Saturday, 18 August 2012

AUTUMN TAPESTRY .... my new painting .....

this is the painting that I have been working on this week.   I am not sure if I have finished it so have brought it into the house to live with it for a bit ....  Sometimes it is important to get some distance from a painting and this one I have been feeling my way rather ..blindly!

I think it is quite like the water paintings in that it is ambiguous what is on the surface and what is behind.  And that is what I wanted ...  I don't want the marks to be too descriptive - although some are ...  

Autumn Tapestry 80 x 120cm 

Saturday, 11 August 2012

WHAT DO THE OLYMPICS TELL US ABOUT OURSELVES

I came across this on twitter - and read it. ( it is by Jon Snow) It is so good that I am trying to make a link with it....
http://blogs.channel4.com/snowblog/olympics-tells/18299#comment-45893 - excerpt below...

I was very skeptical - nay even cynical about the Olympics, and tutted about the cost and the venality of the politicians and money makers etc ....   and/but I really agree with  Jon Snow and believe that cynicism is so uncreative and why choose to be miserable?

Melbury Aglow, 70 x 70 oil on canvas, SOLD

I have also sold one of my favourite new paintings in the Sticks to Stone exhibition which ended yesterday.  I also sold several wood/lino cuts as well so this is a double reason to be cheerful!


...."That we are builders, designers, craftsmen and women; that we can organise; that we can train, set our hearts upon an ambition, and deliver it. It is who we are. We may not, many of us, wallow in the extremes of empire, but together we are a consequence of it.
This medium sized island state once somehow administered, dominated, exploited, developed, half the then known land mass of the world. Today it is different.
We are here, and our talent is dispersed across a very different world......  from Jon Snow's excellent blog... 

Thursday, 19 July 2012

DITCH PROZAC, BUY PHYLLIS.....!

“… if I had both the money and the wall space, I’d have one of Phyllis’s paintings in every room.  The sense of movement, the brush strokes and her distinctive use of colour create such an impact; and of course, the subject matter.  To see nature interpreted with such love and joy is just incredibly life affirming – I always feel as if I can smell the blossom, feel the wind.  In short, Phyllis’s work just makes me happy.  There you have it – ditch Prozac, buy Phyllis”
Virginia Edwyn-Jones  Shaftesbury  Dorset.

POPPIES POPPIES  1 x1m oil/canvas   .... not quite finished yet

POPPIES NOT PROZAC!    I x I m ...oil/canvas ( interim name!)



NEW POPPIES.....  6O X 60 cm    oil/canvas

Three new not-quite-finished paintings .....   after a very difficult day, the sun has come out, he has cut the grass, wonderful organisers of the LONDON SHOW  have over come a big glitch and .....  I am happy and exhausted.   You know what I mean!  

Saturday, 7 July 2012

GREEN RIVER ( the Charente near Ruffec) and this weather ...

... has something to be said for it - there is no gardening to be done!  So a blissful day - much more relaxed than usual I have to say - and some painting.  What do you think of this - its only a start, but I like it!  On top of another painting, so I had to work quickly to cover things up and actually I don't think there is necessarily a huge amount to do ....

I will see tomorrow, when the paint is less wet!

GREEN RIVER ( the Charente near Ruffec)  1 x 1m oil/canvas

Friday, 6 July 2012

THIS HILL CALLED MELBURY......

 I am really pleased with the work I have managed to do this week ...   I am a fortunate  woman to live where  I do and to be able to paint.....  This hill called Melbury  which I have painted for years  since 1976 when I moved to Dorset after being a student at St Martin's and Goldsmiths.....

To me the relationship between the artist and the subject is very powerful and important.  It seems to me that this hill has helped me to paint.   This is certainly true of portraits and it feels true here.  

Maybe the process of  painting the hill has helped me access something in myself ....  But it feels like  the hill is my teacher...  tells me about my human-ness as I struggle to paint its hill-ness.....    and I LIKE the feeling of not-there-yet ....   lots more paintings for us to discover together ......

