Greenhouse

This time last year I got carried away in the dark, overgrown patch behind the barn where I think someone once kept chickens. There were waist high thickets of vicious brambles, bits of half burnt wood, broken fence, smashed glass and a large piece of yellow plastic that looked like part of a vehicle but there was also a cherry tree and a grape vine. The thing about getting carried away in a garden is, you can measure your progress and achievements in a satisfying way whilst getting fresh air and deep splinters; much more tangible and healthy than posting images of half finished work online, casting out lines to the internet for feedback and approval. Given my traumatic relationship with the fragile uncertainties of rental life, it was a big leap of faith to invest so much time and effort and I had no idea why I bothered except that it bothered me that the cherry tree was getting strangled and it was a distraction from my creative malaise. Of course I quietly dreamed of a greenhouse.

Back in my old life on the North York Moors, my son had worked through the night to put together our wonderful Freecycle greenhouse but just a few months later we got evicted. It was one of the hardest things to leave. While I was dreaming and wishing, Rupert must have already decided to take that financial leap of faith and so my birthday present this year, our third year in this place, was a tiny green framed greenhouse! It turns out the patch I cleared gets a lot more summer sun than expected and it has been, along with the owls, a joy and obsession this summer. A greenhouse in woodland in a rented garden is a risk on so many levels, but it is my happy place and I’m very lucky. I’m imagining sitting in there with a hot water bottle, a sketch book and a mug of something hot in the winter but that might be a bit optimistic, I’ve forgotten how cold it gets.

This summer was special and interesting for lots of reasons. While my creative confidence plummeted and I made very little of my own work, the workshops I was teaching really seemed to take off. People want to learn and Experiences rather than Things are often what people choose to spend their precious money on. Two venues in particular have been wonderful – Higham Hall is my dream venue ( it has The Perfect Studio Sink) and my first workshop there felt pretty special, partly because amongst the students was a couple, Stephen and Cindy, celebrating their Golden Wedding, what an honour! They had chosen to spend their special day at a Michelin starred restaurant and at my workshop, does that mean I get a star too? As we chatted and I commented on Stephen’s lovely Lancashire accent, I mentioned my dear bookshop friend Mr Smalley (also from Lancashire, who tragically died last year). Incredibly Stephen had known him at school! I couldn’t believe it, I almost cried. Roger Smalley, author of books on working class movements and socialist history, was 80, didn’t use a computer and used to come to the bookshop with a handwritten list and often a delicious cake from Chesters by the River “to make up for the fact that you’re at work on such a nice day”. I miss him, I don’t think he realised how much he would be missed. Life is full of seemingly random but precious connections.

I also taught my first residential workshop retreat at Rydal Hall this summer and loved it, despite the hard work and extra planning, not quite able to shake the sense of being paid to be on holiday! I had my own little room and even managed a lake swim with one of the students after the session and before our lovely evening meal. The grounds at both Rydal and Higham are so beautiful and being able to wander around the sunflower terrace at Rydal in the dusk and sit alone in the Grot looking out at the waterfall was the perfect end to an intense day of teaching.

And now I’m almost up to date here. The summer feels like a distant memory already, two days until the Autumn equinox and the garden is looking ragged and windswept. I have that seasonal urge to gather and prepare for winter, make jam, check the woodpile and polish the car headlights. I dread the clocks changing this year more than ever because the other thing that happened this summer was our long planned camping trip to France and a very much unplanned trip to Le Centre Ophtalmologique du Mont Saint Michel by bicycle.

I get a lot of visual weirdness with my migraines but walking back to the tent one night it felt as thought there were flashes going off just in the edge of my vision. In the morning I woke up to an ink splatter world in my right eye, black dots, white dots with black edges and a cloud that drifted like ink in water. I panicked, fearing a detached retina and we decided that the aim of that day’s cycle ride would be an optician in Avranche. It ended up being 3 hours in a French eye clinic where I tried to remember the lines I’d rehearsed, trawling up my ancient O Level French – I’m worried about my right eye “Je m’inquiète pour mon œil droit” but I’m pretty sure that instead of describing “des éclairs lumineux et des points noirs dans les yeux” I said, sounding like the policeman in Allo Allo, “I have eclairs and many black bridges in my eye”. Anyway, it turns out I’m just old, my retina is still there but the vitreous has detached (a common and inevitable thing apparently but a bugger if you’re an artist and bookseller) and I need to wait for my brain to catch up. We cycled back, me blind in one eye from the dilating drops, and managed to enjoy the rest of the week en France before heading back a week early. It was a shame, I felt bad to be such a liability but on a positive note it did give me a few more much needed days at home to work on the secret project I want to tell you about as soon as I’m allowed.

Close work and a comical battle with a glass marble probably aren’t the best treatment for poorly eyes (I’m wondering about getting a patch, like the Nadine in Twin Peaks!) but it was managed and the handover completed, all with the shortest of deadlines. I’ll tell you more very soon but for now I’m off to make some lunch and give this keyboard a rest. You are kind for reading, thank you. x

Owl Summer

Part of my display at Higham Hall Open Day in July.

The last day of my summer break. I’m here in my usual position, feet on the desk, head in the clouds, wishing more than ever that I had given myself permission to build a regular journaling habit. Is permission the right word? If I think about it too much I spiral off into a big, inertia building debate with myself about why I write here; who am I writing for, what’s the point, is it any good, shouldn’t I be making some prints to sell or doing the washing up instead? This blog is very old now and almost out of storage space but it’s still oddly precious to me, which is why I’m cross with myself for not writing little and often instead of trying to remember a whole summer’s worth of things I want to say.

It’s been a summer of owls and gardens, a precious gifted greenhouse, creative workshops in glorious locations, hot days in the bookshop, family occasions full of love and most recently some unexpected filming and an abbreviated trip to France. Maybe I need to get creative and not try to cram it all in one post.

My birthday greenhouse in the wood.

In late April the Melbreak Barn Owl Group fitted a nest box in the barn thanks to some funding they had received from Farming in Protected Landscapes (FiPL). We had to get permission from our landlord and the old openings on the gable end were slightly widened with a little landing shelf added on the outside. I was told it was probably too late for a nesting pair this year but everything was perfect for a future owl family to move in. Then, in June they came to monitor the site and assuming the box would be empty, opened it without blocking the exit. Standing outside I saw the owl fly out into the trees, there were five eggs! I was so excited I couldn’t speak, to think she had been there all the time if I’d only known how to look. And so the owl summer began.

Cyanotype made on a t-shirt in May (image cleaned up using photoshop to remove the background)

I felt as though one of my pictures had come alive.

