Category: Remembrance

  • End Game?

    I have explored techniques like collage and photography but the media themselves have contributed to the failures there. So now I must go down to the studio again, for there my future waits.

  • Winter of 1947

    World War 2 hadn’t been over for two years yet. The British were still under a regime of rationing of food, clothing and fuel. The allocated rations were lower than they had been during World War 2 as supplies were diverted from Britain to feed starving peoples on the continent of Europe.

  • That’s Life

    Pleasures must be paid for, and politicians steal other people’s successes to build their own monuments. Many suffered as I did, but I also became an orphan and broke.  My marriage broke, my father died, my design practice failed. But the human spirit in an artist is steel, we bend not break, survive and continue…

  • Ravillious Revisited at the Towner

    There has been a Ravillious room at Eastbourne’s Towner Gallery for quite a long time. Reworking now in a generous and long overdue space liberated by the addition of new galleries downstairs breathes new life into appreciating his short-lived genius.

  • Passwords

    now we have password systems which need password systems themselves to protect the protections that protect our passwords. To change the password I need to download another piece of software, which requires me to use my mobile phone to download a number key so that I can unlock it to get the code to unlock…

  • Colour

    The first rose, what a moment to savour. Will incomers to this country ever feel the special joy that brings to an Englishman? Watching blooms form on the chestnut – being teased that red flowers marked the female chestnuts, white flowers the boys – and you know that it is the Spanish form with its…

  • A Garden

    Ten of the thirty-one days in March we had frosts, but bumblebees have been around for a couple of weeks, and I saw my first caterpillar of the year and heard the first skylark on the Down above the town

  • The Death Sting

    I walk with a camera, sometime with my partner, sometime accompanied by a man and his dog but mostly alone, looking for the delights of man and nature. My painting is paused whilst I try to figure a way of working that will not challenge my body. I think of Matisse working in bed aided…

  • Stalled but engine running…

    In my last post in November, I wrote of my mental confusion and the twists and turns I was making to find a way forward with my work. Since then, I have done plenty of work with the camera, but the problems remained unresolved. I am beginning to realise that many of the problems stem…

  • Empires End

    “You guys have no idea how painful it is to have been young during the absolute peak era of the greatest empire in human history and now be forced to watch it all unravel. The saddest part is that we are doing it to ourselves. Absolutely agonizing experience. Like watching the most beautiful person you…

  • Mary Watts

    Mary Watts

    Mary who? I tried to find her in my art reference books. Mary Seton Watts, wife of the Victorian establishment painter and sculptor George Frederic Watts (1817 – 1904), and he is definitely in the books.  First British artist to have a gallery devoted just to him, it is claimed. His work, including his portrait…

  • Henry V – lessons from history

    I’ve just been reading Juliet Barkers analysis of Agincourt. Not as entertaining as Bernard Cornwell’s story (he uses her research) but far more detailed and informative of reality. Recently we have spent much time denying the relevance of history to current events, toppling statues to past greatness, all to appease urban minorities. Barker’s book illustrates…