Newstead Abbey, one of my first locations as a subject for painting after leaving full time employment. I am struggling with colour.
The oil pastel studies below (one showing the view from behind the waterfall), were more successful.
All text, pros, photos & artwork, copyright Ian Gordon Craig.
Oak in a clearing.
Her life spans centuries. In death she provides sustenance and shelter for a myriad of creatures. Her timbers once put roofs over English halls, and the keels of galleons which carried both the literary delights of Shakespearean culture, and the terrible blood lust of Crusading soldiers, across the globe. All beauty is scarred.
Now she stands alone, isolated within a forest clearing created by a lifetime of casting shadows on those close by. We could learn from her example.
Late night thoughts.
Tick, tock.
It's worth being up late just to hear the ticking of the clock, unspoiled by the constant soundscape of urban life. It's the big white one through the square window above my head. My mother once said I would never be alone as long as I had the tick of a clock to listen to. I suspect that was a voice of experience. But my child's Timex wristwatch had a very short life span. Now, being alone is fine. Feeling alone would not be fine. Thankfully there have been very few times I've felt the latter.
Tick, tock.
Creativity is like a companion of sorts. It occupies your thoughts like a cerebral conversation, your mind exploring the possibilities each idea presents. And then at the end of it all there is this whole new creation, occupying a space where nothing previous existed. "A companion" is the closest I could ever get to a description of "doing art". It's like you were born with a double, but that double is only there, making you feel complete, when you’re creating something.
Tick, tock.
I bet the two old ladies in the white cottage opposite my childhood home, who had button boxes and tin tea caddies on the mantelpiece above their log fire, listened to the clock of an evening. Or maybe the radio? We only ever listened to the radio on a Sunday lunch time: "Round the Horn", consisting of double entendres I was far too young to understand, but which sounded hilarious just the same. Radio was mostly a holiday event for us. Me and big sister in caravan bunk beds, with Radio Luxembourg phasing in and out: "When the mist’s arising and the rain is falling, and the wind is blowing cold across the moor, Johnny Remember Me”.
Tick, tock.
All text, pros, photos & artwork, copyright Ian Gordon Craig.
