The Valley of Imaginings: flying season

In The Valley of Imaginings wingless flight is a seasonal activity.

It comes in moments of wakeful wonder, as naturally as breathing.

The diving and the swooping are fast.

So deliciously fast.

The feeling is much like that of swimming without water.

Without getting wet.

A fact that pleases Ma Baggs greatly.

But, Ma, trifle maker extraordinaire, is a diversion.

Another tale for another day.

 

Simply by surrendering to the wild winds of Autumn with a heart inflated by hope visitors to the valley can rise up to fly above the tree tops,

above the red roof tops of the crooked little houses

and if they choose,

at night, they can fly among the stars.

 

 

As the colours turn on the trees there is an equal slow turning to thoughts of comfort.

Everything softens in Autumn.

The houses perched high on the windswept hill visibly, tangibly relax to welcome and embrace those who forage in the valley below.

 

It isn't perfect.

Nothing ever is.

But as the things of the earth retreat and the days are pressed back by the encroaching dark there is still beauty and hope and love.

Always love.

 

 

The Valley of Imaginings: once upon a time

Are you sitting comfortably…..preferably with a light beverage…..tea in a bone china tea cup perhaps?

You're not!?

Oh well, I'm going to begin anyway.

Welcome to the Valley of Imaginings.
A place that may seem frivolous…..on the surface…. to the untrained eye.

Bordered to the north by the densely populated land of well-remunerated-respected-endeavour and bound in the south by the sad shores of lost hope, it is a place of dream and myth and story.

However,
 dreamy it may be;
 all 'roses around the door'
it is not.
Not picture book perfect.
Not at all.
A little quirky, a little strange and possibly charming.







This land is full of critters
large
small
real
imagined
but folk do not live in the valley,
the valley lives in them.


One of the first that we might meet would be Violette.
Almost daily she leaves her house to fend for itself, heavy laden as it is with memory and dust and she walks down to the valley to read from her book of sorrows.
Or as slouchy hare, so often the audience for these words, chooses to call it, "the spotty book of dotty jottings"


In the meadow, a-buzz and  a-waver with shimmering wings and dancing flowers

Violette reads aloud to the surrounding air, interrupted often and  only by  the cawing of crows.







Many questions rise up in Slouchy's fluffy, stuffed brain but with a mouth that's just a row of stitches he emits no sound and Violette has not thought to listen to his silence.
Sometimes when his thoughts float passed like a dandelion seed Violette  dismisses the faint sensation preferring the solidity of the words that she reads in her book.

Not The End.

Possibly not even a beginning.



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Mixed media workshop

I have been making the final, final preparations for the mixed media workshop that I will be teaching in September.
This idea was born out of the sheer number of times people have walked into the studio and wistfully express their desire to be creative and their robust conviction that they can't be.

I don't believe that they can't and it actually makes me feel really sad that they do believe it, so I set myself the challenge of gently leading them back to the joy of creating because most of us had it once upon a time.
Back when we were children.

It starts with a formula to overcome the 'blank white page' syndrome of being afraid to make that first mark.
Then mixing lots of implements and materials to provide different textures and marks and the only drawing skills required are the ones that we all had in primary school before anyone told us that " a bird, a house, a flower.....doesn't look like that."
Or maybe nobody told us those things but when shown our creations they didn't respond with the same enthusiasm and delight that we had in the making of it.
And somehow or own light dimmed a little.

It all begins with ripping pages from a magazine....any page that sings to you....either the image....or the colours....or maybe some text.
Don't think too much just rip.

Today I photographed each stage of the process, including the bit where I answered the phone and left paint to dry too long and things went a bit tits up, as they do. What I love about this whole process is that generally it's quite easy to incorporate the tits up or restore it.
 Or just damn well celebrate it.
Because after all this is just play.

And colour choices are largely determined by what is already there in the under-layers so no great decisions to make there either.

I added a mandala moon that frankly did not please my eye so I overlaid it with a white circle of acrylic......the 'mistake' is still visible but ....it is what it is ....because there are no mistakes.
None.
Just got to convince a few other people of that.

Illustration and story

I wouldn't call myself a storyteller.
Although I did once tell a tale, off the cuff, in the car, to my sons when young, that went down a storm.

About a pig.

A pig who got a reputation for interior decorating and design!?

Inspired, no doubt, by the pig farm we passed on the A303. Not that they showed any design flair.
And the whole story told in a broad West Country accent.......not my own.....I judge by the audience reaction and have to say it was a hit.

But that's largely it.

So, having confided that, I suspect this next confidence shared will meet with a nervous titter.
It certainly generates an anxious feeling in me.







These new paintings keep suggesting storylines.
The characters develop names and characteristics of their own as each painting progresses.
Little snippets of their history and their relationships become apparent.
In short I feel I need to write about them.
Violette and the slouchy hare have sealed the deal.
Although the picture is unfinished it keeps on talking to me, more loudly than those before.



I know it isn't going to be 'once upon a time she met her prince'.
And I strongly suspect it is going to be more an excavation of my own psyche but perhaps it could be more widely fruitful than that.

I am uncomfortably straddling two thoughts about my work:
one that I have never been more vainly deluded
and t'other, that I am drawing (no pun) closer to the crux of it and discovering some real fruit.

So it is in faith of the latter thought and in honour of the more frequently appearing muse that I share the whisperings of my heart.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Hello dear friends in blogland.

During this last long absence I finally found my groove.

Or finally had the courage to recognise exactly where my groove was at!

I am still exploring the terrain but it feels like home…...

and celebrating with some cards and prints soon to be available in my easy shop