Happy 2020! Here is the view from half way down the fell I struggled up on New Years Eve, fuelled by my gingerbread polar bears and coffee from a surprise coffee van - I'm getting slower but its always worth it for views like this.Well, It seems as though the only way to break the silence on this blog and make a fresh start as I enter my 12th year of occasional writing, is to admit that I was defeated when I started writing this post back in November. I ground to a halt, bogged down in a quagmire of half thought thoughts.
This is what I wrote ... "...I'm writing this by the stove with a hot water bottle up my jumper and a pile of buttered toast with blueberry jam next to me (well, in me now if I'm honest). It's dark outside, frosty cold and moonlit and I can hear an owl calling - a good night for hunting.What happens if I don't write regularly is that things get jumbled up and all the internal monologs that made sense when I was walking up the valley or wide awake in the middle of the night are forgotten. You'll have to take my word for it that they were fascinating and really worth writing down and not at all like this paragraph of waffle. I do regret not making at least one post a month though, because more and more this blog has become my personal record of the past 11 years. At a recent art fair a customer commented (flatteringly) that one of my bear drawings looked similar to another very well known artist's bears and it was a relief to be able to trawl back through old blog posts to confirm, to myself, that it had been drawn before I'd seen her work, although inspired by some of the same sources.At another event a woman picked up a print which I told her was from a piece I'd done at college "Oh it's lovely, don't you wish you could do something that good now? " (people say the funniest and rudest things without meaning to) It's good to be able to look back and see that, with a few exceptions, the things I make now are 100% better than those I was making in November 2009, even if the person making them is a bit more rounded and worn around the edges.
What's brought on all this looking back ? Well on Twitter last week I saw a post pointing out that there were only a few weeks left of this decade! That fact is fairly obvious and shouldn't make any difference to anything but it came as a bit of a shock to someone who can still remember the last days of the 70's quite clearly and somehow can't quite believe how quickly the past ten years, in particular, have been and gone. The question posed by the tweet I saw was, what have you achieved/learned in this decade and what are your hopes for the next? In some ways both these questions terrify me as I am prone to focusing on my fears and failures as well as feeling that, like John Cleese in Clockwise "I can take the despair. It's the hope I can't stand." Besides, many achievements also contain the bitter taste of Something Overcome and those things are hard to look back on, even when heavily sugared by success. But in a decade of big changes for me there are definitely some small achievements to celebrate and as for hopes... "And there I was, stuck, on what should have been the easiest question, what are your hopes and dreams? Well what are they? What are yours as you stride into the year?
So, much of what silences me and makes me sometimes fear writing from the heart in this, "public" space is the pressure to be positive and upbeat at all times, or risk damaging my business, and the very British habit of reserve which means even my most candid posts are heavily censored to avoid being too much of a bleeding heart. What I spent hours mulling over, forgetting to write, turned out not to be my hopes ( I hope for a garden and a pony of course, doesn't everyone?) but my fears - for the planet, for the world my children will inherit, for our country under this government and of course my own selfish fears (how many greetings cards = 1 weeks rent and should I be making more "stuff" in this world of stuff?).Anyway it's the New Year now, we're all full of optimism and shiny new intentions aren't we? I've invested in a fancy new planner from the Makers Yearbook to organise and motivate myself, it's bound to lead to wild success and world domination - gardens and ponies for everyone! I have to set daily/monthly tasks and one of today's is "Finish that bloody blog post" (s'cuse me swearing).I've also been drawing something everyday (so far, don't hold me to it, it's only January 9th). Here is last night's effort, part of an unwritten story.
My trip to Moniack Mhor continues to inspire me, I just need to knuckle down and put it all into practice even if no one reads the results except you and me. James Mayhew and Sarah McIntyre are doing another picture books week at the centre and I can't recommend it highly enough. I'd love to go back but this year I must be sensible, and besides, the car has refused to contemplate the trip.
It's nearly time to feed the stove, make a mug of tea and see what inky character emerges in this evening's session. But first, here is the cover of the poetry book I did for Gary Liggett in the Autumn. It's a signed limited edition book, handmade in Cumbria. I really enjoyed working with different media for this one (Lino cut and watercolour) and as usual it was a learning process. I'm so glad that he liked it, along with the three illustrations inside; you can see them all here along with some other illustration work.
