Category: Lifestyle

  • Teasing teasels

    They were used in industry to tease out threads from wool for spinning. Using photographs and drawings I am teasing out ideas about expressing their structure through colour on both canvas, and if I can figure out a simple way of doing it, in 3D too. I have been walking to regrow muscle and strength…

  • Lanzarote’s Eco-artist

    Lanzarote’s Eco-artist

    Lanzarote is considered by many César Manrique’s most important work of art. His work and influence have marked the external aspect of the island. The natives say that he has “made” Lanzarote. His desire to live with the volcanic lava led him to build his own house in the Taro de Tahiche, now open as…

  • Art: The Future is Yours

    Art: The Future is Yours

    Painting like many other creative areas, is more than just a set of skills, much more. I gained a set of spiritual beliefs that I have tried to live by, and which have enriched my life immeasurably. Apart from anything else my visual training has provided eminently transferable skills I have used across a range…

  • Cliff Walk 27

    Cliff Walk 27

    Yesterday the wind howled across the waves. Spume blew across the shingle and was carried through the air like partially deflated party balloons. Wind driven spray broke hard against the cliffs sending a fine mist of saltwater high into the air. Salt obscured my glasses as raindrops rattled on my hood like buckshot.

  • Luxury on Rails

    Luxury on Rails

    The beauty of the country is showcased through the windows of this train, as are the local standards of service through the charm and courtesy of the staff. Design harks back to an age when grace and pleasure in travel were key ingredients of the experience, when comfort was more important than style alone

  • Towards Journeys End

    Towards Journeys End

    It has taken the year since the operations to fully recover, as much as I ever will fully recover. I’ve had my ‘three score and ten’ now. Probability says I have another decade at least. I intend it to be productive and positive. I paint, therefore I am.

  • The Past is Another Country

    The Past is Another Country

    I enjoyed my bout of nostalgia even if it left me grieving for a nation sold down the river by its politicians. Thank goodness some care about our past, and are willing to give their time and pride to share it with others. You can enjoy these escape hatches too, there are 181 of them,…

  • Passion in Poznan

    Then there she was, the Beautiful Helena, fully revealed in all her glory. What a night time experience!

  • Lunch Out

    The sun tries to break through the autumn mist. Lunch out, “we’re on us ‘olidays”.  Well, yes if just not having to go in to work every day counts as holiday. I ought to feel blessed. Really, I should. I am walking some of England’s most spectacular coastline almost daily to try to build up…

  • Rathfinny’s Riley Stripes

    Rathfinny’s Riley Stripes

     I need the mental resilience to see a reason for moving forward, into developing the ideas into various forms, Digital imagery can be quick and simple to play with but the recent Four Seasons series based on photographs of garden buckets shows that they work best when they go ‘interactive’ with pencils and other implements.

  • A Hole in my Bucket

    Truly it is the Landrover of garden tools and deserves a similar iconic respect as that robust farmers truck achieved .All hail the bucket. A true design icon

  • Long and Winding Road

    “Living is easy with eyes closed Misunderstanding all you see It’s getting hard to be someone but it all works out It doesn’t matter much to me” (Strawberry Field Forever- the Beatles) Funny how on this long and winding road, life goes along. Just three years ago I was running a successful on-line magazine, travelling,…