While the female was in the nest the male went out hunting to keep her fed and I sat on the doorstep night after night waiting to catch sight of him, a swoop of silent white in the never quite dark summer. Some nights I stood quietly in the wood garden where the washing line is, pretended to be washing, hardly daring to breath, just for a fleeting glimpse. I worried about the heat, I worried that I couldn’t hear the right sounds or that I hadn’t seen him for days and Rupert worried about me worrying but eventually in July the owl people came back to check and ring the owlets. So I finally met my two neighbours , who clearly hadn’t fried in the heatwave or starved due to a national vole shortage, in fact they were big for their age (oh, maybe they ate the other 3 eggs!), looking stoned and dishevelled and around two weeks from fledging.

One of the owlets. Thalia is qualified to handle wild birds and she expertly ringed this one, avoiding the razor sharp claws.

It really was a highlight of my year, I’d never seen a barn owl in the wild before and suddenly they were everywhere. I knew of a nest nearer to the lake and now my evening bike rides to the swimming spot also included sightings of the owls, hunting at dusk, once flying right over my head with a doomed vole clutched in its talons as I wobbled about distractedly on my bike.

Waiting for them to fledge I was fooled one night by a gang of freshly emerged Tawny owls from the big tree, who perched on the chimney pots, peered down at me from the telegraph pole and generally messed about in the garden making a racket like naughty teenagers on their first solo trip. Eventually one night after a very long wait I saw one owlet leave the nest, I haven’t seen or heard them since but I hope that “my” two owls and their parents, will make it through winter and next year I might even be able to get a camera for the nest box. I’m so grateful to the Melbreak Barn Owl Group.

Something about the whole thing, etherial ghost-like birds combined with the heatwaves and drowsy days of summer, really fed the part of me that grew up in the 70’s on what is now called Folk Horror (was it then?), The Owl Service, The Moon Stallion and the Children of the Stones. Here I was at 59 feeling all the feels of my 9 year old self, cross legged on the warm concrete path waiting for something magic to happen. There is a queasy stillness and dreamlike quality to a warm summer dusk and I do believe in magic, I do I do!

My cyanotype (Tawny) owl light with citronella candle to ward off the midgees.

And so , with all good intention to continue in another post and with the teaser photo below to keep you interested, I’m off to make coffee and plan how I can spend more time making art and less time thinking about it.

Still to come in future episodes…. how I superglued my MacBook shut whilst working on a secret commission, how I spent a day visiting a French eye hospital by bicycle and what were these people doing in the garden …

Reading: I’m re-reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder books (again) after watching the new Netflix series of Little House on the Prairie, alongside Caroline Fraser, Prairie Fires her biography of Wilder which gives a fascinating account of the history, often tragic, controversial and disturbing. More on this I think, I’ve been thinking about it and what the books mean to me a lot.
My “holiday book” which I didn’t get a chance to start on actual holiday, Sharon Gosling, The Hidden Library and I’ve just finished Joan Barfoot, Gaining Ground.

Balance

This is the view from the little door facing the lane (it is little, even I bang my head on it regularly). I’ve been training the clematis along a rope and now for the first time in 59 years I’ve realised that clematis smells like heaven! The dusty, pink-marshmallow-sweets, scent of Spring that I couldn’t identify turns out to be clematis and I’m so absurdly pleased that I’ve spent a lot of time on the doorstep, sniffing the air, like the woman in a weather house waiting for sunshine. I’m also spending a lot of time gazing into the pond, waiting for the solitary Ramshorn snail to appear (I call him Foghorn) and watching the pond skaters doing their thing. This was a green slimy trough when we moved here and it’s been a joy to watch it balance out and become a diverse habitat (with the help of some plants I bought from Waterside Nursery) attracting birds as well as pond creatures.

Ok, but what about being an artist and stuff? Nevermind all that gazing into ponds and sniffing flowers… Well you might well ask and I’m going to try and be honest here without sounding too full of gloom and discontent. The thing is, I’m sure you’ve noticed, my arty self has definitely done a runner in recent years and whilst part of this is down to lack of confidence, some of it is because bookish things are paying my rent these days and it’s a romantic myth to believe that money isn’t important to artists, we all need it sadly. My part time bookselling job and even more part time admin. role for the Lakeland Book of the Year Awards feel all consuming at the moment. I’m terrified of making mistakes which of course I have done because I’m a human being not an Ai – the typo in the newsletter link, the coffee spilt on the fancy bookshop chair, the grumpy email from disappointed authors who didn’t make the longlist, more typos (half the time caused by bloody autocorrect!) – it all seems so much more consequential when you’re working for someone else. It’s made me more aware than ever of the people behind the emails I’ve had, the lives that other people are living, full time. I sent 20 rejection emails out last week, individually, because I know how crap group rejection letters have made me feel. It took me all day and I’m sure there’s an app. I could have used but I’m stubborn and like to do things the hard way!

I think the word is Sonder – a realisation that everyone you interact with has their own stuff going on, their own particular work/life stresses. What I have going on seems to be a chronic inability to set aside time to prioritise furthering my own art practice. I want to grow but increasingly my pot has been shoved behind the shed and left unwatered.

Teaching workshops has become the main source of income for my arty self and there’s nothing quite like seeing your name in lights in the fancy service station. Please don’t misinterpret what I’m going to say next. I never planned to teach and it’s very hard work. I’m shy and full of self doubt so it’s physically exhausting; I don’t have all the answers but I do love it when people are happy and inspired. There have been people on my workshops who have inspired me, people who might have been friends in other circumstances and people who have taught me through seeking answers to a particularly awkward question. Sometimes it’s not great though: it can feel as though it’s one way traffic, giving away years of hard won knowledge whilst often little interest is shown in my work, just the desire to know HOW it was done, not why. I sound churlish and I am genuinely looking forward to my next workshops at Rydal Hall and Higham Hall, I think I’m getting better at them every time (packing and prepping is definitely smoother anyway!) but I know that I need to seek a better balance to knock off that bitter edge and that can only come from investing in my own creative development somehow.

