End of year Show - and the cycle continues

Well, there is no turning back. The die has been cast and no matter what happens between now and next week I need to finish off everything and hang my exhibition.

I have decided to take it very easy - I am not going to work myself up into a terrible lather over it. I will do what i can and throw our house open on that day and then what will be will be. If one person comes or one hundred it matters not a jot. I also am not going to bank on selling all my work. If it goes it goes. If it doesn't I am already planning to approach the Casa de la Cultura when we get to Spain and see can i not organise something at that end. It would be a bit longer obviously and I would not have to host it myself which would leave me freer.

So there. All my goals and ambitions for Norway have now been met - or at least they will be after next Sunday. I can't believe that our time here is nearly at an end. And now that it is of course I start to get sentimental. I am certain that I will be crying into my beer before we leave.

Still I am so looking forward to the warm sun on my back and not having to live through another dark nordic winter. The dark does get to you actually.

So, what have i been doing over the past couple of weeks? Well obviously I have been busy organising for the show. My 'secret' project has been posted, but shock horror! It has not yet arrived at its destination which causing me a bit of consternation at the moment. If it does not arrive tomorrow I will have to reprint everything and DHL it at great expense! I could scream. In fact I think I might have let out a little shriek!

I am trying to finish off two large paintings on canvas which I started months ago now, but obviously lost interest in and put down. To pick them up again is causing me great effort and I am not certain if I can do it. But I will put one foot in front of the other this week and see what I can do. I have enough work without them so am not worried. But I do hate loose ends.

Of course I am still working away at the Spanish - which moves along, probably better than I think. There are moments when I think it is all hopeless but then I look at what I have learned over the past three months and have to be a little bit proud of my achievement. Of course that does not always satisfy me. In my head I am already reading Spanish novels in their original language. I yearn for that moment. I want to be able to go to the art college and meet other artists and be able to discuss the ideas and methods of the moment with them. I want to be able to ask neighbours how they are and what their children are doing. I want to be able to ask about the past as well as the future and most important I want to understand what the people are saying to me! I know this last will be the hardest - I can already read some headlines in newspapers etc but trying to catch the meaning of what the Spanish say as they career along at breakneck speed is going to be my greatest challenge. Add to that local dialect and .... !!!!! You catch my drift. Sure, when I moved to Ireland first - even though i spoke English and the local people spoke English - i could not understand a word that was being spoken to me. It took me ages before the strange colloquialisms and accent started to make sense to me.

Aside from all those things life does go on. I cook and clean and go shopping for vegetables and lentils (I did tell you that we are economic vegetarians at the moment did I not!). I am also making plans and arrangements for our great move. And in short and tying up the loose threads over here.

In my (blood) family my cousin got married and my nephew too, my little girl is sitting exams and my boy is working toward a new album so things are happening for everyone, new beginnings all round. On Vic's side things are relatively quiet at the moment apart from several birthdays including his own. But his children in their youth are now poised on the edge of life really with it all before them, so that is very exciting too.

You see now how everything in my work revolves around the cycle of life. Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn and then it all begins again.

I will leave you with that thought to ponder until I write again.

On my Mind

Blogging is an art. There is no doubt about it. You have to be dedicated and you have to be organised I am both of those things but not all the time. Or at least in my life I have always been guided by obsessions. These vary from time to time as things come in and out of my life. At the moment I am obsessed with three things.

1. A little job that has come my way - which i am not at liberty to discuss here right now, but will when it is over.

2. The Spanish house, which after grinding to a bit of a halt has begun again with vigour, but now urgently needs decisions made and budgets balanced.

3. Learning Spanish for our impending move - very soon now - and I am still struggling with verbs and tenses.

There is a fourth thing which will come into play when number one is put out of the way in the next few days.

4. My exhibition. This will take quite a bit of organisation. Posters and flyers need to be made and put out and about, there is a little bit of work that needs to be completed and of course the pictures have to be hung.

