So it's ten years since I posted my very first blog. Over the years the writing part has increased but the photography has always been the starting point. Each blog, and there have been hundreds, began with a walk or maybe a trip somewhere, and the images from my camera for that day. In those days, shortly after the . . .
A sketchbook from the Covid 19 lockdown.
I'm suffering from a kind of lockdown brain fog. I think it's curable, but I'm not altogether sure. One of the bright spots of my pandemic days has been making these watercolour sketches that I have been doodling away on through out the last few weeks. They are mostly very small, very abstract and some people say they look like graphic . . .
Nice exhibition on the car door this morning
Dripping with morning dew, these silken webs are at their most luminous. Later they fade into dry vegetation, invisible again. Damp and dark they shimmer on the branches, woven art works hanging between the gorse and the brambles. Sometimes they are stretched beyond a circle, or a long leash extends into the . . .
Challenging invisibility by making an exhibition of yourself
It's all still sinking in. The hard work, the experience of exhibiting, the aftermath. Because I work in an alone space it shocked me on the night of the opening that people would actually arrive. When they came I was somehow still in the middle of the making. I had fallen out of bed that morning, showered, put on a blue dress and gone . . .
Interacting with art at the Tate
I spent two days absorbing the art at Tate Modern and Tate Britain the other week. The retrospective of David Hockney was a treat. I don't think I had ever seen an exhibition of his before. But those pictures were in all the books we read during my art college years. It was like re-visiting very old friends. On the south terrace of . . .
Edgy in Lisbon
We are drawn to the edge. Like so many flamingoes we like to dip our toes into the water and paddle while the sun goes down. Lisbon feels edgy in a different way. More used to the western shores of Ireland and the coppery cliffs of Waterford, this is a gentle edge slipping into the Atlantic in the balmy air. But as I begin to find out . . .
Blogging and the things that make us more alive
No artist is pleased… There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive....... Martha Graham Photoblogging has brought me deep into the world of light and mystery, ordinary everyday beauty, friendship across the world and back on a path to writing. It's been every week now for . . .
Angela Jupe
Angela Jupe's Georgian home Bellefield House In March the garden is full of daffodils and hellebores. Wild woodland planting around the house The stable yard stone out buildings have been transformed into rental . . .
The Italian paintbox
When I was in Rome earlier this year as part of this Pilgrimage year, I remembered those tiny paint boxes that we used to get for Christmas when I was a kid. Each little square or tube of colour had an unfathomable name; Yellow Ochre, Warm Sienna, Burnt Umber, Terracotta, Vermillion. I had no idea what they were or how they . . .
Warblers, Andy Warhol and the beautiful art of land
Small flocks of warblers have invaded the herb garden and I've taken a big shine to them. I think this one is a Chiff-chaff but as ever I am open to correction by my twitcher friends. This summer there are fewer butterflies and insects but a lot more warblers. My sister was visiting from Sweden and we both remarked on the eery silence and lack . . .