The Hermitage

The Perfumier's Clock

2008-07-25T12:19:00.012+01:00

THE SECOND ever Once Upon O'Clock is now ticking its way over the ocean to Perfumier Nicole of Little Flowers.
She asked me to paint a wise woman, a brewer of magic, a young witch rather than an old crone, and one with whom she could identify whilst stirring her own fragrant artisan skincare brews.
I am very pleased with this second clock, I like the warm colours that put me in mind of distilling petals and sunlight through bottles of who-knows-what along a windowsill.
This perfumier is stirring her brew as time turns around her cauldron... she is stirring time.

I have now begun an official List of custom clock orders. I am receiving such delicious requests for imagery that delights me, and I am having fun trying to keep some circular motif within each design to go behind the hands. A few more logs have been brought indoors in preparation for clocks to come and Tui has the arm-aching task of sawing clock-slices from the logs.
The next piece of wood is cut and sanded and almost ready to be painted on... it is for a fencer (of the sword variety, nothing to do with edges of gardens) and I shall be beginning work on it after a little picture-selling jaunt into the north of England, dodging rainclouds, and parking overnight in the forest.
Cheerio for now ... tick tock.

The people on the streets

2008-07-22T12:50:00.012+01:00

OUTCASTS and strange folk are fascinating to me ... as I say in my website porch, they are most welcome in my world, and indeed they people my paintings more than do any others.
As you may have read before, our living is made by selling our work from town to town, setting up a temporary display on the street, selling pictures to passers by and then moving on. This is the most exhilaratingly precarious way to make a living, where earnings are dependent on such see-sawing variables as the weather, people's whims and wallets, vehicular compliance, police and council officials' good will & finding a Good Spot...
Recently we have been hiding in the hills more than usual due to unending rain, truck preparations and repairs, and paintings to do.. nevertheless, we have to go and sell when we run out of money and grab any chink of sun that we can. Often this might mean a small trip to our nearest big town - Glasgow, which for the last two weekends has been the case (yesterday being a true escapade of frazzling exhaustion, ending in us randomly not being allowed on the tube due to our baggage and "health and safety reasons".)

In this country, selling our work like this is not exactly legal; it is impossible to get a license for street trading in the way we do it. Most towns have a handful of licenses available and these have been bought up for years ahead by locals who turn up every Saturday with a tacky display of cheap football shirts and mobile phone accessories, and this is not quite what we're after anyhow, as we sell in many towns. The only alternative is a pedlar's license (bought from the police) which "officially" covers you for peddling door to door or selling on a mobile trolley sort of affair that you move every 15 minutes down the street.

The term “pedlar” means any hawker, pedlar, petty chapman, tinker, caster of metals, mender of chairs, or other person who, without any horse or other beast bearing or drawing burden, travels and trades on foot and goes from town to town or to other men’s houses, carrying to sell or exposing for sale any goods, wares, or merchandise, or procuring orders for goods, wares, or merchandise immediately to be delivered, or selling or offering for sale his skill in handicraft;
~ Interpretation of the term "pedlar" from the Pedlars Act 1871

Luckily we get away with it most of the time, and if we are approached by police on their rounds/suited council officials on their lunch break who decide to invoke the law, often a pleasant conversation about how we do what we do, try our best not to bother anyone, and how we'd buy a country-wide license if one existed appeals to their humanity and they turn a blind eye. Not so always however. There are people in the world who take pleasure in speaking to us as if we are a piece of dirt on their shoe, making assumptions before even trying to have a conversation with us. If these people are the ones asking us to move and happen to have a uniform on, then we have to move, even if the day was going well and the sun was shining. On the whole though, the police are fine.
Plenty of contradictions are thrown in our laps too... over the road we see a beggar preparing for his days' work: positioning his polystyrene cup in front of his feet, donning a suitably grubby t-shirt, pulling it forlornly over his knees, and bowing his head, ready to invoke peoples' pity and in so doing earning often more than a street musician. This is not illegal. The police can move us for selling pictures that we've made ourselves, but they can't move him. In other towns we are approached regularly by people with cameras and microphones... they are making a film about the vibrancy of the street entertainment in the town and could they interview us.