I found that writing my blog was easier when I was actually working regular hours as I was when I was painting and printing. My life was more ordered and at specific times of the day i was eating meals, going for my walks, learning my Spanish, painting or blogging. It all fit in quite nicely and gave me variety in a day which, when spent and worked entirely on your own, can sometimes become tedious. I am always fascinated by artists, writers etc who work on their own - have to be on their own to work indeed - but even though driven to do whatever it is that they do they cannot work more than say 4 hours on the trot, before having to at least stretch, eat an apple or more importantly get out among people a bit, whether it is just to go shopping or meet someone for a sandwich.

I know you will say, I am just making excuses. And perhaps I am, but more importantly I am just trying to keep this blog open for the time when I will have some regularity again as a part of my working day which will include a little slot to write again.

So to all the people who used to read me regularly - please do tune in from time to time and I promise things will pick up again.

For now though - Hasta luego!

Gentle Footfall on the Forest Floor - and musings on hypochondria

Well hello there Bloggers,

sorry for the rather long absence - but there has been a sort of necessary stock-taking.

I have finished all my prints now for my exhibition. Today I even spread them out on the table and signed, titled and numbered them all. I haven't yet done a full print run. I will have to save that for when I am more settled. But have the first two or three of each edition ready to rock and roll.

This print is what I think is the best of the bunch - technically at least - and that is sort of part of the whole thrill of it isn't it. Mind you it was a real pain to handcolour. Still, I thought that I controlled the cutting well on the whole. I managed to create good tone, shade and highlight. I have come to the conclusion that the black and white prints are pretty cool too. They have that nice refreshing look about them. So I am doing a colour run and a black and white run of certain prints. Some of the prints work better in black and white too even though I had planned to colour them from the start. Oooh life! It is always a learning curve.

Anyway. The last week or so I have been doing quite a bit of stock-taking and packing and sorting stuff out. It is good too. Sometimes you have to draw your horns in and just spend some time thinking things through. Changing your habits is also refreshing and leads to new thoughts and ideas. As a matter of fact I couldn't sleep last night at all for some reason. My head was buzzing with all sorts of new ideas, especially for some new sculptures. I just haven't quite figured out how I am going to do them. I was thinking of handbuilding in a nice firm grogged clay but then you have size and weight to deal with and where will i take them to get them fired? I obviously still have to suss these things out. I also don't have a car anymore, and was not planning to get one, so how do i get my sculptures about?

There is another small issue on my mind - my body is not quite behaving the way it used to. I think it is called old age. But apart from a general weakening I have a rather serious issue with my right-hand shoulder. I know what it is, because I have self diagnosed from the internet. I also know the treatment - rather alarmingly I may need an operation - fine if it works, but it is one of those that is not always successful (because it involves the repair of torn tendons). The other thing that is on my mind is that you are supposed to seek help as soon as possible but because of our transient status here I am not going to get to a doctor until we get to Spain. In the meantime I am conscious of the irreparable damage being done.

The point is - if i don't have the strength in my arms, large scale sculpture will no longer be as possible as previously. Of course, there are still medals, paintings and other smaller and less physical media to work in so I am not too sad about it all.

By the way - did I ever tell you about my father who was a terrible hypochondriac?

Well he was. He used to come to ours for lunch on a Sunday and tell us all about his old-man ailments real and imagined - in glorious technicolour detail! And that all over the brussels sprouts and roast potatoes - really appetizing. His most thumbed text book was his ancient medical dictionary. And when I used to take him to the doctor for checkups etc he would get out his own diagnoses and thoughts on his illnesses and tell the doctor what to check for. I remember his last consultant very patiently telling him that he had checked for Diabetes, twice just to make him happy, but he really did not have it. Still, my father was not fully convinced.

I thought the grandest irony was that after he died - and he died rather suddenly so he needed to have an autopsy - it turned out that he actually had hemochromatosis! i will let you look that up yourself - but he had no idea which is such a pity as i know how much he would have enjoyed actually having something to blame for all the other bits that were falling off.

I spent years complaining about him but must admit that I too have inherited this small failing. Not the hemochromatosis but his hypochondria - so now I can have my own real and imagined ailments as I cruise gently into old age. Incidentally, I have kept his medical dictionary as a memento, but being a child of the modern age I prefer to surf the internet checking out all my symptoms as they occur.

It is very educational actually and in fact reassuring when you find out that really that particular ache is nothing to be worried about at all.

