Tagged: art

Merry, merry month of May


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In the dim and distant past (or ancient history as my ten year old would have it) otherwise known as my childhood, I grew up in the large village of Mullion on the very specially gorgeous Lizard Peninsula.  The specially gorgeousness of this place is a state secret so I may now have to kill you all but I digress…

… The cold mornings we have been having with the wonderful sunny weather have brought to mind an early morning jaunt we took to the nearest town.  I think I must have been about five and we must have got up very early for we went into to town on the bus while the morning was still cold and dewy.  The nearest town was a place called Helston and at the  beginning of May every year it holds a festival called Flora Day (see picture above and google to see more images and videos).  The people of the town dance through streets and houses and businesses in a series of different dances all day.  They all sport a sprig of Lily of the Valley on the lapels or shirts and I was entranced by the magic of this and it is tangled in my mind with fairy tales and images from the Pied Piper of Hamlyn.  When I was my little it was one of my greatest wishes to dance at Flora Day but as I was neither born there, nor went to school there, or married to anyone from there it is never likely to happen.

Whether it is Flora Day or not, Helston is a beautiful little town and is having a hard time at the moment, so I urge you to go there and spend some money in their independent shops – we are off down again at the end of May for a few days.

In other news, I have been nominated for a Liebster Award by a lovely Canadian blogger Life on a Dirt Road and I will be responding to her challenge in my next post.

While I’m in the mood to urge, the Painter is just about to have a new studio delivered, so (more) normal service should shortly be resumed.

This one is called We Dream of Cornwall and can be found with lots of friends in his online gallery, here

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Another quilt is finished, pictures next time!

Coming around again


I now have Carly Simon’s dulcet tones ringing in my head but reflection on what’s gone and what’s yet to come seems to befit this time of year.  This time last year I was in a very bleak place emotionally and my confidence was at a low ebb worn away by months of high anxiety.  2011 for all its slings and arrows has been quite healing in many ways.  We have had help from a lovely psychologist specialising in brain injury who has helped us to have a better understanding of what’s going on.  It doesn’t always help to know why something is happening but it never hurts.

A combination of this and my own craftiness (you can take this as cunning or my incessant need to make things) seems to have had the desired effect an inspirational effect on John and his initial small decorative efforts have stretched his artistic muscles to the point where, as I write, he is in the shed painting again.  Not only that but he has renewed his Minigallery subscription and has done most of the adminny bits he needed to do to get it to go live.  These are huge, seven-league-boot steps forward and I don’t think any of them could have been achieved if I was still going out to work.

I am sharing my own personal favourite which I am linking to – not everyone is comfortable with the human form, so if you aren’t don’t click please.  This was painted back in 2005 from a drawing done of me back in 2004 or 2003 and it sold very quickly, too quickly to a lady in London.  I wanted to look at it for a bit longer; who doesn’t want to see themselves so beautifully depicted?