On top of all this, we have to deal with the colourful circus of humanity that lurches past us while we sit there quietly selling our pictures. Despite the fact that we tend towards the shy and certainly never shout "roll up, roll up".. we are called upon by the street to rub shoulders with what, I am certain, must be the strangest, most challenging and disconcerting folk ever to walk the planet.This phenomenon never fails to amaze us and cause us to shake our heads in disbelief.

In the early morning we have to battle with our trolley of wares and armfuls of pictures up and down public transport steps to beat all the other street performers to our Good Spot (a wall where we can lean our pictures that isn't in front of a shop).

Once there and set up, and before many people are even about, we will have met at least two teetering bedraggled drunks who can barely speak and decide that we are the most interesting folk to talk earnest jibberish to, three inches from our faces, even though they can't remember who they are or where they live. The day continues like this ... there are the regular hoo-haas between buskers loud and quiet, talented and dreadful /balloon modelers /Big Issue sellers /street performers /left-wing campaign groups with leaflets and tables and stiff expressions /religious fanatics with microphones and billboards of sin and damnation /annoyingly bouncy "chuggers" (charity muggers) with studenty haircuts who block people's path and bully them emotionally into giving.

In between meeting lovely interested kind people who look at or buy pictures or just pass with a smile, we have to parry the metaphorical blows of a stream of nutters: abusive track-suited teens on low bikes who, laughing, pretend to ride over our pictures and tell us to cut our hair; lonely old men with obsessive interests in cameras and large bellies who engage us in inescapable conversation for aeons; costumed genuflecting weirdos with quotations tattooed on their arms who use the word "betwixt" in ordinary conversation; hollow-eyed heroin addicts who want money for the train; tottering abrasive plastic women/judgmental fat lawyers talking on mobile phones who stand almost on top of of our display and on being asked kindly to move a little say things like "he wants us to move" or "You dare to ask me to move? You're scum"; guitar strumming buskers with dogs that howl to the harmonica who chat at us vaguely; red-faced old scots who shout - "Are you English?! What are you doing here?!"; bearded and alcoholic old men with no homes who dance in joyful oblivion to the street musicians playing and who are not the tiniest bit aware of the crowd of shoppers who have stopped to hold up mobile phones, to laugh and ridicule and video him ...

All of these sad, funny, upsetting and unbelievable anecdotes are true to the letter and have happened to us on the streets of the UK. I may sound like a ranting hermit, but days like yesterday make you marvel and despair at the people in the world, and want to scuttle off to the forest. However, I have always found these interactions fascinating, and it makes a happy encounter with a friendly, unusual or interesting person all the more appreciated. I love the beautiful colourfulness of life, but there are some horrors out there too. Being on the street and exposing yourself to that thing which we call people is a brave eyeopener and a journey and a half for a hermit.

Sometimes when we sit waiting for a sale (which can be a long wait on a bad day and a fleeting minute on a good day), I play the accordion to pass the time and gather a few pennies, or I draw.
There above (click for a larger view) is a collection of a few sketches that I have made whilst sitting amidst the uproariousness of the street, they are almost always portraits of people in my head (although once, in Canterbury, an exact incarnation of my just finished drawing walked past! ~ the old plaited lady, bottom left).

They are odd folk, outcasts, people with wonky eyes ... the people I welcome into my world, and, I suppose, they are the medieval marketplace of folk going by. Maybe I romanticize them ... for in amongst it all, these people are raw and not always pleasant. But for all that, my eyes always will be drawn to the ones who are sitting on the edges of things.

Long walks and rainclouds

2008-07-18T21:21:00.011+01:00

THIS DAMP hanging curtain of cloud has been sitting knitting raindrops over these hills for weeks now, and everything is dripping.
Tui has been fighting a battle with sneaky little leaks in the wooden body of the truck. When it rains heavily, deft little raindrops find their way through 30-year-old screw holes and down the sides of windows and he chases them out again with good old silicone sealant.
Yesterday we drove off up and down a few hills to a Town to buy some groceries and passed a cheerful looking lady in suitable rain gear pulling behind her what can only be described as a tent on wheels. On the side of it were the words "Rosie's World Run" and we waved at her because she looked interesting, and she waved back. And we waved again when we passed her on the way back. On further investigation it turns out that she is walking round the world on a very low budget in the spirit of seizing the day. She is 61 years old or thereabouts and has passed through such chilly places as Siberia and Alaska before trundling through our misty hills. You can read and see more here.

