Inspiration

Each night I go to sleep with the sound of lapwings calling across the fields, their dreams disturbed by fox and weasel, or just lapwing thoughts, conversations. I have my friend, Ann Humble, to thank, in part, for the quantity of birds as she has worked for years now in conservation, as a field worker and then in policy making, and one of their main projects at work has been working with farmers towards the consevation of lapwing breeding grounds. So, yesterday at supper she was telling me about a plan she was drawing up for conservation of the Welsh Clearwing.
She tells me that this is a rare creature, a moth with wings like a dragonfly and yet slightly flocked with soft dark veins. As she speaks about this moth her eyes shine and she paints a picture of the creature clear in my mind. Googling the creature I find there is also a Snowberry Clearwing.

Last night my dreams were filled with a moth like creature with a human face, not clearwings but wing like handmade paper, the size of a cat.  It was so beautiful, so cat like a moth, and yet it would live for only a day.
People ask often where I get my inspiration from. I would say, from people like Ann.

Later today I have an appointment with the bank manager. I wonder if I will find more inspiration there.

Multi tasking.

Lapwings outside calling in cold twilight. I have walked on the beach at low tide with small puppies, a new edition to the pack, a curious selection of motley mongrels ( and their owners ). I have painted, and I have hung some drawings in the hare room at The House of Golden Dreams. Meanwhile there are paintings and a drawing on its way to John Foley at The Imagine Gallery on the other side of the UK.

What I haven't done is look at the two emails from my accountants. Tomorrow.

 

Moments of peaceful solitude, with cats.

Awake early I sit for a while, watching the fire wake from warm slumber to dancing blue flame. All is quiet, but for the singing purr of two cats curled on my lap, a clock tick, the metal heating as the firelight grows. Inside my head rhymes. The Hart, he loves the high hills; The hare, she loves the woods; The knight loves his bright sword; The lady loves her will. Medieval, romantic.
Today there is not enough snow to stop the children going to school. Tom has an exam, seems a little worried by it. I want to paint, draw, stack more of the logs delivered yesterday, walk dogs and work on the walls of The House of Golden Dreams.
Cover of Judy Dyble's cd looks good.

Painting Snow

Yesterday I found my grandmother's wedding ring. So small, gold, over 100 years old. As I slipped it over my finger I could see, in my mind's eye, the slight, frail woman, dead for more than 30 years, as clear as daylight. Objects hold echoes of all those who have touched them.

Walking with the cats as the snow began to fall my mind was full of characters. A man who sleeps beneath a quilt of live birds, small heart beats his lullaby. A woman who can tell the history of each object by touching it. A wolf faced gondolier in a twilight cloak of stars. Dragons.

Stacking logs, thinking of painting, wanting to write. Painting snow. 

A day of birds

Today is a day of birds. Early walking with the cats when a great peregrin, fluffed up against the cold, flew low overhead. Lapwings huddled close to hedge banks for shelter from the storm. Later as I watched a solitary lapwing in search of a flock saw a great gray harrier corsing the field sending song birds scattering. In the garden I put out food for the small birds, peanuts and seeds and cheese. They patterned the snow with delicate footprints.

Settling to work at last after days of restlessness.

New Gallery.

Spent most of yesterday trying to squeeze too many paintings into too small a space. Everything stopped when kids called to say school was closing and as I drove to fetch them it began to snow and the world turned magical. With coal on the fire, the last I think from Tower Colliery in Wales, the house was warm and cosily filled with cats in various melting poses.
Today I started working on a new gallery, The House of Golden Dreams. 
Now I want to clear space in my studio and settle my head to work and get my head around the gallery.
Walking the dogs today, Maurice came too. There were lapwings and to the delight of the dogs a great fox, fleet footed, with a dark bush tail. Now there are a few hundred lapwing outside my studio window. No snow. The rest of the country is being greedy and not sharing.

Frost paintings on car windows.

Frost creatures danced in delight inside my car last night and painted icy patterns on the windows. On the hill the bones of heather flowers were kissed by frost making pools of white across the moorland by the sea. In the early morning sky the bright moon faded gradually as the sun came higher into the sky. The air was sweet and clear and bright sparkling cold.

 

All day taking the exhibition down at the refectory and now my arms and back ache and I want sleep, the house is full to overflowing with books and paintings and I really need to be making some marks on pieces of paper.

But the house is warm and cosy and beautiful.

A day of birds, lapwing and fieldfare

As I walked back up to my studio and looked out of the window a flock of lapwings at least 100 strong launched themselves into the air.
All day they have moved across the field outside while inside my thought have been like bird's wings, failing to settle.
Fieldfare and lapwing. Winter birds. Beautiful.

 

Walked in the snow with beautiful Maurice.

Ssssh.... the world is hushed by snow.

It is snowing. Outside a hush has fallen on the world and great white flakes are dancing down to cover the earth. Inside is warm, logs all stacked and gathered and fire glowing, cats melting, curled on sofas, dogs in their beds. And I have been trying to work but now the evening light is enhanced by snowlight and birds rush to gather the last food before huddling in balls of feathers in cracks in walls, to keep warm. In my sketchbook, all the pretty little horses, in my head, the north wind doth blow and we will have snow, and what will poor robin do then, poor thing? And on the itunes, Lorena McKennit, world music with a medieval folk twist. Perfect.
Let there be snow tonight so the almost full moon can silver the world, let there be snow tomorrow to walk bright ginger cats across its white beauty.

Full moon and early mornings

Full moon in a dark sky and the world silvered by moonlight and frost. Moonshadows broke up the ground into crackled mosaics. Sitting quietly by the fire, heaped with cats while Robin cooked supper I read The Claude Glass by Tom Bollough, a heartbreaking book, haunting, poetic, beautiful. Glass of fizz in one hand, book in the other, peace in my heart, words of beauty singing a story in my head. Perfect.

Walking today my camera ran out of battery, so I could not photograph the sunlight caught like a halo in the finest cats fur, the wind twisted tree with a patch of sky held in its basket bowl of twigs, soft moss emerald bright on a monochrome stone, a dog filled with delight at a brittle stick, a leaf thickened ad beade by frost, a distant flight of birds like a beautiful scarf blown across a fresh blue sky,smoke rising from early morning chimneys.