In other exciting news, I was invited to take part in The Great Print Exhibition at Rheged, in their new gallery space. Sara and I went to the opening night ( we nearly turned back because the poor old car went over a bump and its lights went dim) and I was so excited to see my work along side so many amazing printmakers from all over the country; there was even a red dot on one of mine! Being in an exhibition like that and better still, selling something, is a real confidence boost because I think when it comes down to it, the biggest creative battle I have is the dreaded Imposter Syndrome.
If I don't write again very soon shout me and I'll get my act together. Also this post is dedicated to Kat Lakie, a friend of this blog, and everyone else in Australia, I'm thinking of you and hoping for cooling rain xReading : "Help the Witch" Tom Cox and "The Lost Future of Pepperharrow" Natasha Pulley (out in March )
I'm sitting outside wrapped in assorted layers because today is the first day of British Summer Time, the sun has been shining bravely, the birds are singing love songs and it's (slightly) warmer outside than in. With my slippered feet on the table and coffee mug balanced carefully on the bench beside me I can look over towards Maiden Moor and Catbells where groups of stick figures are silhouetted on the summits; a pair fell runners just puffed past and as usual I feel slightly guilty for being still and apparently idol. With all this Spring going on it's hard to believe that just a week ago I was in Narnia, well Bristol. I travelled down by train and experienced the weird, dreamlike dislocation of hurtling through blizzards, the train tilting and banking like a fighter plane, through the occasionally looming Howgills, and eventually arriving in a city blanketed in white. City snow is not something I've experienced, not since a childhood winter in Providence, and it felt very surreal to be wandering deserted streets at 2am, following fox tracks and skittering about pretending to be a horse (this last means my phone is now smashed and held together with sellotape).The rare treasure of three days with BOTH my children was made even more special by the peculiar, cocooning weather. The highlight (apart from snack suppers by the fire, snuggled up watching Paddington films) was a hair-raising drive to Glastonbury on the eve of the Vernal Equinox, where we had hoped to fly Jake's drone for some exciting aerial photography. It was unbelievably cold though and so windy that flying was impossible so we just walked and talked and looked across the Vale of Avalon and wondered what it would be like to actually live there. A town so full of crystal shops, vegan cafes and people wearing rainbow jumpers that it's almost a parody of itself. It's easy to be cynical and laugh at all the serious New Age types but I suddenly felt very much aware of a road not taken, or at least veered off in my 30s, and wondered if it wouldn't be a more forgiving place to face life, particularly older age as a "crone", than the Lakes with all it's obsessive running, cycling and extreme swimming. I'm still a hippy at heart and there is something comforting about knowing places like that exist, that not not everyone over 50 has to wear beige Goretex, run 10k before breakfast and stop playing horses. As Louise Chatfield commented, on Twitter, it seems at least like a place that is non judgemental or about putting people in boxes. I can't wait to return.
Back in the North I discovered (on #WorldWaterDay of course) the the water had gone wrong again- this time either overflowing like Aira Force on to the doorstep or gone completely and I'm not going to deny that I feel at rock bottom, sorely tempted by some of the more outlandish forms of self-help therapies spotted in the Glastonbury Oracle. Unicorn interactions perhaps or a spot of Puppet Therapy; failing that a new umbrella so that the door step is easier to navigate! I love you Lake District but my patience is being tried.
Again I am pondering Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs particularly in relation to creativity - there are many exceptions of course and some would argue that strife feeds creativity but I do find it hard to justify drawing bears when I probably ought to be finding a more reliable way to help earn enough to meet the first level of the pyramid! Luckily I came home to a few welcome orders for wooden bears which ticks some issues in the "Esteem" box. I want to make more of these wooden pieces, perhaps a hare or a leaping fox... but so far this one has worked by far the best. I got some lovely new silk cords yesterday so he now comes with either a dark red or blue cord (or silver snake chain).
When I was in Bristol we had a look in Hamilton House where the Folklore exhibition organised by Gordy Wright opens next month. It's a great place with loads of events, exhibitions and studios - what a dream it would have been to have something similar here in the old Cumberland Pencil Factory. Anyway, I've been working on a couple of illustrations and hopefully one will be getting printed and included in the exhibition... which one though ?
I've drawn myself a little hut by a lake and maybe if there is still magic in the universe and all that positive visualisation thing works it will one day be possible to find the illusive "Home" a place to belong, to build a garden again.
Meanwhile here is some proof of Spring, slowly unfurling .( this time last year the pink blossom was already in full bloom and the white almost over)
Reading: A Line Made by Walking - Sara Baume. Listening to : The Hazel Wood - Melissa Albert and Spiro who make the perfect music for swooping along Lake District roads pretending you're in a film to.