So on that positive note i will leave you now to enjoy my latest print.

talk soon

Leaf and Fern - and dreaming of summer mmmmm!

Well, the head is a bit clearer today - inspite of a lingering hangover.

My beloved has gone home to see his family for the weekend so we had a little 'last supper' last night with a couple of bottles of wine. I know, I know, pure gluttony .... but most enjoyable.

And here is another photo taken out at the Mosvatnet (the lake) under the trees.

I love ferns - I love the fact that they are so primeval and i love the way that they look like feathers and i especially love them in the spring when they send out those spirals of shoots that unroll and unroll. They always look so tender and young when they start - covered in down to keep the little baby leaf warm.

More than any other plant - except perhaps mushrooms they have an almost animal quality about them. Perhaps because the way they fan out is reminiscent of a hand reaching out skyward.

I am probably attracted to them also because they are so mysterious, growing in the damp and dark beneath the cover of trees and other shrubbery - and yet they can often have such a lively shade of green.

There is a pattern emerging here isn't there. Favourite subjects of mine include: Ferns, moths, mushrooms, dead birds, decaying leaves and other forest floor matter. All these things that exist mysteriously in the dark and damp.

I am less attracted to sunshine and flowers or butterflies. Although in my own life - the one that I live - I do prefer sunshine, and flowers make me smile too and there is something so uplifting in the sight of a butterfly flippy flapping around the garden as they do. I do like the way butterflies fly alright - not exactly in a straight line, although to try and catch that in a picture it does not always translate. Bumble bees make me smile too for that same reason - they are adorable when you see them bumbling around from flower to flower, seemingly unhurried and unconcerned by birds or other possible predators.

Aaah! The remembered sounds of summer days and the feel of the warm sun on your back. The summer is only just gone and I am already nostalgic for it. Perhaps that has something to do with the severe lack of summer we did in fact have this year. So i close my eyes and dream. Next year ....

An Autumnal Ramble!

I hope some of you are still checking back on my blogsite from time to time. I did say that I would be dipping in and out for a bit. It is a shame to lose the momentum, but that is just part of the whole creative process as I keep learning and relearning.

I have been pretty inactive over the last week or so - well, at least in the art department.* That said, I am still working away, albeit slowly, on the prints which I made. I am still trying to dry them out thoroughly and am working out colour schemes for the ones that I am going to hand colour.

Thinking is also a big part of the process. I am sure that people would probably laugh to see me sitting or even lying on the couch in the morning. They would of course think that I was completely inactive and probably even think that I was lazy. But little do they know - inside my head I am hatching plans and thinking about threads of work. Words and images crowd around sometimes and combine without preamble. You might then see me leap to my feet to grab a piece of paper or a notebook where i will furiously scribble for a minute or so to write or draw down my idea.

Half of my ideas never do come to any sort of fruition, but at least I am assured that during times of artist's block I have source material on hand to jog my fumbling brain.

Why is it that i cannot write in a straight line - or event think in a straight line. Don't get me wrong, sometimes i have moments of great clarity, and of course if I am writing an essay or a proper letter I will crowd all the thoughts in first and then thin them out and organise them. But here I allow myself to write much more as I think. It does not bother me unduly, only when I cannot remember what I have said or thought only minutes or even seconds before.

What I am trying to say here is that I was planning write a post about my photography and why I take photos and what I think of them. So far in this post I have not mentioned photography once. Well actually right now I have mentioned it - twice - in one sentence.

So, the photo above. Well, obviously it is a nice picture of a forest floor in the autumn.

I use photography as a tool - not an artwork in its own right - i take photos of things that interest me and store them for the time being. When I am looking for inspiration, as well as the copious notebooks, i also have the photos to draw upon. I trawl through them and start chopping and photoshopping until something starts to take shape. Of course that is only part of it. Most of those chopped and changed photos just return to files and never rise themselves off the page again. Others work for me and these become a starting point for a work or a thread of works.

I know I am rambling - I cannot tell you how disabling the menopause can be at times. I seem to be living on the edge of life sometimes - It is like I am standing at the edge of a party and am watching it through a frosted glass wall. Sound and thoughts are muffled and especially dulled is my peripheral vision - I always prided myself on my peripheral vision, perhaps it is ebbing away with the years, but I think it is more at these times when the head is full of cotton wool and all my senses are dulled.