I am busying away like a ticking bee on the clocks... and am chuffed indeed at the enthusiastic response from folk. I think I have settled on a price for now - £90 for a random Rima-clock that pops up in the shop, and £150 for a commission/custom order. How does that sound? I have a fair old little queue of orders at present so it may be a while before any random clocks pop into the shop!

In the meantime while you're all twiddling your thumbs, I'll tell you that I have a nice little nest of small prints for sale in my shop now.. they measure 7 inches by 5 inches ... if you have any little empty picture frames that need their bellies filling.

Flies & time

2008-07-16T17:32:00.013+01:00

THIS MORNING on tottering downstairs towards the morning cup of tea, I found a drowning fly flapping for his upside-down little life in the dregs of last night's hot chocolate cup. So I scooped him out on a fingertip and sat with him on my hand for some time watching his perfect little fly-drying routine. He would wipe his big little eyes with his front legs like a cat over and over again, and then swap to his back legs which he hooked over his wings to wipe off the tiny remnants of chocolate, scraping them slowly over and under each wing... and then he'd flutter a little and begin all over again. Here he is sitting atop the gnarled mountain rage that is in fact my knuckles under a macro lens!

Outside the wind and cold rain showers are unrelenting and we keep peeping out the door to see if the sun might allow us to trundle off and sell our pictures any time soon.
Meanwhile the second clock has begun! I was jumping about the kitchen the morning the first clock sold (it is happily winging its way now to new owner Tara). Thank you everyone for such a wonderful, encouraging response to this new venture, and for all your thoughtful words on the matter of pricing. I am still feeling my way, but it seems the general consensus is that I could eke my prices up a smidgen. I have received a number of custom orders for clocks too so I think that I have settled upon having two prices, one for the clocks I make and just put in the shop, and the other (slightly higher) for custom orders. I still want these to be affordable, so the prices will be both not ridiculous for the buyers and not ridiculous for me.
Here's a sneak preview of the second clock, which is green where the first one was red, and is a custom order for a perfumier!

And while I paint, we repeatedly check on the BBC weather like anxious mothers or perfectionist chefs, and our lovely Bedford sits there waiting patiently to be taken on an adventure...

Once Upon O'Clock

2008-07-10T16:44:00.022+01:00

GOOD DAY to you all! I would like to proudly announce my newest venture, one which I have had planned for years but not quite got round to until now... I am becoming a clockmaker!
As you know I have a delight in Heath Robinson-like contraptions, automata and all things that clink and clonk, I love to paint folk tales in medieval hues, and make things from wood. So I thought to combine all these things into Once Upon O'Clock, my laboratory of creaking and ticking and a place where you can buy my original paintings with a twist.

My first toe-dip into the horological workshop was a few years ago when I made this clock on the left as a gift for my parents. These new once upon o'clocks are made from slices of wood from a tree down the way that has been logs for some time, logs that are a perfect round clock size.

The wood, once cut, was sanded and the bark left on. Then the hole for the spindle was drilled, off centre to match the rings of the tree. The "Old Mother Time" painting is inspired by the many world myths of the fates spinning the threads of our lives and of time and the familiar old woman of fairytale who spins.

I liked the idea that the hands of the clock would turn around her spinning wheel, and I have spent time making the surface of the paint look aged and worn and the cracks in the wood into a feature. I hope that these clocks will be unique and unusual treasures, useful and beautiful, strange and old, ticking away once upon o'tales on your walls ...

To celebrate my new creations, I have been busy making a ticking tocking website-with-cogs where you can spend time in this once upon o'clock world. Tui has made the most amazing music for the site out of recordings of clocks and treadle sewing machines, bells and scuffles, as only he knows how. I think the sounds add a whole new dimension to the page and make wandering off into the imagination of this wonky contraption of a place quite unavoidable.
I invite you all to go and have a look ... it will grow as I make more clocks, there's even a rhyme. And don't forget to turn your speakers up!

www.onceuponoclock.com

Pricing of works is always a dilemma and a half for me... Artists who make their main living from their art, as I do, have to charge prices that reflect the time and costs involved in the making of a piece; this, after all, is a wage. But it is an ever present problem that if you price a work that has taken you two weeks for example at an amount even half another person's average fortnightly wage, they fall backwards in horror, mutter "um thanks anyway" and scuttle off never to be heard of again!
So what's the answer? Either to undercharge dramatically, subcontract your work to a factory in China, or fill your living room with wonderful never-seen artworks.

