Sunday 21st May

I seem to have been busy over the last couple of weeks, with plans for the taster workshops and other related business events. One was an event about copyright in relation to photographing buildings. It was a little scary hearing that we were only safe from copyright laws if we photographed flowers and animals!

Though it was said tongue in cheek, it does seem that copyright issues are getting more and more complicated. It did take me to a photography space that I hadn’t been to before that was good. The organisation that runs them is called Own It.
They seem very professional and well run events if anyone needs this sort of advice.

I have my large painting on the elements of form still on the go and I just begun a series of paintings of the zodiac signs, which will be appearing on the main site as I finish them. There will also be a new page on the main site of some of my small watercolour and crayon pieces mostly mystical trees at the moment. Later I hope to put a page of drawings from my sketch books.

Messy Business

I have been working with my water soluble crayons and pastels using the photographs of the cherry tree in the local churchyard and from my imagination.


I was partly looking to see how this medium might work in a place where I couldn’t use more messy materials, as I want to find other venues for workshops and many places are put off by the idea of an art and meditation event because of this.

I was also able to try them out at the taster workshops that Clare and I ran at the London Buddhist Centre last week. The colours are great and we only needed a tiny bit of water for dipping the pencils or pastels in, no terrible mess then.

My quest for more business advice has taken me to a workshop with Nick Williams and Barbara Winters. And a business start up event at the Excel centre. I must admit I was more in tune with the Nick Williams event there were some very good ideas, like having multiple strands to your business, and examples of those and a lot of stories of how they and others have managed to work for themselves in a way that worked for their values and beliefs.

The cherry blossoms are out and seeing them always makes me happy. I've been out practicing with the digital camera, though I still prefer my old fashioned SLR. There is a cherry tree that overhangs a few grave stones in the churchyard at the top of my road. It always looks like it is sheltering or protecting the graves in some way. I've been meaning to take photos of it for ages and have just started, with pictures of the tree in bud and now in flower.

I've also been out in the garden taking pictures of the spring flowers and apple blossom, I have ideas for a series of paintings of flowering trees. Van Gogh's flowering cherry pictures have always ben a favourite of mine.

Last weekend was our Urban Arts Retreat and the theme was the elements. I've been working with the elements for a little while now, there is a Buddhist practise called the six element practise that I have been doing, and I have been reflecting on my experience of the elements both internally and externally.

I gave a couple of talks over the weekend and these should be posted on a new section on my site called events and workshops. There are other written pieces from events there as well and they will give you a sense of the sort of things that I am interested in sharing on these sorts of events.

We always do some of our own work on these weekends and I used some drift wood and other items washed up on the beach to make some little sculptures, I had in mind the earth element when I started, but of course there was the water element from their being in the sea, and the wax I also used had come from the candle burning on the window ledge. The air element was an integral part as the sculptures hung in the air, as with everything, it is only possible to seperate the elements in our mind but not in the physical world.

Lots of exciting work was done over the weekend by the participants, artists and new to art people alike. Hopefully I will be able to post some of the photos on the site soon

On the Sunday we did a collective piece on the elements, all working together, which was great and at times it looked like a ritual dance as people moved around the tables putting paint and pastel and found objects on the mandala circle we had drawn.

starting a new picture

It's the start of the Easter weekend and I've been working on another totally different painting. It's something about the building blocks of form, connecting with the nature of mind and the forms that arise in our minds and are then actualization in the outside world.

I've put a couple of shots of part of it here, in it's very first stage, and now I'm spending a lot of time just looking at it, deciding what is working and what isn't before going on. Fortunately it fits very nicely on the back of the kitchen door! So I can sit down on the sofa and gaze at it.

One of the things that I find with my work is just how different a lot of my work turns out to be. I sometimes worry about this as it seems that most galleries and art professionals want a certain style. I understand this in marketing terms, it's much easier to sell something if it fits in to a particular subject matter or format. But I seem to want to give some form of new expression to the subject matter as it arises. In fact if I had the opportunity I would use even more of a variety of mediums to try to express what strikes me in the world.

I've also been looking at what resources exist for artists online, there is certainly a lot of stuff out there. artqwest seem to have a good site www.artquest.org.uk but it takes a lot of time doing all this research. Any suggestions for good sites appreciated, as also good online galleries that anyone has used.

Wishing you all a creative and productive holiday.