Today I’ve been thinking about what that might mean. Well, not just today, I think about it all the time. I’ve just finished reading my parents’ friend John Wright’s book about his incredible life as a designer (mentioned in the previous post) and apart from loving all the personal detail and stunning designs it did reinforce the uncomfortable truth that art and design at a certain level can often be the preserve of the rich. Professional artists need to sell their work, unless they are already financially comfortable or funded by grants and bursary schemes, so finding the right market is vital. I’m never going to make a living and achieve longed for stability with occasional village hall fairs, the odd £3.50 website sale and ordering 20 cards at a time from my printer (in fact this month I’ve earned more from selling a pair of old climbing shoes and a faded pair of trousers on Vinted than I have from selling my own work!) So for now I will continue to blend my three jobs and feel grateful for the amazing luck and happiness they do provide – as I gaze out of the window at the bobbing peony buds, drifting dandelion seeds and sudden sunshine.
Dreams can come true though, if you put the work in, and for the record if any fairies are reading, I’d love to make huge cyanotypes for a fancy building or demonstrate the process at the Chelsea Flower Show (see Francis Tophill’s Kings Foundation Garden this week ) or be artist in residence at Kew, design a dinner service for Liberty, illustrate a book or become master of a heritage craft. Until then I shall tend my garden and watch the birds.

When I started writing this today I noticed that I’ve used 87% of the storage allowed by WordPress for this blog! What happens when it gets full, what is the environmental cost of having all these words stored on a server somewhere? Oh my goodness! A while ago I did look at having the whole thing printed into a book, it would be about 6 volumes and cost over £500 for one copy but perhaps that is the way forward. What to do with a digital legacy and the climate change implications of storing loads of “stuff” is definitely something I had not really thought about until recently. All those videos of ducks eating peas and cats in boxes!
Now is it time for tea? I think it is. Time for gardens and soil and mugs of tea while the sun’s still on the bench. Sending apologies for typos and research into personal development grants can wait. Thanks for reading… really, thank you x

Reading: Nina Bawden, Tortoise by Candlelight. Victoria Bennett, The Apothecary by the Sea and Janice Hadlow, The Other Bennett Sister

Melissa Harrison, The Given World

Love and Pride

Today marks the long awaited Spring Equinox and after a wet dark winter here in Cumbria I’ve been celebrating. Sweltering and recklessly “casting clouts” all over the place in the 13 degree heat, which it turns out is my ideal maximum temperature because I was actually a bit too hot gardening; fantasising about greenhouses, raised beds and apple trees and inevitably thinking about cyanotypes (sunlight! shadows!). I’m a landlord’s dream when it comes to gardens, despite my better judgement given previous experiences, and over the past few months I’ve been slowly clearing the huge bramble thicket, rolling it up like a dangerous carpet and stacking piles of rotting pallets in the back garden behind the barn. At one time somebody has planted some beautiful things here which had become choked by the vicious impenetrable thorns – a cherry tree, fruit bushes, even hostas and roses. It intrigues me because as far as I know these houses have always been rented (since at least the 1970s) and making a garden does involve having a long view and some faith that it is safe to put down roots. Annual or perennial? In the book “Keep Going” by Austin Kleon which I’ve just finished, one of his blackout poems really resonated with me, both literally and as a metaphor for creativity…

Indoors, in my studio room (but always distracted by the view and the idea of another coffee), I’ve been setting myself tiny sketchbook tasks to rebuild confidence and to try and rediscover the love of drawing for fun and spending time consciously NOT thinking about how to sell my work or make money. Last time I wrote that my blog subscription had just renewed but that was nothing compared to this month when my website renewed, coinciding with zero sales. I feel almost giddily resigned to it though, there will be good months and bad months and things will even out, probably. I am not a good capitalist.

I think this uncharacteristically sunny outlook might be something to do with a brave thing I did last weekend. You see, this time last week I was anxious and cross because I was about to go to an event I was really conflicted about, and by Sunday I was feeling absolutely fat and content, full of love and pride. Three wonderful nurturing things, my dad’s exhibition, Mother’s Day and the gift of a family friend’s beautiful book.
It’s been hard to decide how to be around the ridiculous fact that the Thirsk gallery showing my father’s prints (a collection of 52 images inspired by Joris-Karl Huysman’s, À Rebours, completed between 1974 and 2017) is intimately connected by family/business and god knows what, to the people who caused us so much grief when they evicted us during the pandemic, kept our deposit and made us doubt our own sanity at times . It’s a sickening, almost comical connection that could not have been foreseen when we left North Yorkshire for what we hoped would be a fresh start in Cumbria. The six degrees of separation theory seems to have been cruelly missing several degrees in this case because it’s a tangled Gordian knot (if you can be bothered to read back, also bare in mind that my version has been toned down for fear of repercussions) and I really wasn’t sure I could trust myself to be in the same room.

Hey, I did it though, I wore my best invisible “f**k you” mask and three generations of Tillyers were there for theoretical protection! The fact that my whole family were together, along with lots of old friends including my school art teacher, to celebrate my father’s skill and achievement meant that I suddenly realised that it was their loss – you only get that kind of love and admiration if you are good at what you do, work hard and don’t trample on others for your own gain. The next day we all hung out at the studio, eating hot cross buns celebrating Mothers’ Day and laughing a lot , according to the pictures, which is always a good thing.

3 generation of Tillyer men

rare family portrait

books at the exhibition

Seven Decades of Design
by John Wright

view of Villefranche in John’s book.

York up the big studio ladder

A few months ago my mum and my daughter Sara went to Hastings for the book launch of my parents’ friend, the designer John Wright. I’d been waiting impatiently for Sara to bring my copy when she next visited and when she handed it over she said “you’ll cry”, which of course I did. It reaffirmed what I already knew which is that the group of Middlesbrough art students who set off on the bus to London in the very early 60’s were, are, a pretty unique and amazing bunch. As a young person, and certainly as a child, your parents friends aren’t particularly cool or exciting are they, to me they were just people who turned up sometimes, or came to exhibition openings and I really wasn’t interested in that kind of art, I think I just wanted to be ordinary. Now, reading John’s book and thinking about that generation of creative people, it’s wonderful to see how they all supported and influenced each other; it felt like it was also making sense of my life a bit, putting some things in context. The chair in this picture is one of John’s designs while another features in the 1966 film Blow Up; he was the person who gave daddy a copy of À Rebours when they first shared a dingy North London bedsit in the 60’s. I wish John’s book was widely available so you could read it, there is so much social history here as well as design history, but I think it was difficult to find, credit and obtain permission for all the images, going back decades so instead it is something for his friends and clients to treasure and a way to honour his husband Bayley John Carter, who died far too young. Yes I did cry.

I’m rushing this a bit, there is lots more I want to say but I want to post it before it’s not today anymore and being too precious and over thinking is probably why I don’t write very often.

Reading: Sarah Hall, Helm and re-listening to the audio book of Maggie O’Farrell , Hamnet ( I’m not ready to see the film yet as I will weep far too much)

Looking sideways at stars

snow on the tops and the snowdrops earlier in February.