 Melbury delight I 90  x 130cm oil/canvas    


 Melbury delight II 80 x 120 cm oil/canvas

from Fontmell Down June 1989   pencil drawing 

Tuesday, 3 July 2012

MELBURY DELIGHT.... I and II,

I have finally managed to wrench myself away from chores and domesticity and boring but necessary office stuff too.  Just got a tweet from Lizzie Speller in Greece who talks about why she needs to go there to get the necessary solitude she needs to work....   hmm one certainly needs to be very disciplined.  

I am SO happy to be back in the place where I can really be myself - like in the Rumi poem - that I have quoted before and will do again,right here!

Neither of these are finished - the challenge is to keep them open and keep the touch light...more later, oh - and the poem now.
 Melbury Delight  II  80 x 120 cm

Melbury Delight  I   90 x 130 cm 

Time to go Home
Rumi
Late and starting to rain, it's time to go home
We've wandered long enough  in empty buildings.
I know it's tempting to stay and meet those new people.
I know it's even more sensible
to spend the night here with them,
but I want to go home.

We've seen enough beautiful places with signs on them
saying This is God's House
That's seeing the grain like the ants do,
without the work of harvesting.
Let's leave grazing to cows and go
where we know what everyone really intends,
where we can walk around without clothes on.

Monday, 25 June 2012

SKETCH BOOK OF NORMANDY JUNE 16-24 2012

I have just returned from a week in Normandy with friends .... and here are some of the scribbles I made ... 

of the coast near Les Salines,    the landscape around Hambye,  and the well known calf market at Gavray with  children and  animals ( poor little things) and the sellers/buyers who showed their sensitivity to being drawn and 'recognised' but not to the vey young animals in their care .....!  

I am not an animal rights activist or a  vegetarian, I just am a person who noticed the fear in the young animals and felt both angry and sorry for the humans who had power over them  who seemed  so brutally unaware ....  one cannot ignore it, though I was very aware of the English being sentimental about animals ....  it just seemed so very LAZY  an attitude and made life more difficult for the farmers etc too...  

Here are also happy  and sketches of friends, boozy lunch under the trees etc ...   a very full and happy week... storms on the channel notwithstanding!





























NEW BLOG, NEW POND PAINTINGS, NEW LEAF....

NEW POND PAINTINGS

These are three new paintings - one of which I started during Art Week .....    I could no longer bear to be separated from my paints so dragged them and my palette out and just began painting again.  took a leaf out of Charlie Baird's book - who does not do all the clearing and poly filler-ing that we do for Art Week - and I think he has the right idea!


I also like being back on blogspot - didn't like wordpress blog at all.


So all seems well and getting better, sold another painting at the weekend and have made what seems like a very useful new contact with a London agent...  and also have other new plans in the pipeline....  more very soon.....



Sunday, 20 May 2012

Dorset Arts Week at Orchard Park......

Several of us from the North Dorset area of Dorset Arts Week spent time last saturday demonstrating  aspects of our working practise.....  here am I showing iPad drawing which people found very interesting and instructive.  Just to remind you that Robert Paley and I are opening our studios and gallery next week - venue 268 /281....  more about this later

Below is Kate Toms (venue now 286/298) showing her machine embroideryAnd here is Graham Nolan ( venue 273) - who is also showing his beautiful pots at ZMMA in Shaftesbury, with me Charlie Baird, Rob Woolner and Anne Hitchcock...  who makes beautiful ....   sewn images ....  I will have to ask her to send me an image to show here.

The ZMMA exhibition is very interesting and I will post about it when I have some images......

 

Thursday, 17 May 2012

>NOWNESS - this is how I want to be ... ( or maybe I am already)


>
I must thank whoever it was that led me to this  video ... do watch .... just for fun!



http://www.nowness.com/day/2011/3/23/1382/advanced-style-age-and-beauty

Wednesday, 16 May 2012

THERE IS NOTHING CLEVER ......

'there is nothing clever about not being happy' Arnaud Desjardins

I keep a file with some of my favourite poems and sayings on my desktop - and have been looking through it while having a brief pause in activity - too much going on with preparation for DORSET ART WEEKS and ....   I have so many beautiful poems - what gifts they are....   Rumi is one I may just add here

Time to go Home

Rumi

Late and starting to rain, it's time to go home
We've wandered long enough  in empty buildings.
I know it's tempting to stay and meet those new people.
I know it's even more sensible
to spend the night here with them,
but I want to go home.