With this problem in mind, neverending drizzle outside the windows, and a cavernously echoing piggybank, I have decided to try to make these clocks at affordable prices, because I want people to buy them. The idea is to make a one-off original painting in oils on wood which I would normally charge several hundred pounds for and turn it into a useful object: a clock, a unique creation that will never be made again and charge just sixty pounds - one pound for every minute!
I hope that each one I make might sell and then I will make another. This one took me four days. I would really like to hear your views on whether you think this is too much, too little, affordable, silly, cheap or otherwise. Would you buy one? Why/Why not?

Here is the new Once upon O'Clock Etsy Shop where I hope these clocks will flit in and out in a tick and a tock ... first come first served!

To begin this little story:
It was once upon o’clock
When a jumping jackanory
Called to his ticking flock:

“Come and spin a yarn with me
Around this loom of time,
And I’ll tell you horologically
Of the spinning wheel of rhyme.”

*********************************************************

PostScript: It has sold already!! Hooray and thank you! And a custom order is being planned too!

Wildflowers & windows

2008-07-04T11:38:00.009+01:00

WELL WELL, the sun has visited us for a brief glimpse and so we grabbed the chance to hang out washing, walk a little and cut holes in the side of the truck!
Summer here is in full wild bloom. Everywhere there are yellow buttercupped fields, white cow-parsley'd waysides, and the tall gentle warm-whispering mauve grasses are hiding all manner of little flowers and scuttling things.
That orange flower down there on the left is growing by a curling stone that sits at our front door. Back in the days when the winters here were more wintry, the villagers would go up to the frozen reservoir and whizz these stones across the ice.

I have never seen so many buttercups in one place. Do you remember holding them under your chin as a child to see if your skin glowed yellow telling that you liked butter?
I've just weaseled out some other little superstitions surrounding buttercups ...

The common name 'buttercup' was derived from the yellow color of the flower. It was also believed that the richness of butter's yellow color was the result of the number of buttercups in the pasture; however, this was only a myth since tall buttercup is so bitter that cattle avoid eating it.

According to superstition, holding a tall buttercup flower against one's neck on the night of a full moon, or simply smelling the flower, causes insanity, hence the folk name 'crazyweed'.

Flowers tend to track the daily movement of the sun in the sky.

Beggars used to blister their skin purposefully with buttercup juice to arouse the sympathy of passersby.

Fishermen of the 1800's poured buttercup tea on the ground to bring worms to the surface.

Tui took me on a wee short-sleeved walk around behind the village to where he'd been busying away on the latest and excitingest addition to our wheeled home: The Kitchen Window!

And now the starter motor is fixed, we can think about venturing out.
I'm still hard at work on my new secret creation ... all will be revealed soon.
Wishing you all a happy sunny buttercupped weekend.

Rain, rain & little bits of news

2008-07-02T13:48:00.009+01:00

BEYOND THE WINDOWPANES the rain falls and falls and the skies are neverendingly leaden. Indoors I am busying away on a new and exciting little idea, which I shall be telling soon. And we wait and wait for news that the broken Bedford starter motor has been fixed, until then we are stranded in the hills eating baked beans on ryvita! In the mean time I am happy to announce that little bits of my work can be glimpsed in various corners ...

Firstly, I am taking part in the fabulous PikaPackage Project, organised beautifully by Amy of Pikaland who has made it her mission to celebrate all things illustrated. A PikaPackage is a monthly collection of collections of illustrated things donated by illustrators from far and wide, all put together carefully with a lovely little Pikaland magazine featuring the participants and their work. Soon you'll be able to get your hands on these July editions here. And see my humble little contribution here.

Secondly, I am happy to announce that my first ever animation The Woods for Polly Paulusma's single on One Little Indian records in 2007 is to be shown at the Hebden Bridge Fringe Festival on this Saturday the 5th of July in the evening. Here are the exact details if any of you are in the vicinity and should like to pop along, which we would have been doing had the starter motor not abandoned us. For those of you too far afield to visit the film festival, and who haven't seen the animation, here it is again, only very small!

If you are having trouble viewing the film, click here.