The rain and wind is absolutely lashing the studio window today which makes me feel cozy and inclined to sit with a warm drink and try to write. I can see empty plant pots skittering down the path, leggy daffodils flattened, barrel pond overflowing and snowdrops bobbling wildly in protest but I think if I ventured out to rescue those pots, it might feel warmer; a hint of spring in the air. I’ve already got things in trays lined up on windowsills, ideas for making more growing space and seed packets waiting like promises to Summer. All I want to do is grow things and make a garden – this is not ideal when I’m actually meant to be doing ART and cobbling a late life career together.

In January this blog automatically renewed again, before I had a chance to have a big think about it. I pay to keep it free of adverts and distraction and honestly dream daily of things I could write about, but inevitably it is me that is distracted and lulled into an uncomfortable inertia by addictive social media, self doubt and the unholy mess when those two collide. The truth is I’ve never felt more like quitting being “witchmountain” for a while and trying to reset my relationship with creativity.

I spoke to my daughter today about the fact that my website also renews in March – a hefty £300 which commits me to calling myself a business with appealing things to sell, sell, sell. We spoke about art and work and finding the burning desire to create, about Rose Wylie, women artists, class, privilege, money, how any one could afford to do A Year of Nothing and what it all means (we didn’t know!). I think she was incredibly insightful when she said “the trouble is you’ve been trying to make a product to make money, thinking about what other people want (and they often don’t want it) instead of making what YOU want first ” Have I been stuck for so long because I’ve been thinking back to front?

something sad and beautiful that was shown to me in the bookshop.

In January I took on another bookish role, doing some part time admin. for the Lakeland Book of the Year Awards. This, combined with my two days at the bookshop has given me a subsistence level income (until July) which takes some of the pressure off needing to sell my own work, but sometimes feels all consuming. I now have 3 jobs, all very different spinning plates and the one I’m giving the least amount of attention and love to is my own artwork. It feels too easy to look away from witchmountain and risk dropping that plate because it requires so much more effort, commitment and emotion.

I’m NOT quitting though, just letting myself glance sideways for a while, like you do sometimes at stars. I’m so lucky to have this beautiful room, the longed for “room of one’s own” if not the private income ( or Arts Council grant? how do people do it?) to support a year off researching, learning and seeking inspiration. Everything is here waiting for me when I’m ready to turn away from the window and back to what happens inside the room.

outside the window!

inside on the shelf

It’s not all introspection and gloom. In the first week of February I taught my first big workshop of the year at Rheged near Penrith. Teaching was what I had decided to focus on, and invest in, this year and this was a great start. Ten lovely women, one huge room with views across to the Peninnes, access to a fancy coffee machine for brain fuel and a lot of wonderful printmaking. We tried out some Jacquard pre-coated fabric sheets as well as lots of different papers which eventually filled the line I’d strung from pillar to pillar like the most beautiful bunting you ever saw. There was a minor flood when we tipped over a full rinsing tray in the ladies bathroom but I haven’t heard any reports of it turning the room blue…yet. It was such hard work, lots of time setting up, clearing up and preparing, but so nice to spend time with interested and enthusiastic people – I really need to remember this when I get anxious about teaching, it’s always worth it.

students’ work at Rheged

I feel here that I need to send out an extra annual thank you to some very special people who break (and mend) my heart every month by supporting me on Kofi. I often think that for these people alone I should be more productive but the fact is that their small acts of kindness seem to be entirely altruistic and this makes the world a better place, they make the world a better place and inspire me to try to do the same rather than be overwhelmed by guilt and imposter syndrome.

Now perhaps it’s time for another coffee, maybe I’ll set the timer and draw my coffee cup or doodle whatever comes into my head for ten minutes, I shall avoid the hoover and the urge to check emails, I will breath in and out, listening to the rain, noticing how it feels, I will not compare myself to others, I will sharpen my pencils and keep trying.

detail of a sketch of Uffington

more detail of Uffington white horse drawings

Reading: Eowyn Ivey, Black Woods, Blue Sky – Oooh, this feels like something I was obsessed with back in 2009 when love and bears and northern myths were my inspiration. I’m really loving it so far and hoping it leaves me on a high – because the older I get the less I’m up for peril, despair, violence or other physical extremes.
I’m in a Canada/Alaska/North Country phase at the moment and picked this up by accident after binge reading a lot of Elizabeth Hay which I was totally immersed in.

What if it was always meant to be scones?

Slippered feet on the table, mug of tea in hand, it’s time to think about all the things I’ve been meaning to say about October, my October. When I write blog posts I always start by choosing the pictures and often that is the reason I don’t write more frequently; because I don’t have enough images I want to share. I have lots of jumbled words and thoughts to write down but I rely on the visual structure and perhaps I just assume you’re like me and often I confess to skipping the wordy bits of the newspaper in favour of the colour supplement (I realise that this is very old fashioned, I wonder if anyone under 40 ever buys an actual paper newspaper?)
Anyway , it’s been a month of small highs and challenging lows – Rupert’s leg injury, my chronic migraines/post menopausal self confidence slump/ongoing search for the meaning of life – which have been kept almost in check by a small, symbolic, lake adventure and my annual obsession with behaving like a fat Brambly Hedge mouse preparing for winter.

The Brambly Hedge website is gorgeous and full of seasonal recipes as well as the pure joy of Jill Barklem’s illustrations.

The canoe trip was a spur of the moment idea to cheer us up after a stressful morning shopping, for painkillers for Rupert’s poorly leg, in Keswick, dodging stressed out dogs (why do people take them shopping?) and drifts of dreamy tourists. It was a beautiful autumn day, low mist and patches of golden light so we dragged the neglected boat out of the hedge and got it on the van roof, packed a hasty picnic and drove the mile and a half to the lake to try and remember why we’re here. The boat was filthy, heavy and full of smelly leaves, we were both aching and grumpy and the wheel kept falling off the trolly as we dragged everything through the woods to the shore, squeaking and groaning (us and the boat). It seemed as though it might all have been a bad idea and I was worried that it would set Rupert’s recovery back even further but the moment we pushed out onto the smooth ink dark water it was like flicking a switch – the quiet.

A cup of tea, a veggie sausage sandwich and toasted marshmallows in the mist, before paddling back in the dark with not a sound except ripples and owls. Dragging the boat back through the woods in the dark felt easier, I suppose WE were lighter despite the sausages, tired in a good way and glad we’d made the effort (we’d also just finished watching Band of Brothers – which was totally immersive and something I never would have watched except we had the box set and the WiFi was broken by Storm Amy- and I think we were both secretly channeling some inner heroic stoicism! My huge shadow in the torchlight looked like I was wearing a flak jacket and dragging a tank). Symbolic canoes? Because navigating life it often seems to be 85% heavy boats full of mud and broken wheels on squeaking trolleys but the 15% bit, with smooth sailing, flickering bats, owls and hot sugar on sticks makes it worth the struggle doesn’t it… well that’s how my life feels, I don’t know if yours does? I’m not sure but maybe just thinking about that switch flicking moment, the glide out to calm and quiet, might help in the difficult moments.

