A much loved child in our family has from infancy suffered with illness and hospitalisation, it is every mothers nightmare.

On instagram, a mother shared a picture of her beautiful child in a deep sleep, ill in bed.

These intense moments , the quiet waiting , the love, the unquantifiable beauty of a child in their vulnerability is why I made this painting.

For all those amazing people out there who should have been running the London Marathon this weekend to support and help charities. You inspired me to make this painting in 2018 .

To all you Mum’s out there, a special thank you !

And, we remember those cherished Mums no longer with us x .

“IT’S ALL I HAVE TO BRING TODAY” BY EMILY DICKINSON

It’s all I have to bring today—

This, and my heart beside—

This, and my heart, and all the fields—

And all the meadows wide—

Be sure you count—should I forget

Some one the sum could tell—

This, and my heart, and all the Bees

Which in the Clover dwell.

Jacqueline Sarsby , social anthropologist and photographer, has guest-curated an exhibition at the Gloucester Museum which opened on 12th October 2019 and closes on 18th April 2020, so there is still time to take a look. It is called ’The Magical World of William Simmonds, Puppets and Paintings’.

A treasured image that I keep in my studio is a beautiful black and white photograph taken by Jacqueline , called’ Catherine White and Kitty’, in it she records a little girl with her black and white cat . It evokes fond memories of childhood and pets. In that photograph, at that moment, Jacqueline Sarsby captured something unspoken, the affection and shared trust between the two.

To guide us as we enter a new year, here is Arch Angel Michael from a painting which hangs in All Saints Church Marazion .

Wishing you a very happy and healthy year .

On this important day, I share in remembering much loved members of my family and all the brave men and woman who have, and continue to sacrifice their lives for ours. We will remember them.

Considered an English Romantic, Blake was a visionary painter, printmaker and poet. Through life, he explored the powers of the imagination and of creation. He questions the meaning of being, his relationship to the divine and the fundamental tension between the individual life and human condition . 

11th Sept 2019 – 2nd February 2020. 

Canon Nigel Marns lovely book, the ‘Cornish Celtic Way’ had a great review in the Guardian .

It highlighted one memorable quote by Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. “Love the animals, love the plants, love everything,” it urges. “If you love everything you will perceive the divine mystery in all things.” 

cornishcelticway.co.uk

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2019/feb/18/cornwall-celtic-walk-coast-path-trail-hike

While walking along a Cornish lane near home, I saw a Swift swoop and glide over a tall green hedge ahead of me. The arrival of these beautiful birds who have flown all the way from Africa is a welcome sight, as they bring with them spring and summer days.

In this poem by Keats , he expresses his love of nature , the joy it can bring, and reminds us to enjoy it while we can. The line, ‘when all the birds are faint with the hot sun’, reminds me of childhood and empty summer holidays exploring the countryside. I’d take myself off to watch crickets, and discover other strange and fascinating bugs and beetles in some wild spot.

On the Grasshopper and Cricket.
A poem by John Keats.

The Poetry of earth is never dead:    
  When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,    
  And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run    
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;    
That is the Grasshopper’s—he takes the lead      
  In summer luxury,—he has never done    
  With his delights; for when tired out with fun    
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.    
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:    
  On a lone winter evening, when the frost     
    Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills    
The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever,    
  And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,    
    The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.

I would like to join in thanking all of those good people who risk their own wellbeing to help others during the Corona Virus pandemic. Their acts of selflessness are the building blocks for us all when this difficult time has passed.

Artists over the years have naturally been inspired to record their experience of the medical profession.

I have chosen a few favourites to share with you .

Keep busy, take care of those you love and stay safe x.

These are difficult times, but some will be finding life much worse because of the lock down.

This painting sends a message of love to those courageous children, men , women and animals who suffer the ongoing torment of living with a member of The Dark Triad, who demand their daily abuse fix. 

First Light.
Domestic Abuse & Sexual Violence Service

Helpline: 0300 777 4777
Professionals’ Enquiry Line : 01872 241 711
Non-secure email: saferfutures@firstlight.org.uk
Secure email: saferfutures@firstlight.cjsm.net

It looks like we may have to do a bit of this , and take extra care of one another for a while x.

Holocaust Memorial Day is the anniversary of the day in 1945, when allied troops entered the largest concentration camp Auschwitz.

Today I wish to add my respects to Holocaust Survivors , and remember all those who suffered and perished.  

This day is a reminder that reasonable people rationalise poisonous words of hate, to dehumanise and justify inhumanity.

Better to harness the positive power of words to build bridges, to create and not to destroy.

This week in the studio I spent an hour or two , playing with my little boxes of mixed typefaces, images and quick drying black ink . I used a very simple relief printing method to make a few thank you cards, something I began many years ago when I was unable to find the cards that I liked in the shops.

At this time of year , we give thanks for the good people, family and friends that are a part of our lives and remember the happy times spent with those no longer with us.

