Spring Bench, today’s drawing in oil-pastel and pencil

Here’s my drawing from today in the park. It was a perfect day and I was full of the joys of spring, literally, as I walked towards the park. Again keeping myself open to possibility I had meditated at home before I set off. I hoped the tree stump would be there still, but fully expected to do something different, as my thinking and heartfelt response to the Anxiety/ Release brief I’m working on is moving on. The broken tree represents another mood or mind-set as it were.

Here’s the bench in close-up. I started drawing this and the area around it as I was literally pulled towards it by the light falling there, and by the fact that this is my usual meditation bench when I come to the park. I’d already done my practice so didn’t feel the need once there. It’s so familiar and special to me it seemed totally natural to draw it. I saw it from a new and very different perspective though,( from behind the broken tree stump). It’s carefully placed in nature, made by people for people, to rest and be quiet and reflective. It ticks all the boxes.

The Circle Is Unbroken, kickstarter reward card on my mantelpiece

Here’s the card that is going to be used as part of the Kickstarter Reward promotion for the ‘Transformations’ exhibition at Hanse House in Kings Lynn Norfolk in September of this year. It’s of my oil painting, ‘The Circle Is Unbroken’ which formed the final piece in my explorations of the Medea story from Book VII of Ovid’s ‘Metamorphosis’ You can see all the drawing that led up to it on the archive on this blog. Inside the card is a poem by Kate Garett entitled ‘Maybe Medea’ inspired by Book VII as well. The link to the Artipeeps page with all the info is also here. http://wp.me/P2tYft-1MX

Brutalised tree stump sketch, plein air Monday 3rd March 2014

This sketch was made on Monday on an absolutely beautiful still sunny day. I was apprehensive as I walked towards the park as I didn’t know if my tree stump would still be there owing to the efficiency of the Lancashire groundsmen. I was fully expecting cleared and refilled ground to be there. However, I was wrong. The tree stump had been hacked at some more, but had been put back into it’s hole albeit at a strange angle. I’m not quite sure what all this means to me. I’m holding it all lightly and seeing how it fits to my Anxiety/ Release meditations for Artipeeps. I just drew. The feeling of being there was cool in the dappled sunlight. The colours speak to me as I write this, and the feeling of the experience comes back into my memory. The stillness, the birdsong. The man asking me if I’d finished as I walked back from the park. We touch so many people’s lives without even knowing it. He wouldn’t normally have spoken to me in an ordinary sense. He’d noticed me though. The respect of everyone whenever I draw outside. People fall silent as they walk past. They know something is going on. Just me and the trees or what is left of them. I wish the feeling could last for ever. The drawing itself tells me when it wants to stop, I’m almost saying,’ Not yet, not yet’.