Working late

Long after I was too tired to work Chailo Sim kept me going for just that little bit longer. I do like good music.

Music and movement

 Back cover for A Rhyme in Time

Woke this morning to see the stars of Orion striding across the sky outside my window. Above the garden only constellations and the bone moon shone in the dark. This week will be better than last and I now have something that is working. So this week is just one for colouring in. And I will have music to distract me. Yesterday I listened to the life's work of Seth Lakeman so far. Love listening to the developement of his sound. I almost didn't buy the new cd and am so glad that I ignored the reviews which were sometimes negative. So good, strong, vibrant. My favorite is still the original pressing of Freedom Fields.
Today I will listen to Karine Polwart.
This week musicians will keep me painting.

 

Outside the window clouds fly over the green land, sun slants long shadows.

The problem with book covers is that I have a few years of difficult ones behind me. And there are so many books of nursery rhymes that I have to make mine stand out. So, time to start again and maybe third time lucky.

Outside there are flocks of small songbirds, chaffinches that are here for winter. I am waiting for fieldfare and redwing. Listening to David Hughes. Being a Poet is wonderful as is An Ordinary Life. Wonderful guitar and lyrics. And when I was away he gave me a cd of a new song about Venice and romance and a handsome man. And I do love his Song For England, such a beautiful love song.

Time to face the blank page again.

Time

Two days of drawing and painting and what was coming out was ugly. So, this morning started again and now I am sure that what is coming out is too tight. Self doubt and the monster of self loathing are working hand in hand. 

 

In the post today, a copy of The Well, sent by Jennifer Warnes. Wonderful. Particularly loved her version of Tom Wait's Invitation to the Blues. So lovely of her to send it to me. She keeps me painting and gives me courage. And right now I need all the courage I can get.

The passing of time

Jo, with Tom and baby Hannah

I moved to St Davids almost 19 years ago, when I was in the early stages of being pregnant with Tom. In the house down the road we would always hear children laughing, behind high garden walls. When Tom was born we got to know them better. Rowanna seemed tiny, until Tom was born, Jo Jo was the middle child and Noona the oldest and they were all wonderful wild. I still remember them tumbling into the house one day through what was a large catflap in the back door.

Now time has passed. They couldn't fit through a cat flap now and yesterday I went to hear Jo, now Jocelyn, playing piano in St Davids Cathedral. There was a time when she held my Tom, cradled in her small arms. Yesterday she held a whole audience in her hands, filled the cathedral with a beautiful sound, painted images through notes, was wonderful. How amazing it is to see and hear such elegance, all grown up.

It was a while before Jocelyn and I realised that we had a connection other than living as neighbours. I think it was one time that I had asked Anne, Jo's mum, to look after and feed the cats for me when I was away. She noticed a Christmas card lying around the house, a card I had designed for The Musicians Benevolent Fund as a fund raiser. Jo had just received a grant from them to buy a new piano. In the subsequent years she received bursaries during her studies from the MBF. This is such a hard time to be a student, especialy a student of the arts where it is always a struggle to make a living. How wonderful to have such a close connection and see so clearly the benfit of the MBF.

This year's card will be available soon, I am told on 6th September, and the mugs are available now from the MBF. The artwork for the card will be on display and for sale at the Imagine Gallery from 5th September.

My house is full with flowers from the garden and paintings waiting to go to The Imagine Gallery, Long Melford, Suffolk, for exhibition. The preview is 5th September. For more details and invitations please contact John.