MIXED MEDIA

What's the weather like where you are? We are finally getting a taste of summer and it's a beautiful day here in Lincolnshire today. Everytime I go in and out of my studio in the garden I frighten the blackbirds who are trying to enjoy a feast of dried fruit and mealworms I put out for them everyday. One of them is a really dishevelled looking thing with feathers sticking out at odd angles and a patch of white on his side. I keep meaning to try and photograph them but they tend to hide under the belfast sink where I put their food. The birds seem to be creatures of habit - every day at about 4pm I get a bunch of starlings enjoying themselves having a bath in our pond - the rucous is amazing! Feathers flying everywhere! This is our pond after we first dug it (that's the royal "we" DH did the digging)- it's only deep enough to be a luxury birdbath really!

I spent all of yesterday working on some ATC's on the theme of recycling. I had what I thought was a great idea to use recycled foil packaging. Not such a great idea, it refuses to stick down without a great deal of effort and repeated applications of pva glue. You can see it here at the top left of this pic. I designed it with the work of the Cornish painter
Anthony Frost (son of Terry Frost) in mind. I saw his work for the first time last April at Tate St Ives and was blown away by it. He uses all manner of materials in his paintings from ship's sailcloth to netting, scrim to ripcloth, hessian, bedsheet, canvas, string etc etc. His work is wonderfully textural and brightly coloured. I like the fact that it is geometric too. While we were in St Ives I had a go at his style of painting myself. I used found objects, label from a jacket, bird's feather, piece of an oil painting, wool, felt, corrugated cardboard, sand, pva glue. I had a great time painting it in acrylics. What a buzz to use such bright colours!

Anyway, I digress. Back to the recycling. As you can see from the pic above I made several recycling ATCs. So far I am not happy with the fabric one. I don't like the way I've edged it so I am going to rip it out and probably use a gold thread to stitch over the surface. These are the 3 I've decided on. I've cheated a little as the top and bottom ones are collages from old paintings I did some time ago but they are recycled. (sorry but I don't think blogger is going to enlarge these. I'll put them in my flickr album).

I must just say Hi to my friend Nancy who I know is looking in from time to time. Nancy is living in Adelaide at the moment but missing the UK so Nancy, I hope you're feeling OK today.

I am still having a rough time at the moment. As my old teacher used to say, "My get up and go has got up and gone". I usually feel like this when my B12 jab is due but that is 5 weeks away so I can't say what's up. Just a down period I suppose. Roll on some energy from somewhere!