Hurrah for King Charles 1- 4

The following four paintings are based on photographs taken in Budleigh Salterton on the day following the Coronation, when the main High Street was closed and some of the locals held an afternoon of feasting and jollity, which culminated in the mayor making a speech, followed by general toasting of the new King.

Shadows on Hoar Frost

As the land rises behind our garden I noticed one cold morning how the shadows of the trees surrounding the field were blue on the frosty grass and also how the frost had touched the tops of the winter trees. I took a photograph before the sun changed the landscape, and this is the result.

6.20 Fox

Every morning, for about the past year, a fox trots past our bedroom window at 6.20 in the morning.
I am an early riser and I see it as I drink my early morning tea; what is amazing is that even when the clocks changed, it continued its walk up and down, inspecting the hedgerow at the same time.
In order to paint this I had to draw from a stuffed fox from the amazing collection held by Hampshire Museum’s Service. This was lovely to see the texture of the fur and the variety of colours in the coat.

Oxford Botanic Garden 2022

This large painting has taken several months to finish.
The Oxford Botanic Garden contains a wonderful glasshouse with large leaved waterlilies; the reflections on the water of the complex roof mean that when looking at the plants you are made aware of the abstract elements which link with the figurative plants.

Kieran ( back view)

This is the second painting of Kieran.
His subject matter tends to be a mixture of mythological and the exotic.
At first glance it is somewhat difficult to recognise that this is the back of a head.
As snakes feature in his choices, I have included some snake skins from my collection in the background.

Kieran

Following on from my paintings of Eric, I met Kieran, who works at a local barbers.
He also has tattoos all over his shaven head.
There are two paintings of him

Local Heroes

An initiative related to the Covid virus has been taking place in our village. This encourages local people to nominate their local heroes and to produce a picture of them in any form. This has led to lots of people making a contribution.
I have chosen to foreground people working in local shops, specifically Swanmore Stores and Hylands, greengrocers in Bishops Waltham. These wonderful people have kept going throughout and have really helped me and also my husband who has been shielded since March 2020.

Pontiac

This car is in a garden close to Hatton Cross tube station.The locale consists of 30s house, not very inspiring, so I ” demolished” them and painted a neglected orchard which is in our village instead.

Mr Livermore lived here

On the outskirts of our village there was a stucco covered bungalow. A conversation with my doctor many years ago elicited the information that this was actually a railway carriage inside, and Mr Livermore, the father of one of our cricket acquaintances, lived there. He died a few years ago and the site was abandoned, but at the end of 2020 I noticed that a metal fence had been erected around it, and the stucco removed, revealing not one but two railway carriages, one behind the other.
I had to work from photographs, as the site was inaccessible. This painting is of one of the carriages; it is possibel to glimpse the fridge through the door, and the original Smoking sign on one of the carriage windows.

Sarah Raven’s Nasturtiums #2

I painted this subject last year, from seeds for these nasturtiums given to me, and the resultant flowers were so lovely that I saved the seed and planted them again this year.
This version is much larger, so the flowers are three times actual size and therefore more dynamic.

Marley

This is a painting of our gardeners’ dog, Marley, who died last February.
He was so loved by Mike, his owner.
I don’t usually paint dogs, but I enjoyed doing this.

Mayflower

This year, 2020, Southampton City Art Gallery proposed an open exhibition entitled In Search of a New World.
This is a commemoration of the Pilgrim Father’s ” discovery” of the USA.
My painting ( one of two) combines a reference to one of the two ships which set sail combined with a map of the landing site and an image of the replica of the Mayflower.
The tribe which was living in the vicinity of the landing site used specific designs form their textiles. I have used the design to flank the ship image.

Speedwell

This year, 2020, Southampton City Art Gallery proposed an open exhibition entitled In Search of a New World.
This is a commemoration of the Pilgrim Father’s ” discovery” of the USA.
My painting ( one of two) combines a reference to one of the two ships which set sail combined with a map of the landing site and an image of a boat of the period;
( it was not possible to find a good image of the actual Speedwell.)

Pink Bicycle

This painting is a response to a photograph which I took when we were in Vietnam.
We were taken to Nimh Binh to see the paddy fields and the wonderful odd shaped mountains. This girly coloured bike, which obviously belonged to one of the many people working in the fields, caught my attention.

Tulips in the garden

Further to the lockdown paintings in the garden, from our patio table we had a view with a variety of tulips in the forgeground to the trees in the distance.
To a certain extent this painting is quite saccharine in content…but the flowers are lovely anyway.

The Nuffield Tractor

This tractor, circa 1960, is on my friend’s farm in Kent.
The father of the farmer never threw anything away, he just abandoned things…and this is one of the things he abandoned.
As such it fitsnin with my love of abandoned vehicle.

Burnt out burger van, Bishops Waltham 2019

This van was burnt out one night in 2019 , possibly by a rival.
It was parked behind a Georgian building which was damaged in the fire.
As happens, the fire produced wonderful colours and textures in the van itself and also on the wall behind it.
An unexpected consequence of the fire was the the rendering on the buildimg was taken away, revealing an older building underneath.,

Dresden Demolition 3

This is the final Dresden demolition drawing. It is much more abstract than the preceding two.
It could be any building anywhere, but it reminds me of the noise and smell I encountered of decades of a structure which is coming to the end.

Dresden Demolition 1

This is the first of a series of drawings made from photographs taken in Dresden in Spring 2019. This communist era building was being gradually and slowly demolished, revealing all its innards. This contrasts with the buildings growing up around London glimpsed from the train, whereby the internal lift shaft is the first element to be seen, gradually replaced by more decorative elements.

