by Patrick | Mar 7, 2024 | Design, education, Environment, Lifestyle, photography, Travel
The only town in Britain whose name ends in an exclamation mark sits on the North Devon coast. Nearby is the beautiful little town of Bideford, perhaps one of the most beautiful places I have visited in recent years. It was here in the 19th century that the novel...
by Patrick | Mar 1, 2024 | art, Environment, Lifestyle, photography, Travel, wilderness
As the rain continues, one commentator remarked that “Alfriston is afloat”. Flooding from the Cuckmere is commonplace around the village and its church, the ‘Cathedral of the South Downs’, and only increases as the Environment Agency allows the sea defences at the...
by Patrick | Feb 17, 2024 | Uncategorized
Do all artists go through creatively sterile patches? Maybe it’s a bit of creative exhaustion having made and exhibited so many paintings based in the decay of local sea defences, or maybe it is my increasing physical handicaps, but I haven’t been in the studio...
by Patrick | Jan 23, 2024 | Uncategorized
Recently my partner and I took a drive into deepest Devon, so deep we stood on a Hartland cliff looking at the Bristol Channel. My mother hailed from Devon, although that was south Devon. She was born in ‘John’s Cottage’ in Churston near Torquay, and one of my uncles...
by Patrick | Dec 31, 2023 | art, Design, education, Lifestyle, painting, Uncategorized
Nancy and Jim visited today. Nancy was one of the senior assistants in Olga Polizzi’s office at Forte and was the person who approved my design practice as one of the group of practices working on Forte hotels in the 1980’s. She and Jim wanted to know how Goff...
by Patrick | Dec 20, 2023 | Design, Environment, Lifestyle, photography, Remembrance, Travel
Why do I go cruising? This was only my second cruise, and my partner has booked a third, to Iceland. So why? I spent nearly 20 years driving thousands of miles through Europe, Southern Africa and the States reviewing hotels for my online magazine, after a previous 20...
by Patrick | Dec 11, 2023 | art as language, Environment, Garden, Lifestyle, photography
Once Upon a Time there was a writer of fairy tales, Hands Christian Andiscat. Known as the ‘whether-man’, every day he would emerge from beneath his warm bedding and wrapped in his dressing gown Hans would sally forth into the garden where he would try to feel whether...
by Patrick | Nov 11, 2023 | art, art as language, education, Lifestyle
I have written a number of pieces on this website about art education. In my now 60-year career in both art, design and ‘publishing’ I have spent time teaching in college environments. Some of this teaching has been done in FE, running successful Foundation Courses...
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