Doggie Portrait

Just sent these beauts off to their human in Cornwall (hence the sandy background). These doggies have been lovingly painted in gouache and, fortunately, the owner was very pleased. Always a tentative moment! If you would like your furry friends painted, or would like to commission for a gift, please enquire within. Thank you.

Art & Craft Fair, The Old Co-op

Once again, I am delighted to be taking part in the next Art & Craft Fair in the iconic Old Co-op building in Todmorden. Looking forward to seeing the talented work for sale by arts and crafters and hopefully meet some new folk along the way. If you are out and about, please come and say hello. The Old Co-op is on the Rochdale Road, Todmorden. 11th and 12th August. 10 am to 4 pm both days. See you there!

Homebird Vintage Tea Room Art and Craft Sale

Hello everyone :)

This is a quick announcement to say that, weather permitting (the wonderful sunny weather we have been having has given in to overcast cloud, but it isn't raining....yet!), there will be an Art & Craft sale in Cornholme today, outside at the Hombird Vintage Tea Room. Please check out the poster for details. There is some fantastic stuff on sale and all of it at affordable prices. 

Todmorden Information Centre

Hello everyone!! As the exhibition of work I have at Legacy Arts Gallery comes to a close, it is time to announce another exhibition! And it is only next door to Legacy Arts at the Todmorden Information Centre!

Firstly, I want to thank Legacy Arts for having me, it is a beautiful gallery/shop to go and visit. There is an eclectic mix of artwork by many talented artists and it is worth a visit and browse and look. Stella, the owner, is really friendly and affable and since she too is an artist, doubles up the space as a studio.

I have chosen to show my work at Todmorden Information Centre because Tod has been my muse for a while now and has inspired me to capture it in such a way that brings out a quality and character about the place. It is not only a beautiful market town to come and visit, but it is full of personality and charisma. If you haven't been to Todmorden - and it is a great place to holiday - then I urge you to come and say hello, visit the quirky shops and take in the dramatic vista. Make sure you pop in to Tod Info Centre to get some maps and postcards, and, maybe buy some quirky artwork as a souvenir or gift. 

The above painting is of the Old Co-op in Tod and will be in the exhibition. 

Iconic Doors and an Apothecary

Hello everyone! Hope you are enjoying the summer sunshine. I'm feeling particularly blessed at the moment living in our stunning Yorkshire hills and cloughs with the sunlight dappling through the trees and the running water giving a cooling fresh effect. I could stay out all day, walking with Hector, but work beckons and work I must!

Work wise, this week, I am continuing on the Todmorden project and have painted a few quirky buildings on watercolour paper 300 gsm and acid free, that will be going up at Legacy Arts Gallery in Todmorden. I shall be swapping the colourful Catrina paintings, now that the Pushing Up Daisies festival is over, for the Todmorden project. If you can't make it to the gallery, you can buy the work here on my Shop. Or, perhaps you would like to have your own or a relatives quirky building painted as a lovely gift/affordable artwork for your walls. If you do, enquire within, it would be lovely to hear from you.

To die or not to die, that is the question

Framing the images ready for Legacy Arts Gallery

I have been musing over death for the last two or three weeks recently. It all started when I was asked to show my work at Legacy Arts Gallery in Todmorden, West Yorkshire, for the month of May to coincide with the Pushing Up Daisies Festival, 12th- 19th May.

After a lot of exploring I ended up painting a set of very colourful images that are Mexican Folk Art (Day of the Dead)/Pop Art even kitsch inspired! You see, they defy death! Death is a harsh word our western society knows little about since the experience is subjective only. If we are lucky enough to be with a beloved when they die, this can give us a much deeper understanding of the process and maybe into the nature of reality.

This is a controversial subject. There is a kind of blindness that most of us have about the nature of reality, unless we are jolted out of our sleep. My own story reads a bit like the DEATH card in Tarot (meaning transformation). This is centred around the death of my Pa. He phoned to say he had a couple of months to live. I packed my things and drove 8 hours so I could look after him for the remainder of his life. Brought up in an atheist family, he said, ‘when you die, you die, there is nothing’. Having seen, felt and heard the unseen at times in my life, I was less sure, I said, ‘can you let me know, though, if you are alive when you get to the other side? He agreed anyway. A few days before his death, he looked peaceful and very happy. He told me, with a big smile on his face that Granny was in the room with us, which, I thought, was strange coming from an atheist, but a clue that all is not as it seems. I held his hand when he died and waved goodbye to him, opening the front door of his house so his spirit could depart. And off he went.

I was grief stricken when he died and the emotional turmoil of my experience made me feel flat for a very long time. But then I started to look into this life and death thing. I started to read the cutting edge news within the scientific community about consciousness. I started to revisit ancient spiritual beliefs with a fresh understanding. I joined dots. Worked things out. I started to watch interviews of people who had died and then resuscitated to tell a fascinating tale. I learned how the Double Slit Experiment (quantum mechanics) showed us how observation, which requires awareness, changes the behaviour of light particles.  I learned that people are projecting astrally/leaving their bodies with evidence of non-locality all the time and were very common experiences, indeed, it has happened to me. But could this be real? I collected a wealth of discerned evidence, both personal and from others, until, one day I could deny it no more, ‘We might lose our body but the sense of ‘I’ doesn’t die'!

So, did Pa let me know that we don't die after we die? Well, we can never be 100% sure what happens until we have experienced it for ourselves, but, yes, in many ways, because he taught me how to listen to him as a radio tunes into a frequency and that life is primarily a mental construct and not a physical one, which is what we are taught to believe. But don't believe me, it is down to you to join the dots.

If you got something from reading this blog, if you are going through grief or that you have experienced something similar, I would love to hear your story and perhaps you would be interested in attending the Pushing Up Daisies, here is more information: 

http://www.pushingupdaisies.org/

To find out more about Legacy Arts Gallery, click the link:

https://www.legacyartsgallery.com/

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