A little over a fortnight since my last blog post and I'm sitting quietly by the stove trying to work out if it's even possible to coherently share some of the ridiculous things that have happened lately and where to start. This is where being a proper writer would help... or if only I'd taken pictures as proof. Well you'll just have to imagine if you can:- the aftermath of the snowstorms, the heating oil arrived at last, the cupboards restocked with Marmite and bread flour and all is as it should be; except that as the snow melted and spring seemed to be arriving, the water went off. Much of the country had similar problems including Jackie Morris and the designer/shepherdess Alison O'Neil who both endured similar lengths of time with no running water (and electricity in Alison's case). For 8 days, while waiting for the plumber, we wrestled with the ancient pump (the water comes up from a spring near the beck and it had frozen) and the horrible tanks in the attic; lugging buckets up from the beck for toilet flushing and wrecking my plastic free intentions by buying gallons of bottled water. It was horrible, one trip to the beck was enough for me, I ached all over and the romance of rural life was hard to see. It shouldn't have taken so long to fix but the house is old and crumbling and the whole experience was incredibly stressful, dredging up memories of the last days at Snilesworth and making me militant about the absolute priority that should be given to making sure people all over the world have proper access to clean drinking water and sanitation. We take water for granted, especially in the Lake District and hardly ever stop to think how amazingly lucky we are. Water Aid do great work in this area, as I've mentioned before, so maybe I'll ask my landlords to make a big donation!As a side issue we discovered that there was a monster living in the attic. We'd heard him moving his furniture around in the night but whilst battling with water tanks and float switches in the terrifying attic, Rupert found the "droppings" of something evidently much larger than a mouse. Thankfully not rats, my friends assured me, but more weirdly ... weasels or stoats. Really?! I haven't been able to eat from the stoat plate since all our chickens got murdered when we moved here and now it seem the culprits live upstairs!
This house is connected to the old cottage next door, so we had a bit of sorting out to do in there too ( burst pipes, Aga issues etc) once the water was back on and I decided to put some of our washing up in their dishwasher since we don't have one. The cottage is dark and slightly haunted, having been empty for a while, but I'm never too worried, even when I realised that the front door was ajar when I went in to collect my pots in the evening- I probably didn't close it properly. In the back kitchen, loading my tray I heard a very strange noise and realised I wasn't alone. Shuffling , scratching, banging sounds that were obviously a brutal burglar nicking the collection of Beatrix Potter figurines, came from the front room and I prepared to meet my doom armed with some crockery. Creeping round the corner I came face to face with a tawny owl who was jumping up and down on the windowsill trying to get out. As I write I can hear the owls, they call constantly even in daylight and I love them but not upset ones in a confined space. As I edged forward to try and open the door the owl swooped silently into the other room and eyed me from the top of a wooden screen before hurling itself into the mirror over the mantlepiece, scattering trinkets and old photographs.We played this game for half an hour- I considered taking photos and wish I had now but I just wanted to set it free without getting it's talons stuck in me. Eventually the poor thing was so fed up of flying at the window that I managed to catch it (wearing an enormous pair of gauntlets that were lying around- it's that kind of place) and set her down on the gatepost outside, part of me wanting desperately to keep her. Away she flew, without a sound or a backward glance leaving me to recover from the shock. How did she get in, walking through the half open door or falling out of the attic after the plumber left a hatch open? Summoned by too many owl drawings and not enough flowers?
I feels though I've waffled on enough now, you probably had to be there, but anyway, it sets a scene. I live in a very odd place and I think if it weren't for my precious, occasional bookshop days, I would be going a little bit crazy by now. It's important to have a bit of human interaction and lately that has felt more important than ever.
When not fetching water or wrangling owls I've been drawing swans, preparing to send an image or two down for an exhibition in Bristol next month and being inspired by a folk tale based in Grasmere called the Hunchback and the Swan by Taffy Thomas , a local storyteller. I've just found this wonderful animation by Dotty Kultys based on the story today [vimeo 197521074 w=640 h=360]Isn't it great and the music too! Now I need to keep drawing because I have lots of ideas but they're not popping out how I want them too yet. Here is my swan, the Lady of the Lake.
Until next time. xReading: "A Line Made by Walking" Sara Baum Listening to : " TheBedlam Stacks" by Natasha Pulley ( audio book)