Inspirations, Illustrations, Imaginations

2008-06-28T14:30:00.013+01:00

I THOUGHT IT TIME to pass on a few threads of inspirations that I have received from other lovely people hiding in the hills of blogland. As I have mentioned before, I'm not a keen passer-oner of "awards" and things like I'm s'posed to. But I do appreciate those given to me and in turn, I will from time to time show you some lovely things I've found on my web burrowings.
Morna, Erica, Ciara, Jo, Lindsay and Terry have all been so kind as to give me little blog awards recently, and so today I wanted to show you some artists and their illustrations that have made me smile and feel inwardly connected to them.

A little while ago Victoria Usova contacted me to ask if I fancied doing an illustration swap, which I hardly ever do.. but this time, I felt something warm and familiar in her illustrations, and so after much trouble choosing, decided that I would like this Foxy Fox watercolour original on the left to come and live with me, in return for my Button Mouse travelling over the sea to New York. Victoria is a Ukraine-born New Yorker and said of my work that "your painted world seems close to mine, but more in the evening or nighttime. Perhaps we travel to similar locations just during different times of the day." I liked that.
She has a "Chest of Fairytales" etsy shop here and flickr page here where you can see her enchanting works. For me they have a playful sunniness and very distinct Russian flavour which is delightful. This Foxy Fox will be framed and enjoyed on the wall of our truck.

Next I wanted to show you the wonderful otherworldly paintings of Yoko Tanaka. She paints a muted Other world peopled by strange beasts, surreal objects and melancholy tales. Yoko was born in Japan but moves from country to country, having been educated in the US and living at present in Thailand where buffaloes stroll around the house and cranes fly over the nearby Mosque's call to prayer. On the right is her painting Remnant. Do take a while to wander her world, which I feel very drawn to, here.

Thirdly, another Japanese illustrator, Yuko Michishita, who is currently studying in the UK. The inspiration for her fine pencil drawings dwells in an interest in folklore and nomadic ways of life and she says of her work that she has always loved "meticulous patterns of Asian traditional costumes, shades and shapes of trees, furry animals and human faces that look slightly like fish", and is greatly influenced by these likings. This illustration to the left, Apples Be Ripe makes me smile no end ... and includes lovely wonkyness, detail, colour and lettering. Do have a look at her work here.

And lastly but not leastly, Oliver Hunter, a young Australian artist whose work I have known of for a little while through Endicott Studios. His imaginative, surreal and strange mythic world gives away his obsessive and cerebral imaginations and love of tale and spirit. I find his creations extremely evocative, and a little influenced by the character of the world conjured in Terri Windling's book The Wood Wife. On the right is his painting After the Hunt. Those of you who are aware of Goblin Fruit, a relatively new online mythic poetry magazine, will have seen his work there. He also has a little "Cupfull of Oliver" website here, and there's a fascinating write up about his work, background and inspirations here at Endicott.

Thank you to all those people who have sent me words of encouragement and told me that my work makes them feel familiar strange things ... these kind nods lift my fragile self confidence enough to keep me creating. And thank you to these artists whose works make me feel these familiar strange things too.

A seafaring door

2008-06-25T17:09:00.008+01:00

THERE ONCE was an ordinary door
With dreams of seeing the shore;
A porthole came by
And said "I'll be your eye,
Through me you'll see seagulls soar!"

This is one of the busynesses I have been up to lately (apart from writing silly limericks)... click on the picture for a larger version.
It'll be the front door at the back of our wheeled home when we've removed the tailgate.
All we need now are some nice hinges and handles and suchlike... do you think it'd be silly to have a letterbox too?

The Visitors

2008-06-21T10:14:00.006+01:00

SEVEN STRANGE folk have arrived at an odd little chicken-roofed house hanging in the branches of the forest, all clutching baskets for the tiny old lady. And what's in them nobody knows ...

The Visitors is my new painting for the front cover of the lovely new fairytale magazine Les Bonnes Fees. And each basket will take you to a different section of the current issue... The magazine boasts a fabulous collection of fairytale fiction and poetry and articles on such things as hair and spinning.
This way to begin your wander.
They have also kindly done a wee interview with me too, which you can read here.

And for those who feel inclined, The Visitors can be carried off in a basket from my shop here.

Lost Things

2008-06-19T13:46:00.008+01:00

THE GREY LIGHT of a shivering Scottish June day is trying its best to make its way through our deep set windows and cheer the house as best it can. There's a faint flappity-whapping sound outside of coloured bunting strung up for a village gala, and I am indoors with a hot water bottle and the warm feeling of a just-finished-book.
This book is one that called to me from the bookshop shelf with its thorn-silhouette cover and a quote by Picasso that I had coincidentally just recently painted:

"Everything you can imagine is real..."

