Words can cage us or set us free

There are stirrings in The Valley of Imaginings.

Have you got a quiet moment?
.....with a pot of tea on the go?
You've got time to butter up some crumpets before we begin ......

I'm not quite sure where to start.
















I had thought to tell the tale of Ma Baggs, the trifle maker.
Her presence is, after-all, like a silken thread that runs throughout the valley, binding all of its characters and shaping many of the happenings.
I am impatient to tell you about the time she rode through the valley on a motor bike...
wearing her best tea dress....
paisley headscarf,
tied tightly beneath her chin.

But the current gossip concerns Violette and the Slouchy Hare so
we'll start there.
















As the flying season gently draws to a close there's a lot of smoothing out to be done. Eyes are brighter and there is generally something less weighty in the appearance of those who have flown but it is often the case,
in the aftermath,
that things are not always returned to their original starting position.
Never more true than for Slouchy and Violette.

Apart from some springtime leaping Slouchy prefers to keep his feet on the ground.
He is truly an earthbound creature. 

This season he has spent his lonesome days doing very little, saving his energy for long nights of stargazing and patiently waiting for Violette to finish her flying.
As the days faded into night he looked to the sky for the first twinkler to appear.
Long ago he was taught to wish upon a star by his dear papa. Over the years he has repeated the rhyme many times.















" star light, star bright
first star I see tonight,
wish I may, wish I might
have the wish I wish tonight"

And Slouchy's deepest longing is to be able to speak to Violette
to make her see,
to make her understand.

Violette is by nature a cheerful person, a being as full of light as it is possible to be.
Not that you would know that
and neither did she.
How could she, with her head forever stuck in that book!
Between the spotty front cover and the dotty back cover she had recorded every hurt, every perceived wrong, long lists of grievances fears and frustrations, sorrows and pains. Every page was stained with tears.















Every morning that she has read from its pages Slouchy has watched Violette's light flicker and dim. He has watched her face as the corners of her mouth turned down.
Watched the back of her hand rise to her forehead and heard the breathy sigh of woe.
Over so many years Slouchy had become, if he could be frank about it, frustrated by her preposterous posturing.
In fact he had moved through frustration to fury- and that's hard for someone as softly stuffed as he.













Slouchy longed to tell her to close the damn book!!
Well maybe not damn.
He was a soft spoken, soft hearted, soft toy after all was said and done.
But close it , definitely.
He wanted to point out that if she would close her spotty book of dotty jottings
and look up at the stars once in a while,
if she would pause to look at the flowers more often,
stop looking over her shoulder towards the past and instead take in the full view of the horizon,
she just might find that her little frozen heart would thaw.

The first morning after the flying was done Violette smoothed down her rumpled dress, teased the windswept wisps of hair back into place and cast her bright eyes down to her book and began to read out loud.






Slouchy's little patched heart slumped in his chest as he heard the familiar words. He felt every stitch in his neatly stitched mouth tighten and pull.....
he surveyed the scene around him in the dew damp meadow....
....although everything was beautiful...... row upon row of grasses strewn with jewelled spider's web..... his little heart just ached for Violette....






Suddenly Violette looked up.
Her eyes were wide and bright.
Strands of her hair lifted in the breeze and her nose twitched slightly as she caught the scent of falling leaves.
If Slouchy could have, he would have held his breath...
With a very sharp decisive movement that made the soft hare jump, Violette snapped the spotty book tightly shut.
She turned to look at Slouchy and held his gaze intently for a moment that seemed equally long and still and silent.
Something imperceptible passed between them, surely....they both felt it ....as light as a bird's feather.... caressing a cheek....
Finally the spell was broken as Violette placed her book into her capacious pocket and tilted her head towards the birds swooping in the sky above.
Then she slowly looked towards the house slip sliding down the hill and a smile lit her face.
Finally she dropped her eyes to the ground at her feet and slowly bent to retrieve a stone that lay there.
As she raised it up in front of her face Slouchy could clearly see the heart shape and the hole in it that let the light shine through.
Violette took in a deep breath, breathing in all the scents of autumn in the valley and exhaled a declaration

"Time to write a fresh story"

And so a new chapter began.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

❤️Written with just a tiny nod to my loving memory of Evelyn Baggs my motorbike riding grandmama who gave me far more than a love of trifle ❤️












- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

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.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

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