Wishing you happiness, peace and good health in 2020 x.

And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.

For in the Dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed .

Lines from the prophet.

When “All Hallows’ Eve”  or Allhallowtide is celebrated, it is a time to pray for recently departed souls who have yet to reach heaven, and a time to honour the saints. As in many traditions, it follows natures calendar, a time of dying back. 

Below are just a few of the 80 etchings and aquatints, made by Goya, entitled ‘Los Caprichos’, they were made in 1797 & 1798 and are just as relevant and awe inspiring now . 

In this series he recorded the true horrors of war and life . Not only did he interpret how base human nature could be, but how a persons grotesque fantasies could lead them into an abyse, lost to this world. 

So ,don’t forget to light your lantern, to keep those evil spirits at bay.

This wonderful work by Goya is at the Prado Museum, Madrid.

Raise a glass to those we love who are no longer with us.

And tell those close that you love them while you can.

Wishing you my friends good health and happiness in 2019. x

On VE Day the country woke up to the news that the war in Europe was finally over.  The crowds in London celebrated, singing Land of hope and glory as Churchill in his boiler suite made the victory sign . A time for us to celebrate , but for some families and friends it was a time to remember their loved ones, who had paid the ultimate sacrifice, and would never be coming home. 

Many artists and their families who until the outbreak of war had been living in London decided to leave . Some came to Cornwall and established, what was to become a new artists colony. Artists like Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Christopher Wood, Naum Gabo. They and their group went on to influence the second generation of artists such as Peter Lanyon , Terry Frost , John Wells, and Patrick Heron. Heron was living in Cornwall because his father Tom Heron managed the fabric printing company Crysede . The influential nieve painter Alfred Wallis, lived in a cottage in Back Road West, St Ives . The story of these artists can be found in Denys Val Bakers lovely book ‘Britain’s art colony by the sea’. A copy of which my grandmother gave to me when I first came to live in Cornwall ,  before Tate St Ives was conceived . 

So it was with this in mind, I thought today I would celebrate this special day with two Ben Nicholson paintings, in which at the time, he marked this historic day , adding the Union Jack Flag into his still life paintings .

By T.S.Eliot

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.

T. S. Eliot, East Coker

I was reacquainted last week with two paintings I made many years ago, recently acquired by Paul Longthorne, the Director of Market House Gallery, Marazion.

The earlier of the two is this oil painting, ‘ Girl with Ducks’ dated 1984. 

In the 1980’s, I made number of painting exploring the theme of relationships between children and animals … cats and ducks in particular. This painting was made when I lived in a rural cottage between Gloucester and Ledbury. There I had a small studio with a window that overlooked a few dwellings and fields towards the town. During those years, I was selling work through, what was then, Rooksmoor Mills Gallery, Nailsworth and the Arts Centre Cirencester.

In 1987, we moved to Cornwall, and for many years I rented an Acme Studio in the Old Net loft at Porthleven. The new studio and location naturally influenced my work in many ways, and it also gave me the opportunity to have people to model for me, like Paula, recorded in this oil painting below, at the time she had begun the male to female transition .

If you wish to contact the gallery about either of these paintings, here is the link – http://www.markethousegallery.co.uk

Lot number 662 is an oil painting I made in 1987, when for many years I rented an Acme Studio in the Cornish fishing village of Porthleven, in what was the old Net Lofts. I used to go there with Ruby, my little dog. I would paint for a bit then we would take a break and walk along the cliffs. The views from the second floor studio window were spectacular as the building is positioned right on the harbour side. The Mens Institute with its clock tower has been the subject matter for many an artist and photographer especially when the storms come in .

When I rediscover work that I made some time ago its like being united with an old friend, and all the memories associated with that time come flooding back . This is coming up for sale at David Lays Auctions, Penzance, Cornwall on Thursday 31st January 2020.

To feel at one with the earth and all things living .

As the nights draw in, its the perfect time to get ourselves cosy and warm, with some good music and company , here are some of my companions in the studio at the moment.

It would be great if we could all do a bit more of this ……

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

By William Stafford

Today we remember those brave men and women who sacrificed their lives for us.  

Few families remained untouched by the First World War . My own Grandmother lost her beloved Father, Thomas Henry Hearder Perring , of the Devonshire Regiment . They lived at the time at the Barbican Plymouth, in upstairs lodgings which remain almost unaltered, as it is now the museum. 

When I visited the house with my Grandmother before she died she explained how they had lived, where her fathers easle stood, and the yard below where the local boys played football with a makeshift ball . Thomas Perring a scenic and landscape artist studied painting under Opie in Plymouth until one day he left and never returned. A stretcher bearer killed in action on the front . 

This is a little painting I made of his son , my Uncle Coyte, a man I knew and loved .He served in the second world war, and did come home. He wrote poetry in quiet moments and this painting includes one of his I discovered in his small note book, long after he too had died.

We remember them.