The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly is a delicious delve into the world of fairytale, imagination and books. It is the story of David, a quiet boy who is trying to come to terms with the death of his mother, and the new family that takes her place. He retreats into a semi trance-like world of his own creation peopled by crooked men, knights and beasts, enchantresses, wolves and worse-than-wolves. Written like all good tales, there's a quest and all sorts of encounters along the way. I was particularly delighted by the more gruesome aspects of the story, where Connolly has drawn upon pre-sanitized versions of fairy tales for his inspiration. Particularly dreadful was a huntress who made child-animal hybrids so that they would be more challenging and swifter hunting quarry, and The Crooked Man who is an incarnation of Rumplestitskin and who makes terrible bargains with children before plucking out their hearts and eating them, and then storing their souls in a jar on a shelf in his lair in order for him to remain alive.
Included at the end of the book is an excellent collection of notes by the author on the various fairy tales that were woven into his, and on the meanings behind them.

The dedication at the beginning concludes:

"For in every adult dwells the child that was
and in every child waits the adult that will be"

Today, too, there is another lost thing: my painting Soup & Pipe is winging its way to a new owner far across the seas and I am a little sad to see it go. It was painted last year on a lovely slice of wood found in a jumble sale, and these two bent old friends might be Tui and I holding hands by a log fire one long-away day...

Orla Wren Films

2008-06-15T14:58:00.017+01:00

ORLA WREN as you may or may not know is the name of the beautiful music that Tui makes.
Indeed, his second album, The One Two Bird And The Half Horse, the making of which took him through two years, around tender sounds, over hoorays and in and out of sorrows, is now complete and ready to whisper into ears far and near, and an astonishingly beautifully crafted creation it is. I am full of admiration for this work that I have seen in its birthing, and I will write more about this one day soon when this music is available to be heard, and glad the world's ears will be then.

In the meantime... we are making films for the music. My cut-out wonky-handmade stop-frame animation will be for one track - The Fish & The Doll, and it is emerging slowly up in the animation attic day by day. Another film is just about ready, made by Tui for the last track The First Born Daughter of Water from little pieces of film from my childhood.

Here you can see some tiny snippets of stills from the first scenes of the animation and stills from Tui's film where layers of inklings of glimpses of my younger days are merged delicately to compliment the music.

We would like to ask if any folks out there might have some old footage that they would be happy to send us to be used in a similar way. A unique collection of hints of people's stories would be woven together to make a wonderful film or two to go hand in hand with this music. Please drop a word to orlawren@gmail.com if you can help. Thanks muchly.

The Concertina Eggcup Song

2008-06-12T21:32:00.006+01:00

A BROTHER for the Button Mouse, sitting in an eggcup, playing the concertina ... and why not indeed!

The Concertina Eggcup Song
... balancing deftly here in the shop.

A barrel stove day

2008-06-10T16:27:00.011+01:00

OUR WHEELED HOME is growing bit by little bit into itself. While I sit at home in the animation attic moving little bits of paper and making paintings in between, Tui spends his days down in the sun and wind and horsebox, sanding and sawing and hammering and building and making a home.
Since the acquisition of this Bedford, we have been collecting some lovely ebay finds for it, including the recently fitted round window, a copper kettle, a little belfast sink, some lovely old leaded windows from a demolished chapel in Wales, and a brand new barrel stove!
So yesterday was spent admiring Tui's lovely new door and "seasoning" the new stove outdoors with a little fire made from the offcuts of wood.
It is lovely to finally have this vital ingredient, every home needs a fire! You may notice that we have no chimney yet... we need to put down the floorboards before we know the length of stovepipe needed.
This is a long slow process, and expensive... each time we make a little money, it goes on wood and screws and silicone sealant and sandpaper. But bit by bit, it is feeling more and more like ours. We've developed a little rather old-fashioned routine where midmorning I bring a pot of coffee and two cups down to the spot where Tui is working and we sit on the tail gate discussing our mornings' works, and looking down the hill towards the stream where goats peck and chickens bleat.

PS .. the spiders have blown off!!