Meanwhile, back in the studio I have been taking stock, finishing some old things with added stitches and wondering about the future. The Cumbria Printmakers Out of Ink exhibition was lovely – carefully planned, well publicised and a really interesting showcase of diverse printmaking techniques and ideas. It was great to meet Susie and Martin again. I used to work for Susie’s mum at Northern Lights Gallery and we reminisced about the time they house-sat for us at The Evil Barn up Newlands Valley, dodging horse sized spiders and probably resisting burning the furniture to keep dry and warm! They now run the local art shop and had really helped publicise the exhibition as well as championing printmaking in general with their Artist of the Month window and exciting display of supplies. We also had Jack and Emily from Market Place Print Studio demonstrating letterpress and letting people print a specially designed card. Like most 58 year olds I forget I’m not 30, until I see the photos, feel the ache or catch a reflection, most of us in Cumbria Printmakers are not spring chickens so it’s great to have some younger people adding their energy to the group.

Letterpress card designed by Jack Fawdry Tatham of Market Place Print Studio, Cockermouth.

And so to the title of this post…

I write as if you know me and have followed this story since its beginning in April 2008, but more probably if you’re reading this you just fell through a hole in the internet because you were searching for a new canoe or something. Perhaps though, you remember a post from November 2013 where I made a big decision and received the most beautiful gift . No? Well I’d been bemoaning my situation, reluctantly running a gallery cafe, baking scones instead of using my hard won art degree and out of the blue Charlotte Bezzant wrote me a little note which arrived with a small box containing a silver bear. I was, and am, still overwhelmed by such a random and thoughtful act of kindness. The note said ” I read your blog and hope this will brighten your day, it won’t always be scones”
My heart!

Tiger biscuits with whisky cream on a plate by Seatree Argyll.

In a roundabout way of course making that decision (and having others made for me by circumstance) worked out, I am an artist, I don’t serve pints or scones for a living anymore. But recently, continuing the theme of many previous blog posts where I’ve attempted to untangle how creative people make a living, I’ve been trying to evaluate what I do and why. I don’t think I’m alone in this, it’s possibly a late mid-life panic reaction, looking back at where other paths might have led. Basically my bookshop job just about covers my outgoings so can I continue to be an artist if I just work harder at self promotion? Could I find a mentor or invest in new equipment and what can I change to make my practice emotionally and financially rewarding, because at the moment it is more often than not neither. I “find my joy” in the garden or the kitchen. I need to change things radically because at the exhibition although my work is admired and commented on I sold just 14 cards …. and I’ve written about this too often for comfort.
Next year I have really exciting workshops at beautiful venues booked in and I’m wary of trashing my own brand by continuing to be open about the difficult bits, but during this self audit I did worry that maybe it was scones all along … a fear that perhaps I hadn’t used my real gifts and I should have been a baker or a gardener after-all ! By nature I’m a nest builder and nothing gives me greater pleasure than a kitchen full of warm baking smells or jars of jam, kimchi or fire cider preferably with a house full of people to fuss over, I no longer make art for pleasure and that seems a momentous and frightening thing to say. If my dream is to live simply, to make mouth watering tiger biscuits, clear the brambles in the overgrown field to imagine a productive orchard garden, fill the cupboards with pickles and potions, sometimes make art or craft that makes ME happy, as well as all that treading lightly on the earth stuff, how do I get there from here?

Still. I suppose any creative thing that becomes a job can start to lose its shine, I don’t think running a bakery would have been the answer in reality and I also think if I’d had a summer of successful events and social activities I might be feeling differently… so perhaps a plan is forming and it is a case of knuckling down… more applications to print fairs, more bespoke workshops at home so that I can also indulge my Brownie badge hostess skills and a new creative challenge or collaboration to reinvigorate my interest … any ideas or recommendations? Give me a shout if you’re an artist/maker who has found a course/group or mentor that really made a difference to your work life.

The days are short and I need to shuffle about in some leaves before the light goes, so until next time, stay cozy and celebrate the seasonal shift. x

Reading: Austin Kleon, Show Your Work and Keep Going , Jacob Kerr, The Green Man of Eshwood Hall and various books on fermenting things

Drift

Summer drifting away into Autumn again; there’s always the initial feeling of sadness, wanting to cling on to something ephemeral, until the joys of the new season are remembered. The plunge into Autumn seems even more sudden this year as we have been away a bit and returned to hedgerows full of hawthorn berries, wind, rain and hail-swept garden and the realisation that my attempt to grow outdoor tomatoes in Cumbria was probably over optimistic despite the various heatwaves. I’m looking forward to what looks like a bumper year for rosehip syrup though and log fires and apple pies and maybe a slow knitting project… or even better the elusive creative surge to produce new work.

Sitting in my customary position with my feet up on the desperately empty studio desk, laptop balanced on my knees I’m still daydreaming about this Summer and the memories made, how the most perfect days also seemed to have, for me, a built in nostalgia for childhood, or early-parenthood. Summers in story books, novels and songs; slowing down and floating about. There is still some French sand in my shoes, a pile of shells, pebbles and pressed flowers on the shelf, beside paper bags of collected seed from this garden and others – a wish and a promise, hope for next year.

Studio shelf

Stone Circle – cyanotype sketch

In August my daughter organised a family get together in Northumberland – she is the family organiser! We stayed in a wing of Whalton Manor near Morpeth and I drove my squeaky old car along the swooping arrow straight road beside Hadrian’s Wall, past the tragically treeless Sycamore Gap, to spend a magical weekend with almost all of my favourite people ( Rupert arrived later by bike, Sara got the train from London and the North Yorkshire contingent had various battles with rural sat nav and road works on the A1). The accommodation was definitely a case of “faded grandeur” built in the c17th but with later additions by Lutyens, beautiful gardens designed by Gertrude Jekyll, ornate plaster ceilings and a full size billiard table. Within moments or arriving it was possible to pretend it was home and we were characters in an old film or something. Since my parents moved to a small flat and I moved to Cumbria it has been harder to all spend time together in a relaxed way – Christmas is always slightly fraught isn’t it- so the simple pleasures of sitting together in a garden, having a squabble about the heating thermostat or watching my dad play snooker with Stewart (my childrens’ dad) are priceless. I like having everyone in the same place, safe in a nest!