We've seen enough beautiful places with signs on them
saying This is God's House
That's seeing the grain like the ants do,
without the work of harvesting.
Let's leave grazing to cows and go
where we know what everyone really intends,
where we can walk around without clothes on.

This speaks to me so much and expresses how I feel about this landscape ....

and this one too - I can almost imagine doing a painting of this subject ...

The Baler - Seamus Heaney

 

All day the clunk of a baler
Ongoing, cardiac-dull,
So taken for granted

It was evening before I came to
To what I was hearing
And missing: summer’s richest hours

As they had been to begin with,
Fork-lifted, sweated-through
And nearly rewarded enough

By the giddied-up race of a tractor
At the end of the day
Last-lapping a hayfield.

But what I also remembered
As woodpigeons sued at the edge
Of thirty gleaned acres

And I stood inhaling the cool
In a dusk Eldorado
Of mighty cylindrical bales

Was Derek Hill’s saying,
The last time he sat at our table,
He could bear no longer to watch

The sun going down
And asking please to be put
With his back to the window.

 

Thursday, 10 May 2012

CALLING ALL SPIDERS........!

I have put this on my Facebook page - while my blog was being updated .... and/but I like it so much that I am including it here.  Thank you   Nina Katchadourian....   she has done some amazing other things too .... no doubt I will show you them too .....  xxxP

MEDLEY for TWITTER....!


I obviously don't have enough to do - I spent time doing this for my ....profile page on TWITTER???

Actually its also a practise blog too......!

 

Wednesday, 9 May 2012

EXHIBITION IN SHAFTESBURY ...OPENING NEXT WEEK....

Adam Zombory-Moldovan invites you to the launch event of ZMMA's new Architecture Studio and Gallery in Shaftesbury.
Adam Zombory Moldovan came to visit me last week to choose a painting to go in this mixed show of artists he admires.  The show  is  curated by Anne Hitchcock and I think it will really be interesting...   it  is very good when people who have a real eye and also opinions about things visual take an interest in one's work...



 

 

It is an interesting choice?   The white abstract, that people may be surprised to find out was painted by me - is something that I do from time to time....  I have often said I feel that ...one of the points of being a painter or an artist is the excitement of doing things differently!  Experimenting....   trying something out and seeing if it works - or how it works.   Sometimes it just dosnt!  tant pis!

And sometimes it does, and one comes back to have another go - from a slightly different place...



 

 

Wednesday, 2 May 2012

VALUE OF TOUCH SCREEN TECHNOLOGY FOR PEOPLE WITH DEMENTIA AND THEIR HELPERS…..

This morning I went to the Stour View Day Centre for the Elderly and Disabled of the local area,in Sturminster Newton.    Stephen Hopcroft  who is the centre manager had seen the article  about  my iPad drawings in the Blackmore Vale Magazine and asked me if I would go and give a demonstration there.


Stephen told me that the University of Worcester has done a study of touch screen technology and the benefits different apps have for people with dementia and their helpers .....  and identifies how different apps help to improve the quality of life for people .....   might be us one day!


The dreadful thing is BT class the centre as a service so they have to pay business rates for telephone and broadband ....  like so many things - awareness needs to be raised on this.  Maybe more later?

 

Phyllis Wollf and Robert Paley

Here is our joint entry showing our venue details in DAW 2102 brochure - we both have studios and work showing paintings, prints, and drawings - please do drop in



VENUE 281 in the DAW 2012 catalogue

Since Phyllis moved deeper into rural Dorset, under the mound of Melbury Hill her personal association with the landscape has become more intense, with an obsessive need to paint and draw the essence of Melbury. Using her distinctive palette she joyously records the garden and ponds they have created.” Tony Birks-Hay in ‘Colourscapes’, Phyllis’ book. Robert continues to paint his atmospheric watercolours and now he uses oils to movingly interpret the Scottish Highlands, Dorset and Europe. Studio and gallery in superb location. Pub and tearoom nearby, Bring picnic? Please contact for information about Commissions visits or classes.

Hawkcombe, Hawkcombe Lane, Compton Abbas, Nr Shaftesbury, Dorset SP7 0JH

t. 01747 812610