Also today, I was pleased to catch an interesting programme on Radio 4 about one of my favourite albums: Just Another Diamond Day by Vashti Bunyan, who made it whilst on a horse-drawn waggon journey to the outer Hebrides in the 60s before choosing to disappear into obscurity. For me her wobbly gentle songs and guitar tell lovely tales of a simpler life with a strange warmth that obviously comes straight from the feelings that went into making it.

Little Yellow Stowaways

2008-06-06T19:03:00.010+01:00

WHAT IS THIS strange yellow bundle clinging to the wheel-arch of our Bedford?

This Scottish June has brought us yellow all around.. yellow gorse along the roadsides, yellow buttercup-blanketed fields and these little yellow stowaways on our truck.
This silken nest of new scuttling spider babies is just one tiny corner of the arachnid population that has taken up residence in our home on wheels. In between fixing down floors and mending fuel tanks, Tui has had to wrestle with his spider terror every time one of these lodgers is disturbed by his screwdriver!
For some reason, spiders love our Bedford!

(click on that picture for a closer view!)

I leave you with a superstitious spider rhyme in German:

Spinne am Morgen
bringt Kummer und Sorgen
Spinne am Nachmittag
bringt Freude am dritten Tag
Spinne am Abend
erquickend und labend

(Translation:

Spider in the morning
brings grief and sorrow
Spider in the afternoon
brings joy on the third day
Spider in the evening
refreshes and nourishes)

Myths & Magazines

2008-06-01T12:54:00.007+01:00

I HAVE BEEN on the lookout lately for a good magazine. For me this is quite a difficult thing to find... It needs to have amongst its pages some or all of these things: well written stories, strange ephemera, book reviews, art that is not arty, old objects, interesting articles about interesting people, nicely designed pages, non-mainstream music, geekily obscure academia, lots of good photographs, enough reading to last a few weeks and delightful inspirational things that can be savoured! I have found some excellent contenders recently, which I would like to share with you.

Firstly, there is the wonderful Illustration Magazine, a quarterly publication of all things illustration-y: interviews with artists, book reviews, articles on historical illustration, book arts, and introductions to newcomers to the field. I was particularly excited about an interview with Wayne Anderson in this spring's issue, a very favourite illustrator of mine.

Next in line we have an intriguing magazine that has been around for some time I believe, and yet I had not until now discovered the treasury of visual delight within. Raw Vision magazine is a journal of outsider art, "art brut" and contemporary folk art, which is to say, art that has been made by those who on the whole do not consider themselves artists. Spring's issue contained strange woodcarvings, hand made gothic follies made from found materials, "devil houses" painted by a prisoner, drawings and paintings by outsiders and madmen and many many more visual wonders. It is a real find.

Lastly another new discovery: Cabinet Magazine. This one's hard to categorise.. a quarterly that covers art and culture but resides in some quirky corner. This issue boasts articles and images about such things as sloth, opals, victorian fitness machines, clockless time, snowflakes, nineteenth century female naturalists, and the mysteries of stones. And there you have it!

Online magazines are another beast altogether, and becoming increasingly popular. I was saddened indeed to read today of the closure of Endicott Studio's Journal of Mythic Arts. Written by Terri Windling and Midori Snyder, this magazine has been a real library of myth and magic to inspire tale-lovers and dreamers like me who had no place to sit and read like this before, and I would like to thank them for supporting my work amongst the other delights that graced Endicott's pages.
In their final farewell post, Terri and Midori pass the torch of online fairytale and folklore journaling to a host of wonderful places, which I look forward to exploring.

This brings me to introduce you to Les Bonnes Fees ~ a brand new fairytale and folklore magazine which will be launching in June with one of my paintings on the front cover.
And here it is in progress....

Rogier van der Weyden

2008-05-30T18:20:00.004+01:00

IT IS BUSY here, a house of paintings and cistern-leakings, album finishings and off-to-town sellings, so in the meantime I thought I'd leave you with a favourite piece from a favourite Netherlandish painting... the beautifully painted and beautifully sad close up of Mary's weeping face in Rogier van der Weyden's Deposition.
A happy weekend to you all ...

Witch Bottle

2008-05-23T13:44:00.017+01:00

OVER THE LAST few days this Witch Bottle will have been crossing some of your house thresholds. So I thought it time to introduce her, and tell you why her crossing your threshold might have been quite a horrifying thought had you been living centuries ago. She is painted with oils on burr walnut wood and the idea is based on an old English folk magic, evidence of which has come to light in the rebuilding and renovating of old buildings in recent years. The practice of making witch bottles dates back at least to the 15th century and is a form of apotropaic charm (i.e. one that wards off evil).

