Aprox. 2 and 3 hours, with thinking time between.

Then 4,5 and 6.......

and finally, 7 or maybe 8 hours later.....

Almost finished, still wet.

People often ask me how long it takes to do a painting. This one took about an hour or two drawing as well, and then there was the rough, which I did whilst watching A Knight's Tale with Heath Ledger and the lion came out looking rather like Heath Ledger, which was strange.

So in this case I would say that it took about 10 hours, and 45 years ( as it has beneath and behind it the experience and learning of a lifetime of drawing and painting. 

In my studio

My studio is now run by dragon time. I chose to have the large clock without numbers and although at first I thought that the clock was a 'bit plasticy' have decided that it does look good on the wall. Will do some more designs soon to add to the ones at the gift shop for The House of Golden Dreams.https://www.facebook.com/TheHouseofGoldenDreams

First mug design almost finished. One more to go, and a powerpoint for Sunday ( talk at Oriel y Parc) and daughter to wave off to Peru, and cousins to see.

I want to play with the idea of time and make clock designs.

Elegant measures

I have measured out my time.

Hours spent painting.

With a kitchen timer shaped like a chicken, sitting ticking away minutes until the bell rings.

With a pomodoro timer on my phone, a tick and a whir and a measure.

With an hour glass where a line of sand falls from one sphere of glass to another. One glass diminishes while the other glass fills and another hour passes.
At night, when I wake, the time passing is spent watching the movement of stars across the sky as the earth tips.

And now with music as I have been introduced to Spotify. And I have discovered Sigur Ros. One hour playlists of wonderful music.

The most elegant is the hour glass. Silent poetry of passing time. And the movement of stars.

On the beach today, then home to work.

On the beach, a fall of flowers. The unwanted gift from a casual lover? A funeral tribute? A curious sea spray of carnations? 

Back home, working through time marked by a line of falling sand.

 

And meanwhile the house stands against the wind, dreaming of summer, while birds flit through the garden and rosehips wait for the coming of redwings.

The Time Thief

Yesterday I spent most of the day gathering together the lost hours from all of the beings that are in and around my house. ( In the UK we have a curious system of time, run by clocks, where once a year the hands of time are turned backwards at 2 am.)

There were four human hours, all different. Each of the hours I caught in a net and moulded into a solid small bead. There were four dog hours that looked a little lazy and ill formed and four cat hours, bright beads like amber. In corners, almost hidden, I found complicated, soft spider hours, fast and scuttling mouse hours and outside there were feathered, drowsy flicks of bird hours, huddled in bundles in warm places. The hours were all from two in the morning. The birds had been sleeping.

It was a warm night, so to add to my string there were aerymice hours from the fast furious hunters of the starlit sky. These were dark, almost so dark that you could not see them, only visible from eye corners. And there were owl hours, curved like claws with moonlight a crescent in their form, somewhere.

And because it was All Hallows Eve there were other hours around from people and creatures who had lived in the house far back to when the stones were gathered from the fields around and shaped into walls. These were the hardest to catch.

Each bright bead formed from stray hours was different in character from the next. Each I gathered to myself, greedy to capture more time for when I needed it. As I strung the hours together the weight of time grew heavy, the hours all lay, coiled around and upon each other, each more beautiful than the last.

By the end of the day I was tired but the moonjar was full and I had hopes of how to use all the time I had trapped. I have so much work to do. I have to finish A Rhyme In Time by the end of January so that it can go to press to be published in the autumn of next year. I have some other work that I must push forward on as my part of this is one of the building blocks of a major project and it cannot progress without some drawings, some paintings. There are paintings that I wish to do, friends who I want to spend my time with and I would like to get out and walk more. And above all I would like time to just sit and think, either at home in the silence of the house or on the hillside, above the sea.

So, I thought I would test my time machine. A mouse hour would be good. Small, and round, it flickered with a nervous energy as I popped it into my mouth and swallowed it down.

What happened next was hard to explain. Mice live in a different time zone from humans. I know that now. An hour was like a year, but I could not use it wisely. Instead I hurried fast around the house, nervously pulling at this and at that, jumping at every loud noise, a minute seeming to be an hour, heart beating faster than the ticking clock. A bird hour was more elegant, but no more use to a human. I just wanted to be out of the house and could almost feel the place where my wings should be, and I yearned for the sky. The hour of a bird trapped in a human throws itself against the cage of the body in its desire to be free.

It had been a good idea, had made a beautiful collection, but it would never work.

You just can't capture time, although, if you are lucky you can steal a little of someone else's with an elegant pattern of words.

Morning Song.