Dresden Demolition 2

Having spent time in Dresden in the Spring of 2019 I was able daily to document through photographs the demolition of a very solidly built Communist era building.
This drawing is one of a series which show stages of the demolition. It links with the broken down vehicles and derelict buildings which I have been recording over the years. The reason for all of these images stems from seeing Buddhist prayer flags in the Himalayas, which flap in the wind until they decay. I like the idea of objects having a finite life in a variety of ways.

Bere Forest, Bluebells

This painting …4ft x 4ft has been carried out over two years. I had to wait for the season to come round again to complete the background and the bluebells.
Bere Forest , in Hampshire is a wonderful piece of ancient woodland and every year the bluebells are a delight to all the senses.

Chinese Jacket on a Chinese background.

This year ( 1919) a retrospective exhibition of the work of Elizabeth Blackadder was showing in Winchester.
Among her paintings were two of a Japanese jacket. I don’t own a Japanese jacket, but I do own two Chinese ones. here is my favourite, painted lying over part of a traditional opera garment.

Art Nouveau vases from the Hotel Flora

Staying in Cagliari at the Hotel Flora in the Summer of 2018 we discovered that the owner had a wonderful collection of vases on display in the dining room.
We both made small paintings in our sketchbooks, and this more substantial painting comes from the studies.

San Sopolchro, Cagliari

This painting comes from a drawing made in 2018 in Sardinia on a very hot afternoon. Sitting in the shade outside this church I thought the shadows on the yellow wall and the baroque arch were great to draw.

Morning Glories and Perennial Peas

In the Summer of 2018, the heat during the day was so great that in order to paint these lovely plants growing in my garden I had to get up at 5.00 a.m. and worked until 9.00 a.m after which the temperature was too much for painting.
Serendipity ensured that these plans grew so well together.

Lilies 2

Every year I grow lilies in my garden. This year I grew some very large ones which reached over five feet tall, due to the 2018 hot Summer. As it was too hot to paint after 9.00 a.m, I had to get up at 5.00 a.m to be able to carry out this painting.

Police Aware 1

This is one of a series of three small linked paintings which reflect the habitual dumping of vehicles in the countryside.
This particular transit van had been totally burnt out and only the internal structure was visible. The shattered windows showed the lush vegetation outside and the metal had changed colour to the most beautiful tans, blues and greys.

Red Mangle

This mangle, originally a mottled blue, was found in an old shed when we moved to this house nearly forty years ago.
Our house originally had a communal wash house at the back of the terrace, so it may well date from that period.
It has subsequently been painted red and black, mostly to draw attention to the peace sign cast into the side panels.
Over the years , standing in all weathers, the wooden rollers have begun to deteriorate. Sadly there seems not to be a “spare parts for rollers” available so their demise will continue.

Twin Deckchairs

These two chairs were sitting under trees in gentle sunlight at Berrington Hall in Shropshire. The shadows cast on the pink fabric were so atmospheric, and the proximity of the chairs indicated a missing human presence.

Gabrielle 2018

Forty plus years divide this portrait and her previous one. In this instance I am trying to show different aspects of her life. She is a remarkable gardener but also she loves to dance, so I have shown her in one of her vibrantly coloured dance dresses with her sparkly dance shoes

Blue Chairs

This 2017 painting is a follow on from the many garden paintings completed over the past few years. I realised that I had not included distance in any of the previous paintings; they all relied on the picture plane, so this is an attempt to show distance as well as the wonderful June flowers in the garden, combined with our recently painted table and chairs

Lead man, Fishbourne Roman Palace

This tiny figurine, no larger than 2″ high leads to wondering why the figure was made in the first place. Was it a toy, or did it have more mystical significance?
The back view shows minute buttocks…there is a painting of the back view as well, not shown on this site.

Roman glass

A further exploration of the Discovery Collection at Fishbourne Roman Palace led to this small fragment, with gold running through it. As ever, the packaging forms and integral part of the image.

I love you in Madrid

This tree , heavily carved with romantic tributes, some of which the tree was taking back to itself was in the Botanical Gardens at the Paseo del Prado in Madrid.
I made a drawing of it there, and the painting, helped by a photograph has come later.

Lilies

These are the 2016 lilies in the garden, which link to those painted from previous years. The short window of opportunity between bud, blossom and the dropping of petals is about one week, so there was little room for contemplation, just painting.

Genetic snowball, flava sava

This is one of a thirteen part series of paintings which addressed the debate about genetic engineering which was in the public arena around 1998-2000. Flava sava is a painting of the variety of tomato which was crossbred with coldwater fish in order to prolong shelf life. In the series images from the debate are juxtaposed with images from the tarot, making the point that much of this manipulation was connected with fate.

Genetic snowball, the tarot

This is one of a thirteen part series of paintings which addressed the debate about genetic engineering which was in the public arena around 1998-2000. In the series images from the debate are juxtaposed with images from the tarot, making the point that much of this manipulation was connected with fate.

Genetic snowball, Sainsburys

This is one of a thirteen part series of paintings which addressed the debate about genetic engineering which was in the public arena around 1998-2000. In the series images from the debate are juxtaposed with images from the tarot, making the point that much of this manipulation was connected with fate. At this time, Sainsbury’s was sympathetic to genetically modified foods, but public opinion prevailed.

Roman glass

This Roman glass is a tiny but intensely coloured fragment with gold running through it. The experience of handling this ancient remain linked me to a past which I can only begin to imagine.

Rosebud Shoe

This piece is one of many thousand small shoes which were sent out to artists and interested parties across the world, to draw attention to the plight of children caught up unwittingly in war zones.