Oh dear, I am off again.

I wanted to tell you about the other reason I use photography.

I use it for documentation of my work. That has improved quite a bit - practice makes perfect. Although it is not perfect, especially as we do not have a suitable outside spot here for taking photos in natural light. I used to haul all my work outside when I had a garden - that helped a lot. i will be able to do it again when we finally get to Spain. Now I have to make do with large windows and photoshop.

I am thinking now that the ideal thing would be to set up a permanent photo 'studio' outside. i could devise a corner with rendered walls, painted white for a backdrop. Yes, as I think of it, that is a very good idea.

You see - i really cannot keep my ideas straight today - i do apologise - I am looking forward more that you know to life after the menopause, when my brain will settle down to more rational thought once more...not completely i am certain, because of course then i would not longer be me.

Keep watching this space :-)

*My vegetarian cookery is coming on a treat. We had gratinated Lyonnaise Potatoes last night - very tasty!

You - and organising things

This is another of those illustrations i did for the poetry book.

It is probably one of the few drawings I have done that you could say is actually digital. Because I did the original drawing and then took it into photoshop where i airbrushed the shading in and otherwise coloured it in by computer as well as superimposing butterfly wings as a background.

I liked the theme of this - the poem itself was rather tragic, but I chose to focus on the way love bewitches you for better or worse. The subject is obviously represented here as just that - a little witch.

In general my life right now is shifting subtly to a run-down into our impending move. Right at this moment it is the one thing on my mind as i am organising things like the packing and throwing away and/or selling of all the stuff we have accumulated during our stay here. As always I am amazed at how much one or two people can collect in such a short space of time. In fairness we had been open to staying a bit longer, hence the bicycles, stereo sound system (zeppelin) and the printer (although a printer is rather an essential tool don't you think?).

Learning Spanish is rather high on my list of priorities too and i am walking around both the apartment, as well as Stavanger town centre, speaking or whispering to myself in Spanish. The phrases are based around finding somewhere to eat or how to get a doctor, not to mention how good milk is for you when you are sick. I can say that I am American (North American to be precise) which of course I am not, but as yet I do not know how to say that I am Irish, although I do understand that all I need to find out what 'Irish' is and I will be away in a hack! i do grasp the concept, but am in no hurry to start worrying unduly about those little details. I am, however, banging away at the lessons as much as I can to get some fluency before i get to Spain. if I have the tools to start with I am certain that the vocabulary will fall into place pretty quickly.

The town we are moving to is not touristy and therefore the Spanish people there speak Spanish as opposed to being geared towards English and German tourists. It will help in the long run as trying to learn Norwegian here was a huge challenge as almost everyone here not only speaks English but they speak it exceptionally well and they like using it.

But I am getting a bit sidetracked there I think. What I was really doing was making excuses for why I have slowed down on the blogging front as well as on the art creation front. That said. i did most recently have a very successful print run (as you know), which is always draining and left me feeling a bit empty and exhausted afterward, so i am also regrouping. It is great for the apartment because I tend to use the more menial tasks to unwind - as in dusting, cleaning and cooking, but not ironing! I am also, of course, waiting for the prints I made to dry out completely so that i can give some of them a colour wash. The ink is intentionally very slow drying and will take a couple of weeks to dry , although i am trying to speed up the process by using heaters and such. Still I will not rush it to be on the safe side.

I do intend to do a few more drawings/paintings for my exhibition, but also intend to have all my work finished by the time I go to Spain (to check on building) on the 24th of october. i will be back on the 1st of November and will spend the remaining couple of weeks organising for the exhibition - I hate having to rush these things at the last minute - it makes enjoyment of the evening much harder, in case you have forgotten something. But I may have mentioned this before. Such is the nature of excuses.

I hope you will still check up on my blog though - because I do not intend to give up in it. I am just more excited putting on new work rather than plundering the archives for older stuff. i think though, that once I start drawing again and my life settles back into that creative pattern I will just start blogging again naturally anyway - so please do not give up on this space!

going to pub

Friday.

Exhausted.

Great day's printing.

Going to pub