I am working on the final items to take to the Aunty Nora's Vintage and Handmade Market in Deal on Sunday 23rd of November.

The event is being held in the Astor Theatre in Deal  website for the theatre here.    10 till 3.30pm.

I have been gilding and painting some of my shells, collected from the beaches around the Isle of Thanet, and making some strings of the shells with vintage and collected beads.

Other things I'm taking include prints and cards and original works of art, photographs and other seasonal  craft items.

I'm also experimenting with some different photographic papers from Permajet and the sunset and misty sky photos of Margate harbour have come out very well on the glossy and pearl papers.

Link to Permajet here

Pre-Raphaelite exhibition at Tate Britain

Ruth and I visited the Pre Raphaelite exhibition at Tate Modern a little while ago. link to the exhibition site here

Millais's Mariana.

I thought it might be a bit of a block buster show, and it certainly was busy. That's one of the problems I find personally, having to shuffle along side hundreds of people to get near a piece of work, without blocking other people.

The Death of Chatterton by Henry Wallis.

Still I was pleased to have gone, the Pre Raphaelites were one of the groups of painters that I first admired as a child. A lot of their paintings were in an art encyclopedia that we had at home and I remember spending lots of time regularly looking at such pictures as The Blind  Girl, Hope, The Lady of Shalott, The Scapegoat and The Death of Chatterton.

Such vivid detailing in the paintings influenced my teenage pictures of the natural world.

Ophelia by Millais.

There is definately a quality of light that I respond to now, rather than the detailed depictions, and the spiritual dimension in some of the work.

William Morris's bed from Kelmscott Manor.

Interestingly I found myself more desiring of some of the tapestries, carpets and furniture rather than the main paintings. They did reinspire me to take up decorating some of my furniture again when we've moved.

Turnaround at Wood Street Market and theFourth Plinth

I went down to Wood Street market, to put out a few more cards at our Arts Club gallery Turnaround yesterday. It was good to meet Pauline Evans and Nicolette Murin who have Turnaround 6. Turnaround website here

Their private view is on Thursday 6-8pm. It is good to see all the vibrant new units and have all that creative energy around. I hope people will support these new ventures.
Nicolette has a sound installation running so great music is happening there too.


While I was there I met up with Catherine of Significant Seams her website here.

Catherine has some great workshops running and projects, as well as quirky items for sale and materials. She is really enthusiastic about sewing and crafting and sharing her skills. Which I've noticed is a feature of lots of crafts people I recommend a visit.

Shirley Pountney was in her gallery/studio too and it was great to catch up with her, as she has not been well and not able to get to Wood Street as often as she would like. I really like a lot of her mystical paintings. Shirley usually has her front room open in Walthamstow village for the E17 Art trail each year.

I had gone over to Trafalgar Square a few days earlier to see the new sculpture on the Fourth Plinth. The latest commission is Elmgreen and Dragset's Powerless Structures, Fig. 101
Which is a bronze coloured gold of a child on a rocking horse. It is meant to celebrate the heroism of growing up and not glorify the past.
I can see the contrast with the usual generals on horseback, and I like the rocking horse for that reason. Though the rocking horse is rather a cypher than a well worn child's toy, which would have worked to give more feeling I think. But the face of the child seems to have too much of the Roman warrior about it to engage me emotionally with the idea of a child growing up or a sense of vulnerability.

E17 Designers Market this week.

I have been busy getting work ready for the E17 Designers market on this Friday at the Asian Centre, 18a Orford road, E17 9LN May 13th 7-10pm. link to site and more info here The craft markets have a really good range of products and do showcase what skilled designers we have in the area. There is also live music, wine and soft drinks and goody bags to be won, so a good evening out if you can make it
E17 Designers has a new website with more information about the designers here
I am taking my new individual collages as cards, I'm enjoying collecting all the material and making up the compositions, though the sorting of material for easy use is a bit daunting.


I'm also working on some larger collages as well, some of which will have more political comment in them
Part of my interest in collage has come from the political Agit Prop work from the 1930's onwards.
Today artist Peter Kennard carries on the tradition. Good article here about his work and his own website here.
Photographers working with a collage element also interest me, such as the recent work by John Stezaker at the Whitechapel gallery link to his work here. I have started a few photographic collage pieces over the years but haven't made up a body of work with them yet. I like both the digital and more hand made aspects of collage but my photoshop skills are not great at the moment.

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Video Art

A New Year and a new course on video editing. Of course I don't have a Mac or the very expensive software at home, but some of the skills will be transferable I'm sure.
I have quite a collection of videos waiting for a bit of editing so I can upload them. Doing some more research for video artists lead me to Jonas Mekas where there are some great short videos to download and others to buy. I liked the little intro video by Jonas as well.

Here a couple of my short videos, filmed at the Christmas market along the Southbank.