The seed shed at Whalton Manor

Before we left Whalton I met the gardener who very kindly gave me a bunch of poppy seed heads and showed us around the green tiled stables and tack room.

And on to France …

It’s been nearly 10 years since I have been ABROAD and in the meantime Rupert has fallen in love with France following a big cycle trip last year and a 600 day streak on Duolingo. I was prised out of my nest to spend a week being navigator while we drove about and slept in a Tentbox. We began by visiting my Great Granddad’s WW1 grave in Peronne ( this has been an infrequent family pilgrimage for many years and still feels so tragic and deeply moving), we listened to lots of history podcasts, cycled, ate cheese, learned how to ask for camping gas hoses in French but still bought the wrong ones (so no morning tea!), visited the church on a cliff in Verangeville -sur-Mer where Braque did the windows and is buried, swam in the sea, failed to read any of the suitcase of books we’d brought, missed seeing the Bayeux tapestry by 1 day and generally felt like slightly lost and confused – but happy- country mice abroad. Next time I would love to spend more time in Brittany and maybe get the ferry to St Malo because France is HUGE and the journey home (Le Mont St Michel to the tunnel at Calais and then the drive north) was madness. We did it in one go, arriving home at 4.30 am like a pair of phased out clubbers, dizzy from the road and demented with lack of sleep – I don’t recommend it!
But I do recommend : Camping at Notre Dame du Verger https://camping-verger.com and swimming at the beautiful sandy beach, if you go to St Malo visit Cafe Cargo https://www.facebook.com/cargocultecafe for the charismatic and attentive service as well as rare vegetarian offerings, stay at the La Maison Fleur de Sel and cycle to Le Mont St. Michel at dusk https://demeure-fleurdesel.com (our room, before the drive home, with kitchen, balcony and amazing homemade breakfast was about 80 euros but take cash or make sure your bank lets you do international transfers)

Anyway, enough of my holiday snaps, it’s like describing your weird dreams – personally fascinating but sleep inducing to your audience.

Beach at Notre Dame du Verges, near Cancale.

The best tomato in the world

Mosaic on the grave of Braque

window by Braque at Verangeville-sur-Mer

The dunes by the beach

looking towards le Mont St.Michel from Roz-sur-Couesnon

Back in the north and straight back to work in the bookshop with fresh empathy for confused tourists and excitement that the reprint of Beginner’s Guide to Cyanotype has arrived at last and been allowed the hallowed position of “face out” on the art shelf. I started making some new little cyanotype “sketches” over the summer (the Uffington and stone circle images above) and after a conversation with a friend who is studying for an MA in Fine Art, using cyanotype in a very exciting and experimental way, I’m again pondering the question of size… does size matter, is a piece of art taken more seriously if it is BIG, does working small (out of necessity) make me small in ambition and outlook, how do you free yourself from the financial constraints of creativity – ie. make and create with no worries about selling the thing? So many questions! Right now I’m about to pack up a couple of things to take for the last week of EVAN Open Studios with Cumbria Printmakers and then start preparing for another Cumbria Printmakers exhibition next month, this time in my nearest town, Cockermouth.

Reading: Maggie O’Farrell, Instructions for a Heatwave, Peter Ross, Upon a White Horse and a proof of Jessica Field, Eviction – A Social History of Rent ( published on September 16th)

Grow – Make – Do

I sat in the garden the other day taking stock: it had turned into a clashing riot of scarlet and orange Crocosmia (a sinister combination to me as the wasps seem to love hiding in them), sweet purple Buddleja (dancing with butterflies this year thank goodness) and Yellow Loosestrife running wild, set against the dark green yew and rhododendron foliage. I would never have chosen these alarming colours and yearn for more restful blues and subtle shades, but as a it’s a rented garden created by someone who clearly loved their plants I can’t really complain. What did make me sad was the realisation that there is nothing next but berries… everything that marks a season by flowering has done its thing and August is here already, another year rushing by, measured out by waves of colour and scent – precious and fleeting because they only happen once a year and who knows where we’ll be by the next flowering.

I wondered what I could plant to fill the gap between now and autumn and Rupert bought me an Agapanthus like a blue firework which is pure joy. This particular plant continues a long, ongoing conversation I have with my family and particularly my brother ( who once apparently snapped our mum’s precious agapanthus with a football, just as it was about to bloom – this despite or perhaps causing, a lifelong dislike of football!). We speak every week, he is often out watering his Wiltshire garden while I’m looking out of the window at mine (more rain and poorer phone signal in the north!) and as we talk about our gardens it always amazes me the way plants can have a kind of family folklore about them. We can both remember in some detail the things that were growing in our childhood gardens as well as those of our grandparents’ and yet we almost certainly had our heads full of much more important subjects at the time; how did we end up over 50 years later reminiscing about the fluffy yellow pom pom plant, bobble head grass and grape vines? I do distinctly remember sitting on the swing next to some yellow flowers, perhaps it was in April, my birthday, because I remember thinking “that’s my flower, Forsythia, because I’m four!” The older I get the more precious the garden is and the stories each plant holds of all those other places and memories.

Last Monday was difficult for no particular reason at all, in the olden days I would have put it down to monthly cycles but I have not a clue what’s happening these days, I just get sad, unmoored. I spent the day wandering about feeling useless, trying to draw with blurry eyes, trying to snap out of it and trying to think up things to make, something, anything to help build a sense of a day well spent. It probably doesn’t help that a bleak assessment of my annual website sales to date added up to slightly less than I’d taken in the bookshop that Wednesday alone! But it’s not as if I’ve made anything much new to sell, so, no point in moaning…

When these days happen I know from experience that the they will pass, like a migraine ( and often leaving a fizz of energy in the same way), but at the time it is excruciating and lonely because … who do you call when you’re having an Art Emergency? It seems so self indulgent. I did manage to do some drawing and appreciate the way fragments of old work hanging on a line in the studio made a pleasing whole, in a photograph if not in reality. I scanned and layered (using Photoshop) a Curlew drawing with a textured background made by blind embossing and cyanotype. It was an awful day and I’d wanted to rip up the pages I’d “ruined” in my sketchbook, but now four days later, fresh from a two day stint at the madly busy bookshop, I have a new perspective, I’m pleased with what I achieved in adversityand determined to find a way of chasing down and nobbling those gremlins of self doubt. Maybe I can bribe them with something to be nicer, what do they like I wonder?
Remember how in maths they used to say “show workings out” ? Well I think part of my problem is forgetting that sketchbooks are meant to be ugly – despite some very very gorgeous examples by people who make them works of art in their own right – a page can be 99% horrible if the 1% is useful.