If someone believed that they were the victim of a witch's spell, they would take an old pot-bellied bottle, often made of blue or green glass, or a stoneware container known as a Bellarmine (named after the rather dreadful bearded face that decorated the side of these bottles, which reminded folk of Cardinal Robert Bellarmine who was a persecutor of protestants and labeled a demon), and fill it with various curious ingredients...
First the worried spell victim would drop in some bent iron nails or pins, then some of their own hair, and lastly their urine. Sometimes other items like thorns or pieces of wood, nail clippings, stones, bones, ash, menstrual blood, oil or coins were added to this. Then the bottle would be corked and buried in a significant place. Many witch bottles have been discovered underneath the hearth stone, hidden in walls or at the threshold of the house.

The idea behind this was that if a witch was sending her spirit to harm you, she would most likely try to enter your home through a doorway, chimney, or other entranceway. If there was a concoction made from your own bodily fluids in her way, she would turn her attentions on that, presuming it was you and get herself caught on the bent iron nails. It is thought that in the case of bellarmines, the frightening face on the side of the bottle would further ward off evil.
So if there appeared in the nearby vicinity someone with a dreadful sudden affliction or who experienced terrible pain whilst urinating, then it was likely to be the witch!

Archaeologists have found only four bottles still completely intact with evidence of urine and hair and all sorts of other delights within. In fact, these witch bottles were often thought to explode on the death of the witch, so perhaps these are cases where the charm did not work.
If you are interested in learning more about strange popular superstitions, dried cats, old shoes and other Things Hidden In Walls, there are some excellent articles here at Apotropaios, where you are invited to send details of any odd things found hidden in your walls and under doorsills.

My witch is currently hiding here under my etsy doorsill, waiting to tell you her tale.

Mum & Dad

2008-05-16T12:53:00.023+01:00

I WOULD like to tell you a little tale of my beginnings ... because I was brought into this world 28 years ago by two wonderful artists, who have passed very valuable things onto me. Not only do I have their eyes for looking at things and their art in my blood, I have seen through them that it is necessary and possible to make one's own work and a living at it. I know that I am lucky indeed to have a rich childhood treasure chest in my head to draw upon: of being surrounded by sculpture and art, of interesting places, of Bedford van travels across Europe, of strange bedtime stories, and of being a little different from everyone else.

My parents continue to make their art in their home, and have recently dipped their toes into this strange 21st century web world ... with a website, etsy shop and blog where you'll see delights indeed. To celebrate this, I thought I would show you some of their wonderful works and give you an idea of the inspiring household in which I grew up... with these creations on every windowsill, stair and shelf.

My parents met in the 1970s in the plaster room of City & Guilds of London Art School where my mum was studying sculpture and my dad teaching it...

My mum grew up in the wilds of New Zealand and finds much of her inspiration in memories of those hills and the nature there... She trained as a nurse before travelling through many countries to finally arrive in the UK to study sculpture, a discipline that was long bubbling in her, even as a child scraping clay from the riverbed to make forms... an example of this on the right, a young horse laying on its side, which she made when she was only 9.

My dad was born in South London 10 years before the second world war, and on being asked what he would like to do when he grew up, would answer: "either a fighter pilot, a priest or an artist!" This last choice seems to have endured all his life, with a particular focus on his love for woodcarving. He has made a great variety of works in stone, wood and clay over the years, making figures for churches, architectural stone carvings, lettering, and a great body of his own work, in varying styles.

I remember vividly the curls of wood on the floor of the workshop when I was small, and the smell of resin, and learned at a young age about the progression of a piece of art from its beginnings as a piece of wood, through many stages, agonies and hoorays to the final work.

From my mum amongst many many other things, I have inherited a sense of colour, design and form, and a fascination with people. My dad has passed on to me, amongst many many other things, a love of the medieval, words, wooden things and wonkiness.
And I know that I am privileged to have such masters of the field as critics and encouragers... and I would like to thank them for always inspiring me, for this art in my blood and for truly knowing me. I hope that I can create works as beautiful as these one day.
Please welcome them and spread the word of their masterpieces...

The images on the left are my dad's work and on the right, my mum's.