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November 30th, 2019

30/11/2019

7 great things about this week ...

1. The Open Eye Gallery opened its annual winter exhibition On a Small Scale yesterday. Can't wait to get along there to see all the artists' works and how my Confused Flags look! See today's home page for details.
2. Everything turns golden at sun rise.
3. Aircraft trails in a clear blue sky and identifying their flights on Flightradar24.
4. My Greyhound Dolly-Meg in her woolly winter jumper, such a jolly dog (or a 'Dolly jog' as we call it as she trots around the house with her toys).
5. Sparkling frosts - really putting me in the mood to get on with making Christmas cards. Hello glitter!
6. We finally got on with clearing out a room full of junk and organising books - ah, space at last.
7. The moon is so beautiful right now, a golden curve low on the horizon. It reminds me of Samuel Palmer's painting A Hilly Scene (c.1826-8) which has been a big favourite of mine for ever.
Image: Tate

And now it's time for me to say ...
Thanks for visiting, see you next week!

24 NOVEMBER

24/11/2019

I took a trip to Edinburgh to deliver 4 Confused Flags for the Open Eye Gallery Christmas exhibition On a Small Scale, during which the walls of one gallery are banked with A5 works. The new flags are a lot larger than the miniatures I made for the Artobotic vending machines, although still small at A5. The beauty of delivering small works is that I can carry them on the train, and the train journey to Edinburgh has been one of my favourite things to do since I was a little girl, so here are 7 great Edinburgh-themed things I saw this week:
1. I never get tired of the views from the Forth Rail Bridge. On one side there is the expanse of the river with twin drilling rigs in the distance towards the estuary and the North Sea, and on the other the two road bridges and views to Grangemouth, the Ochil Hills and Ben Ledi towards the west.
2. The new Queensferry Crossing is splendid. There are great views from the rail bridge, and the sight of all three bridges is stirring. I was at the opening of the Forth Road Bridge in 1964, aged 5, and remember the days of the old ferry when there was only the rail bridge - what a time to be alive this is! Visit Scotland has some great images of the three bridges here.
3. Edinburgh has begun to celebrate Christmas vibrantly, with the market and plenty of other events and attractions. See what’s on at Edinburgh’s Christmas.
4. The massive St James project is going to be so exciting and impressive when it is done. It has a brilliant website here.
5. Edinburgh Trams. Their presence graces the city with a most international atmosphere; they even have their own Wikipedia page.

6. Edinburgh Castle. The train passes at its foot with amazing views upwards over its towering rock to the mass of its walls, turrets, and windows. It makes me think of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast.
7. The Ingleby Gallery has acquired a beautiful building in Barony St, not far from the Open Eye.

NB: For a more enjoyable way to find information, I only link to sites which do not carry pop-up or video advertising.

Thanks for visiting, see you next week!

16 NOVEMBER

16/11/2019

After a very busy couple of weeks I got back to work making larger confused flags for the Open Eye Gallery On a Small Scale exhibition. This is an annual event hosted in the run-up to Christmas, when one of their beautiful Edinburgh New Town Georgian galleries is turned over entirely to line the walls in banks of A5-size art by gallery artists. The works are presented simply unframed on the walls in a grid formation, an exciting melting-pot of ideas, materials and colour (the artists' party is great, too). Affordable small works mean a great chance to buy art for Christmas!
It has been interesting to scale up from the miniatures I have been making for Brexit Art Machine, I can fit in more drawing to combine with ideas of obfuscation, disorder, transparency and confusion. I am enjoying the flag invention more than ever as I make flags 14, 15, 16 and 17 in the series especially for the gallery, and then watch out in 2020 for some more miniature flags for the vending machines.

7 great things about this week:
1. Waves aren’t made of water: I watched David Malone’s The Secret Life of Waves on BBC iPlayer. Poetry, philosophy, life and death, needles blowing bubbles, and Professor Michael McIntyre’s fab lab’s wave box at Cambridge University complete with rubber ducks - marvellous.
2. Brexit Art Machine is in London, with my mini confused flags loaded alongside works by brilliant artists in the vending machine! It is popping up at selected venues, and was outside the Houses of Parliament a couple of days ago.
3. A friend making an extremely speedy recovery from a knee replacement and looking fabulous and happy after years of pain.
4. I found a beautiful, tiny insect exhausted on the kitchen worktop. I smeared a strawberry beside it and observed through a magnifying glass: insect found its way to the spot of juice and fed by dipping its proboscis. I noticed it had a pair of curly antlers fringed spectacularly with hairs. After a while it had enough energy to fly away and I felt nurturing and deep-down happy.
5. Coloured pencils so soft it's like drawing with eyeshadow.
6. Relief. When pain, worry, nightmares and things that go bump in the night disappear and you feel yourself again. Maybe it was the full moon.
7. Getting back to work in my room.

Thanks for visiting, see you next week!

9 NOVEMBER

9/11/2019

A busy week full of happy things. I looked after the cat across the road, a favourite person came to stay, I made a confused flag and posted it to friends for a thank-you gift, and cooked a lot of delicious veggie food. I describe myself as a ‘non-practicing vegetarian’ because I had to stop it 13 years ago for health reasons, and it’s lovely to get out all my favourite recipes again! Yesterday I cooked Spanakopita, and it was delicious.

7 great things about this week:
1. Autumn colours! They are everywhere.
2. The moon is particularly luminous now, magical to see rising through newly-bared trees.
3. Fleabag on BBC iPlayer, love it - had myself quite a merry binge.
4. Jigsaw puzzles. Even the one with the missing piece.
5. Couldn’t stop laughing about a new rude word I learnt. Nicknamed the dog with it and kept calling her using a sweet voice. Really couldn’t stop laughing.
6. Having a day all to myself but spending the evening with my most beloved people and greyhound.
7. Hailstones bouncing down the sloping roof tiles outside my window. Such a pleasant sound, and fun to watch some bouncing straight down the rone-pipe - a hole in one!

Thanks for visiting, see you next week!

November 30th, 2019

24 NOVEMBER

16 NOVEMBER

9 NOVEMBER

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