store malls are selling not only products, but also lifestyles, but these lifestyles are still only transient fashions, largely targeted at young women. It's easy for a Westerner to be misled into thinking that because all the shops are corporate chains or outlets filled with trendy international goods, that consumers themselves are becoming more "international". Even after twenty years in this country I still fall for it. But the truth is that for the average consumer (and these malls are all focused entirely on Mr and Mrs Average), it's all just shallow fashion. For the Shelley's, as an authentic quirky international family, if we want to find items to match our lifestyle we need to go shopping in quirky international towns, but they have become a great rarity in Japan now, squeezed out or transformed into these souless money-spinning malls.

So why can't I find a decent western tea pot in Japan? Because, despite the appearances of the shopping malls, this is still very much the East!

More machinery

2007-09-17T02:09:00.000+01:00

Something else from the sketchbook. I find the more constraining the environment around me, (concrete jungle, crowds of people etc) the more I escape into fantasy.

Machines

2007-09-12T14:02:00.000+01:00

It's not only faces I've been doodling during those increasingly rare occasions I get a seat on the train into Tokyo. One day these doodles might develop into a finished product, then again they might not. I don't really think about where I can take them too much, it's where the drawings take me that's more important. It's just good to scribble away without any agenda other than enjoying myself.

...and more faces

2007-09-11T01:30:00.000+01:00

Let me know if there's anyone here you recognise!

More Faces

2007-09-09T15:44:00.001+01:00

Here's another page of rambling pen lines from my pocket sketchbook.

Sketchbook doodles

2007-09-08T03:20:00.000+01:00

Recently I've been doodling faces a lot in my little note sketchbook, here's one page. All straight from the imagination, not so much observations of people around me. I regard it as a kind of imaginative work-out - free doodling without the pressures of meeting a brief. It's not for any specific project, though I'm actually preparing to begin work on the fifth Charlie Bone novel later in the autumn, so maybe some of these doodles will eventually appear in some form or other in the pages of the book.

Family Photos

2007-09-06T01:59:00.000+01:00

Okey, this is definitely the last post on my family, the howling wolves of deadlines are baying at the door, henceforth I'll be focused on the present and the tasks in hand.

However I just wanted to show what a wonderful tool Photoshop can be for retouching. As various older members of the family have passed on my father's house has become a repository for a growing collection of old family photos, some of them in very poor condition. So I've been scanning them in and doing what I can to make some of the more important shots more presentable. It's amazing what can be done:

Anne Hern (born 1850) - original scan of a very faded photograph before retouching.

Anne Hern after painstaking cleaning up and judicious use of Photoshop's light/shadow & saturation tools.

The Shelley family around 1932, my father is the toddler propped on the back of the bike. Original scan with nasty creases.

The same image after careful retouching with Photoshop's clone tool.

In such a way have I been avoiding work and thinking of my family. I've a lot of pictures of my mother's family too, but since she's now gone there's plenty of time to work on those. But its back to work now! As my forever practical wife says, I should worry more about providing for those still around me than those who are no longer with us!

Heritage

2007-09-06T01:33:00.000+01:00

I've been researching my family history for some time now. A couple of years ago my dad had reached a blank on tracing his grandfather, and asked me to see what I could find on the Net. For a history nut like me this was an invitation to open a door into the past - I was instantly hooked.

Since then I've not only traced my great grandfather, but his father in turn and generations before that. I've traced the Shelley line back to 1715 to the small village of Broadwell in Oxfordshire, which last year we visited when I was back in the UK. The biggest revelation was that the family name was originally Shayler, and was mysteriously changed to Shelley in the 1850's, so I've no connections to the poet or the miniature painter Shelley unfortunately. One of the other families in my tree, the Herns, I've traced back to the 17th Century. I've been lucky in that many of the names in my father's line are quite regionally localised, although other families with more common names I've been less successful with. Notably my mother's family in Wales have been difficult to trace beyond the 19th Century as Welsh names are all very similar, the records are just not clear enough. There are just too many Williams, James, Edwards and Davies.

But I live in hope. Now that my mother is gone I have almost no-one of that generation to refer to for information on the family, so the buck pretty well stops here. The research I've garnered is for future generations to preserve, if they so wish.

Of course this has absolutely nothing to do with art, other than a search for some sign of where my meager creative skills descend from. So far the strongest contender for an artistic heritage is my paternal grandmother's family, the Griffins, my great grandfather worked in a Birmingham engraver's office in the 19th century.

Thwarted Summer Greeting

2007-09-04T15:29:00.000+01:00

Here's an image I drew some time ago to celebrate the publication of Crockett Johnson's Magic Beach by Front Street in the US. I was invited to submit an homage illustration which would be posted with others on their website. I created it in an afternoon and emailed it over, but for some reason they never received the image, a fact which was overlooked until it was far too late.

Oh well! Had things worked out differently this summer, I'd intended to print it up as postcards and send it to publishers across the continents, but family circumstances intervened. I was hardly in a seasonal celebratory mood either of course. It seems this illustration is doomed forever to be hidden to the public. Well, not if I can help it, at least I can post it here on my blog!

Moving on

2007-09-04T15:03:00.000+01:00

I've found the best way to cope with family loss is to concentrate on work, although I can't say I'm being particularly efficient at the moment. It's been a month since my mother's passing, and it's in frequent quiet moments that small details bring her memory sharply into mind, enough to make me stop whatever I'm doing. More particularly I worry about my father, alone now after 55 years of marriage. It's difficult to get enthusiastic about much around me in Yokohama, because I feel my right place is in the UK with him, rather than here the other side of the world. It's silly really, as Japan has been my home for 20 years, my career and family are rooted here. Nevertheless rather than pushing on with deadlines, I've been researching family history and doing other things that help me to place our lives into focus. These are the things that occupy my thoughts a lot of the time.

Though it may be hard to feel very creative right now, I've a lot of work to catch up with after three unscheduled weeks in the UK. Chief task is a 24 page picture book with November deadline for a Japanese publisher. I promise myself once I get stuck into it I'll be fine, but overcoming the first hurdles is not easy!

Funeral speech

2007-08-27T01:44:00.000+01:00

We were offered a few short minutes to deliver some words during the funeral so I put together and presented this.

Our dearest Gwen

As we say our farewells
we remember the love and the selfless devotion you showed to your family and to your friends.

As a mother you've were an inspiration, a shining light of guidance,
who encouraged your children to pursue their dreams and aspirations.
As a companion and friend you were a comfort, with an openhearted enthusiasm for life, and generosity of spirit.

Gwen, ever prepared with a word of sage common sense.
Gwen, the socialite, an astute judge of character, for whom the warmth and companionship of those around meant everything.
Slow to anger, quick to empathize, your loyalty and compassion reached out to friends and family alike.
Gwen, bursting with spirit, sometimes eccentric, sometimes even scatterbrained
we loved you for it all.

You were a rock of support to all who have known you, the anchor of our family.
As you begin a new journey, the legacy of your life remains through your children and grandchildren, a precious legacy that will be preserved in our memories.

Spiritually you were always by the side of your loved ones no matter what. And still you remain by our sides now.

Thank you Gwen, for your grace. Thank you for your understanding, and for your insight.

Above all, thank you for your love.