I have to tell you, my battle to overcome the sketchbook gremlins is nothing compared to my son’s current project and he deserves a mention here. In every spare moment for the past weeks Jake has been getting his car ready for a car show this weekend – big sound system, shiny paintwork and other crazy car things that mean nothing to me. On Tuesday night he worked on it until 2am before leaving it parked in its usual space on the Kwik Fit forecourt and going to bed. According to a neighbour, who happened to be looking out of the window waiting for the sunrise, the driver of the white car that skipped over the roundabout, smashing into it and demolishing the garage wall didn’t even brake. He had been drinking but was apparently just under the limit and was very lucky no one was badly hurt. Anyway, the point is, in the 48 hours since this happened Jake hasn’t sat about weeping like his mum would have done, he has completely rebuilt it, sourcing parts, repairing most of the damage and helping to clear up the remains of the wall. Kwik Fit at Northallerton leant him tools and have been amazing. Honestly, I’m so proud, it’s that resilience thing everyone goes on about as well as self taught practical skills that were definitely more use to him than a lot of what he got from school. Not only that but when I was last there I left some green beans in the fridge, they soon got thrown out but one had fallen on the floor and dried up . Jake decided to plant it on the windowsill and now has an actual bean plant producing beans in his bathroom- the gardening bug is there whether he likes it or not!

Back to the picturesque and a glimpse of a strange creature spotted in Easedale Tarn last week. It was a hot walk and much much further than I remembered. The water did NOT look inviting, rocks giving way to fathomless mud that made me swim before I was ready just to avoid the sensation. There were tickley weeds and “someone” had forgotten to pack cake but it was beautiful. My headache and irritation drifted off into the deep and we enjoyed noticing the distinct layers of temperature change from pleasantly cool to almost bathwater. I’ve really loved swimming (dipping really) this year and feel so grateful for that aspect of living in the Lake District. My glasses broke on the walk back down but it turned out I had the exact shade of fine blue wire to fix them with when we got home; a room full of creative junk stored for decades CAN be useful after all. There are different ways to be rich and there is sweetness among the thorns.
It’s time to go now, it’s time to start some bread to bake tomorrow, on Lammas Day ( the word itself is derived from the word loaf) and to swap this screen for plans to quietly celebrate this point in the wheel of the year, the midpoint between summer and autumn.

Reading : I’ve just finished re-reading Alan Garner, The Owl Service and Katy Massey’s memoir “Are We Home Yet?” ( a friend of my brother’s, we went to the same school so this was a very interesting read! ) and now I’ve started Diana Wynne Jones , Fire and Hemlock for some pure escapism.

Real

Perhaps in the winter my urge to draw and make will return? Right now the garden is claiming all of my often scattered attention; nothing else can compete with the ever changing picture, the perfect imperfection of Mother Nature’s glorious canvas right out side the door. I’m spending far more time contemplating the squeak of a hazed and puckered Cavolo Nero leaf or the soft flumph of a toad hopping over my bare foot, than I am the pile of scraps on my desk or the idea of making new work. I’ve made a semi-conscious decision this year to make less and do it slowly, which is actually hard (and a bit mad financially!) but I felt overwhelmed with Stuff and Doubt, and the reality is, I have such a small audience that pieces I make can hang around for ages before finding a home. I recently sold a lovely framed cyanotype, with hand embroidery, that was possibly 6 years old and had been to several exhibitions before meeting the person who loved it enough to take it to live on their wall (at the Cumbria Printmakers exhibition at Upfront Arts Venue). I’ve always been caught, or rather trapped myself, between two lumpy chairs – not able or willing to invest enough time and money into making the high volume gift stuff work and not daring to take the risk of concentrating on more expensive Art pieces; because 6 years is a long time to wait for a sale! I am cutting things up, rearranging things, trying to get a different perspective.

On Tuesday I drove home from the bookshop in a biblical rain storm, wipers struggling, listening to Radio4 talking about heatwaves and how to keep cool, how Paris was short of green spaces and everyone everywhere was too damn hot. It was hot here in Cumbria, but also heavy, like being wrapped in damp woollen blankets, steaming dry after a nights camping. The clouds were lower than the fells and as I walked around the fields after supper, some began to be lit pink from within like healing bruises, and soft bits of blurred rainbow fell down and of course my phone camera/paintbrush/wordery is not good enough to show you any of this, but I stood in the middle of the field, jeans wet to the thighs, from plodding through soaked grass and recorded this minute of birds and rain because it was a moment of utter sensual bliss and peace….

Part of the reason I was out plodding through the dripping wood without a coat was because I was trying to think through something that seems to have made me more cross than it should have – so I’m told. Having spoken about it today I’m going to be careful about specifics, there are delicate politics here I know nothing about but this is my personal reaction. What happened was that I was sent a bit of writing praising my father’s work. It had been sent to him by the gallery and – I’m definitely not an art historian or a particularly good judge of writing about art – I was excited; a new exhibition catalogue perhaps, maybe something in a respected journal ? I’ve often been frustrated that his work is not better known, appreciated or written about recently by contemporary writers and despite it being the family business I’ll be the first to admit I really have no idea of how the art world at that level works. The piece mentioned themes of nature, ecology, landscape and weather; I was touched because, walking around the field watching the clouds dropping and swirling in arabesques like a Tillyer brushstroke, thinking about the way we had once discussed the best colour for the fells (caput mortum) and the way my own limited understanding of his work has grown with time (but is still overlayed with the primary thing, a father daughter relationship that has made me a bit blasé and cynical about Art Speak) , I was stupidly floored by the revelation that it was a “joke” by the galley staff, generated by AI copying the style of Robert Hughs.

Why am I so upset? Partly because I feel like an idiot (shouldn’t I be able to tell what is good writing? Should I have tried harder in History of Art O Level?), partly because I was disappointed in the gallery for not finding a real writer to sing the praises of an artist who is genuinely interesting and really deserves it (yeah ok he’s my daddy but believe me I didn’t always think he was the world best artist, I wanted pretty, I wanted him to draw ponies and stuff that looked “real” and be more like a normal everyday daddy). Add a good dollop of frustration that I wish I had the knowledge and skill to be that writer myself and a hefty helping of fury at the way Generative AI steals from genuine human artists, writers and creative folk and it’s not really surprising I needed a dose of birdsong. My busy daughter uses AI to write letters of complaint to dentists and to refute parking fines, a colleague of my partner who has dyslexia finds it helps his written communication, I don’t object to AI checking my mammogram or even “Virtual Lucy ” who looked at my MRI brain scan to see where the migraines were coming from, even though she couldn’t work it out, I like to use filters and brushes in Photoshop, it’s fun to grow floppy ears and a snout while talking on video calls. – but it kills something in my soul to think of human creativity being outsourced to a data farm full of stolen intellectual property somewhere, with all the related human and environmental costs. (There’s also an infuriating new feature on Facebook that gives you a question prompt under posts … don’t we know our own minds well enough to know what we want to ask?! )

Generative AI is built on the back of real people’s ingenuity and hard learned craft. I want earth on my hands and paint on my t-shirt, ink blots on a paper letter, finger prints in my ceramics and dropped stitches in my jumpers. I want a handmade and slow life with fat strawberries and snappy peas eaten straight from the bush. People able to make a comfortable living from art, music and writing… because without it, what are we? Just consumers.

