In waiting

There's a stillness just before Spring bursts forth, and that is where I am, in that stillness. I'm waiting with the trees to put on a fandango of colour! As the days have drawn out I've enjoyed a couple of trips out...to Lincoln and to Oakham to visit galleries (find me at Itch Gallery in Oakham) and to seek out the new.

My bid to give up plastic for lent has led me down some new paths too. I've been enjoying home-made bread and home-made yoghurt. Shopping has become a different experience and I've sought out interesting farm shops and markets. I've also had a deeper appreciation for the handmade and hand mended. It's important to me to create art that is made from the heart with processes that tread lightly on the earth. 

As I have crossed the landscape I have been inspired by the bare trees, layered up. Some conceal what is behind them. Some cast shadows. Some play with the light and create a dance of negative and positive shapes. It has been a fruitful time creatively and I have felt at peace with my creativity.

Looking Through

Midnight Trees

But now I'm looking forward to the growth, the colour and the energy that comes with the longer days. I'm looking forward to being outside soaking it all up. I'll be sharing time in nature and my creative techniques and response to nature on my Summer Sketchbook workshop on Saturday May 21st in Long Eaton. And in July there's my Back to Nature art holiday when you can join me for three idyllic days in the hills! And I've a Mark Making studio day on Saturday June 25th. I hope you can join me!

Over Easter I'm looking forward to getting my seeds planted. I have been shirking my responsibilities on the allotment but already Mr Hallows has some lettuces popping up in the polytunnel. I hope we get some warm days and to be able to get out on some new adventures. I'm taking part in 100 Happy Days to bring my attention to the small, joyful details of my life. There are many but I need reminding to stop, to look, to appreciate. You can follow my #100happydays on Instagram or Facebook where I'm also having a give way!

Visit, and like, my Facebook page to enter the giveaway.

Sunshine and Showers

So Spring is teasing me with sunshine and showers. I can smell the hope in the air and I'm filled with a sense of purpose. The reflective time of winter has fuelled new ideas and I've been scribbling them down in the hope they will come to fruition this coming year.

My creative flow is amazingly balanced at the moment. I find that to be true in Spring and Autumn. They are my favourite seasons because of that balance between night and day, light and dark. I work best then. In the summer I tend to be a bit skittish and high energy and in the winter I feel like someone has switched off all the lights and find it hard to get things done. So the pace just now is just right. I've been enjoying planning my gardening year too. Last year I didn't grow much but found I felt disconnected from nature. This year I have already had my fingers in the soil and planted lettuces and beans in our polytunnel. I'm determined to preserve as much of our crops as possible. I've been challenged by a friend to give up buying plastic for Lent. It has meant a journey of self-discovery and a hunter-gatherer style of shopping as I skit between farm shops, markets and super-markets trying to find unpacked or paper packed goods. It has given me a new drive toward being more self sufficient. This week that has meant making marmalade and pickling onions. You can find my favourite recipes here. There's something wonderful about stacking up jars of coloured produce in the Spring sunshine.

Connecting with nature is fuelling my workshops too. I had such a wonderful day with my students on both the 'Rest with Nature' workshop and 'Spring Sketchbooks'. There was a real sense of enjoyment of process and having time to experiment and try new things. That's what art is all about isn't it?

If you'd like to join me for a workshop, I'll be running a 'Summer Sketchbooks' day on Saturday May 21st and a mixed-media 'Mark Making' day on Saturday June 25th. And don't forget that I'll be running my 'Back to Nature' Art Holiday in July. It'll be a total immersion in beauty and art - a wonderful treat for your creative soul.

Amongst the planning for workshops I'm creating a new series of landscapes. I'm currently exhibiting at the Ferrers Gallery and will be demonstrating my techniques and giving a taster of my workshops on Sunday 6th March between 12 and 3. Come along and say 'hi'!

Workshops for Spring 2012

I've just designed the flyer for my workshops for spring.  You know what they say, 'The early bird.....'

A Spring Rainbow

Happy Easter!  What a week. I've been working hard and playing hard with trips to Melton Mowbray Flea Market, Rutland Water, Uppingham, Nottingham University and Wollaton Hall. Such beautiful weather! 

The landscape was so inspiring; fields full of rape in glorious yellow. The garden is bursting with green shoots and we've eaten chocolate eggs wrapped in a rainbow of shiny wrappers.  

So much colour and light....I'm giddy with it!

Simple details

Hooray it's Spring!  The switch has been flipped and the lights are back on!  Suddenly there's a world outside again. I took these on a trip to Hardwick Hall, but everywhere I look I'm seeing the details of life, as if for the first time, baptised in the Spring light.

Getting on with it

Sabrina Ward Harrison.  From Brave on the Rocks

"People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long course of rivers, and they pass by themselves - without wondering."  St. Augustine

You'll tell from my blog that life has been busy!  I'm so excited by all that is going on, I'm just trying to keep track of it all!

My time spent wondering what robots did for their birthday paid off as I sold that design at Spring Fair.  Call it beginners luck, but by an alignment of the stars, moon and planets in my favour, that one design in a huge pile of designs, on one stall amongst very many stalls, somehow caught a buyer's eye and is off to the States to be printed.

It's encouraged me to carry on and I'm setting myself some new work targets, including florals, baby and Christmas.

David has been getting some work and I finally feel I can breathe normally.  I wonder about this period he's not been working.  Without it, I'd not have had the time and motivation to make the decisions I have and build a business.  I'm often wishing that I had a crystal ball, to check up on myself down the line.  It's been a very bumpy five years and here we are, still enjoying life.  The simplest pleasures have got us through.....and I suppose, the fact that we are Us.

Anyway, mustn't rest on my laurels, one design sold does not a happy bank account make.  Hope you're all noticing the bulbs twitching their noses above the surface of the soil.

Do not bend

I've just managed to get this piece in the post to my goddaughter April whose birthday was yesterday (sorry!).  It features words from the poem, "Always marry an April girl" by Ogden Nash.

Praise the spells and bless the charms,
I found April in my arms.
April golden, April cloudy.
Gracious, cruel, tender, rowdy;
April soft in flowered langour
April cold with sudden anger,
Ever changing, ever true -
I love April.  I love you.

Thinking of Spring poems, my favourite is by A E Housmann:

Loveliest of Trees

Loveliest of trees the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bow,
And stands about the woodland ride,
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom,
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go,
To see the cherry hung with snow.

Such a reminder to enjoy the beauty of spring, tinged with the weighty reality of our mortality.  It also makes me smile and remember my Grandad, he always talked of his "threescore years and ten" and how he'd be in his box!  He lived until he was ninety one so lived to see a good number of springs.

I've been enjoying the birdsong against our silent skies and have spent the weekend gardening and harvesting our first crops of lettuce, wild garlic, spinach and nettle.

First day of Spring

It's the Spring Equinox this weekend when the days are now as long as the nights.  Heard the birds singing at dawn this morning and could feel the energy of the world.

I love white on white and when Selvedge magazine arrived I had to post this egg image by Katya de Grunwald.  So beautiful.

Happy Spring.

Spring has sprung

This lovely fresh, Spring image arrived on a flyer from St. Judes Gallery.  It features the work of printmaker Penny Bhadresa.  She has great compositions.  I like how she plays with scale and space.