Things that are beautiful:
First light, as the sun rises over the horizon. An every day miracle.
The song of birds that greets the coming of the light.
Stars, still shining in the early morning sky.
The sound of wings brushing the air.
Time, stretched ahead. A whole new day, perfect. Each hour may hold the promise of an unexpected surprise. 
The bone moon in the twilight sky, fading as the sun begins to rule the day, an eternal dance.

There is no way to spell how this makes me feel inside.

Finally found a way to make it work but the painting is still not sitting right. So have sent another rough to my publishers, much lighter, much more movement and much more representative of what is between the covers.

And you can play 'spot the nursery rhyme' with this one. 

 

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.

Time and tide

In my garden plants that were only a few weeks ago small seedlings are now strong and beautiful. The leeks, pulled from the earth, smelled sweet, strong, fresh.

At the beach Robin played with Charlie. The sea had thrown itself back leaving wide clean sand.

Today I started work early, then walked, alone, along berry filled hedges to the blue sea. I stood for a while with the wind wrapped around me and contemplated the texture of water. Sunlight reminded me of a poem from The Barefoot Book of Classic Poems.

 Until I saw the sea

I did not know

that wind

could wrinkle water so.

I never knew

that sun

could splinter a whole sea of blue.

Nor

did I know before

a sea breathes in and out

upon a shore.

by Lilian Moore

Back home I settled again to work and watched the sea of time wash over different sands.

 

Just Imagine

Time slides in the sand of the hour glass, falling steadily, elegantly away. Time ticks with the waving arm of a Chinese lucky cat, tick, tick, ticking in my studio. Time hangs heavy around my neck in the Alice in Wonderland necklace from The Imagine Gallery.

I have much to do.

Today, all I wish to achieve is to do a page of photographs in order to share the wonderful place that is The Imagine Gallery with a wider world.

Also to do a rough for KNTR calendar and then get to work on the artwork tomorrow. And to think about and begin work on the roughs and an image for I Am Cat, which is the book that comes after the Nursery Rhymes which seems to be called A Rhyme in Time. At least I hope it is.

To see more of the beautiful things in the gallery in Suffolk click through on this link.

Sand and horses.

Home. I was only away for a few days and they were beautiful days of sunshine and warm winds, willow trees and herons, paintings and sculpture, old houses that tumbled and twisted and held hidden nests sculpted by wasps, flint, big skies, tall cloud castles and golden fields, lazy ousing rivers, lost lanes, lost villages. I travelled to Robin's by train, intending to work on roughs on the journey, but instead began to read and spent the next four hours in Mexico with The Hummingbird's Daughter. This is the best book I have read for years. I am sad to have reached the end of the story, so far, but love his blog and website.

Home now and the rain is singing on the roof. Heavy showers and blue sky, and I have much to do. Today is my birthday and Robin bought me an hourglass, because he knows of my musings on time. It is darkly perfectly beautiful, and I have found myself just sitting and watching the sands of time run through. (More on the Hour Glass later, when I have more time!)

Horse Feathers no.1, Mother and Child is finished and I have to move away from drawings for a short while to work on I Am Cat in time for Frankfurt Book Fair, and the KNTR foundation calendar piece that is already a month late.

And I want to post pictures of The Imagine Gallery.

And paint hummingbirds.

Photographs

One of my photos has made it through to the Visit Wales Spring Photo competition. Feeling blue a little because it is from the camera that died a terrible squashed death at the weekend, alone beneath the wheels of a car. Although it is labelled St Davids Airfield the photo was taken up the hill behind my house on the rock where I love to write. The ponies were the colour of the bone white lichen that grows so slowly over the stones. The sky so blue and quiet as the sky was closed to traffic.

The winner is decided by how many people go to the page and click the like button, so please do, and invite friends, family, lovers and spouses, children and pets and weasels to do so too. Follow the link here to vote.

Today's list.

1. Think

2. Draw.

3. Prepare snowleopard for a long journey.

4. Take poor Martha to the vets.

5. Cook supper.

6. Pick up dragons and seals and whales and leopards from shoe shop.

7. Walk dogs.




There is a tangle of twigs in the dark thorn branches outside my studio. Magpies are very busy visiting it. As they fly to it there is a flash of white reflected light across my studio walls and the sound of wings. They are so busy. Their chicks must have hatched. Time flies on the wings of pied birds.

Books, Dragonflight, Cats and Time.

This morning I have travelled to Pern and inbetween. I have ridden on the back of a great golden queen. I have curled in bed while Maurice sang a morning song of praise. I have lived through another time and place and tasted the air of another world. Don't you just love books.
All these days I have been searching for a time machine while my house was filled with strange countries made of ink and paper where time exists in a different form, held between covers, waiting.