Anyway, that’s all for today, I shall try not to be a hypocrite and switch off this computer ready to do something real. I can pack the two small orders I got yesterday now that the cat has moved from the chair blocking the cupboard door.

Reading: The Sunshine Man, Emma Stonex, The Lost Folk, Lally Macbeth and Stone Lands, Fiona Robertson. All of these can be found at Sam Read Bookseller (not everything on the website is in the shop and not everything in the shop is on the website but things can almost always be ordered and posted to anywhere if you get in touch with them)

Feeling the heat.

It’s a small solstice heatwave here in Cumbria, 10 degrees cooler than London but still, sultry. I’ve been sitting outside wearing a big, ugly-but-comfortable, floaty dress from the charity shop and a homemade hat; I match the subtle shift to blue and purple in the garden and if I don’t catch sight of myself all is well. I’ve never been good with heat (recently, like a small nuclear reactor I generated enough heat to steam up the letter screen and all the lenses at the opticians although I swear the air conditioner was broken). Increasingly as I blunder through my 50’s there is a mismatch between who I am inside and who I look like to everyone else and I have a new deep empathy for older people that shames my youthful complacency. When I started this blog 17 years ago (can it be?!) my life was so different in almost every way. If I’d written a book in my 30s it would have been about making jam, planting trees, balancing single parenthood with working several part time jobs and partying the weekends away. I had a bathroom full of potions and sparkle and a wardrobe of size 8-10 from festival stalls and Top Shop. Life working in a village pub often felt like an outtake from something Antony Bourdain or even Hunter S Thompson might have written. My 40’s were a mixture of The Outrun and The Salt Path and now, looking at the rose my parents gave me for my 50th birthday, already 8 years old, I know I need to find a way to adjust to now and start living well in the present. Any tips for the almost 60’s?

Would you like to know a secret? It’s not a very well kept secret. I sometimes wish (if I have to be human at all and not a swallow or a wild pony) that I was a gardener, or one of the people who have been lime plastering and pebble dashing the house next door, doing something physical and tangible, occupying both mind and body instead of constantly THINKING about things that I end up not doing . Am I actually an artist if I haven’t drawn anything for weeks? Is my business really a business if I haven’t sold anything since May? And if my bookshop job pays the rent and I don’t owe anyone anything what am I worrying about? I’m really interested to know how other creative people feel and what the reality of their situation is. If I could have a superpower at the moment it would be bloody mindedness – not caring what other people were doing or if someone else once had a similar idea and just getting on with MY idea. Comparison and envy are crippling, social media has definitely made this harder and in my case working in a bookshop surrounded by the carefully crafted words of people who knuckled down, stopped mulling it over and wrote a book about it!

I recently answered a call out for illustrators from a well known artisan honey company and spent a happy morning making digital mock ups of honey jars using my old Lino prints which led to getting carried away messing about with a photo I’d dug out when it was my son’s 30th birthday in May. I love this kind of thing, combining handmade elements to make digital collage and I was really hopeful about the job too, I even sent them a picture of me in a pink beekeeping suit from my day with Trevor Swales Honey years ago. Anyway, they naturally had a lot of interest and I didn’t get the job. Fair enough, I had already told myself I didn’t deserve it because I don’t draw everyday so therefore I can’t be a REAL illustrator can I! See, self sabotage for no reason, I was happy with my submission, I enjoyed doing it so it was a worthwhile thing to do. I think if you’d seen me through the window pottering about, staring in to space thinking, wandering out to water the lettuces, you might have thought, god what a life of ease she has, and I suppose this is the thing that I worry about. There are lots of obviously busy people here – farmers, neighbours, the lime plaster people, my partner… and I have hobbled myself with guilt about looking like I’m living the life of Riley… where did that come from? Work looks different from the outside and none of us really know how someone else’s day feels. Working in the pub was exhausting and the bookshop can be intense too but neither involve the possibility of actual rejection on a daily basis which can be the reality for freelance creative people. We need to be tough but also sensitive which is often uncomfortable.

I should have written this post back to front to save you ploughing through all the soul searching and navel gazing because some really lovely things have been happening too. Will and Polly at the bookshop somehow managed to get Penguin Books to PAY me to paint a river in the front window to celebrate the publication of Robert Macfarlane’s book Is A River Alive? and, having got some kind and generous advice from Libby Hamilton on which paints to use and spending a few days practicing and painting cardboard fish I spent a hot few hours after work climbing about in the window doing something BIG and painty which felt wonderfully different for me. Once again my bookshop life and artist life met sweetly and it’s so good to have supportive employers. Often these things are not paid – Penguin could have just got some promotional window film printed so it’s wonderful that they decided to pay artists and bookshops to do this.

My book had its first birthday and is currently reprinting with new stock due in August. I spent an afternoon messing about with cardboard cakes and mini bunting to celebrate and mark the day… and here’s a thing I read in an old pamphlet last night about the summer solstice…

” The rampant growth period has reached its peak. Everywhere there is a sense of abundance and fresh growth. This is the peak of our expressive and expansive selves. Celebrate all of your achievements and who you are.” Glennie Kindred, The Earth’s Cycle of Celebration.

This seems a good note to end on. These past few weeks ( and months… years even…) I’ve often made myself stop and list the small things achieved each day, when maybe I’d been beating myself up about having “done nothing” or struggling with migraines or something. This week I sold/made no art but I did some applications for workshop teaching, made rose petal jelly, elderflower cordial, sourdough loaves and a flower cake to celebrate the solstice, I made a pair of trousers, cycled to the lake for a swim, picked up litter on the way home and wrote letters to friends. Some days I just go to work and come home for tea and telly. It’s all ok, we’re all just doing our best to make it a good ride around the sun aren’t we?

A very happy midsummer to you, I think it’s about to thunder, I love a good thunder storm. x