Autumn Field

 It’s been such a long time since I posted here, so I thought it was high time I was back here again. The  beautiful warm weather lulled us all into a false sense of security I think, but autumn is most definitely here now with the rain lashing against the windows as I write this. The views across the fields are changing too, with that soft focus murkiness taking the place of intense blue skies and dark shadows. I think there is still a lot of beauty in the murkiness (which is just as well as I’m sure we’ll see plenty of it over the next few months)! 

Lockdown survival strategies

I’m sure many of us have found this second lockdown more of a struggle than the one earlier in the Spring and Summer, even though that one was much longer. The combination of lack of daylight and cold, murky weather, added to missing our families and friends (and for many, very real worries about their jobs and businesses) has made this feel a very uncertain time for so many. 

I’m a naturally cup-half-full person, but even though I have been keeping myself busy I could feel myself getting more tetchy and fed up as every day started feeling like a scene from the film ‘Groundhog Day’ (which, incidentally, is one of my favourite films, and I’m not going to even try to count how many times Phil and I have watched it)!

Then along came artists Jeremy Sanders and Jenny Aitken, who decided between them to arrange a ‘virtual paint out’ on Instagram, offering other artists who were also missing painting outside,  a different daily selection of photographic views from their respective homes in Cornwall and Derbyshire to paint from. Once painted, we put our paintings on our own Instagram pages with the hashtag #l2paintin

So each day this past week I have ‘travelled’ miles across the country via my studio, keeping company with a really lovely, supportive group of artists, each of us painting in our own unique style and admiring each other’s work at the end of the day. 

I’ve taken a screenshot of my Instagram page (@jackyradbone),  which shows a little montage of the  paintings I have done this week, some of which will be in my Oxfordshire Artweeks exhibition in May. I’ve  kept to my usual limited palette, and I’ve kept to the same amount of painting time I would, of necessity, have kept to if I’d been painting at the actual location - no more than one and a half hours. 

I have my own sketchbooks and reference photos I could have painted from, or of course I could have painted some more still life subjects or painted in the garden; but this feeling of community, of ‘meeting up’ to paint with other artists each day, has felt very light-hearted and upbeat, and has helped keep my ‘cup’ half full just when I needed it. Thanks so much Jerry and Jenny x

RUSSETS 6” x 6” oil on board

Our neighbours’ Russet apple tree looked lovely in the early morning light and I couldn’t resist doing a little oil study of it. Our family have a fondness for that Russet tree, which grows right by our garden fence . . .when our boys were little (they’re grown men now), our lovely neighbours told them they could scrump ‘our’ side of the tree whenever they wanted (how our boys loved our neighbours who, with great patience, would also return stray footballs etc and pass other treats over the fence!)
 

Now it’s Boo dog who goes apple scrumping and eats all the windfalls as they drop on our garden path. If you hear me bellowing, “Boo, drop it!!” at this time of year, it will probably be because he is wolfing down his third apple of the day! 🍏🍏🍏🐶

 Fail Big, Fail Often! -  This is a quote I heard from another artist a long while ago. It really clicked with me when I first heard it, and I now have it stuck on the chest of drawers in the studio where I can see it every time I’m ‘Failing Big’ yet again! 

It’s quotes like this that keep me going when I get stuck doing painting after painting that isn’t working out how I’ve seen it in my mind’s eye at the outset. Time after time I will make the same mistakes and my efforts will look clumsy . . .  and then . . . (hopefully/usually) . . . the day finally arrives when something clicks, and all those disappointing paintings pay off; what I was aiming for, for such a painfully long time, finally happens and I have a painting that is pretty much how I intend it to look.

Here’s longingly hoping that this will happen one day with roses, which are my nemesis. I envisage these gossamer, floaty, translucent things of delight - but it just isn’t happening yet; roses are such complicated structures, and with my double vision I lose track of which part I’m supposed to be painting!

Hopefully though, as I keep studying these delicate, beautiful flowers while painting them from life, and my tenacity in keeping on failing(!) will finally bring about the results I want. In the meantime, I will just keep plodding on, Failing Big, Failing Often, and loving every minute of it. 

If you are also trying to get somewhere with what you love to do, be brave, bold and tenacious, and remember this inspiring quote, it’s a good one! 🌸

SPRING GLORY painted on location five days before self isolation began. 

The last time I wrote a blog post Spring was just around the corner and we were all busy making plans for the better weather. Now we find ourselves in strange, and worrying, times that we couldn’t even have imagined a few months ago.

Times at the moment certainly aren’t easy for anyone, and the daily news continues to be grim viewing; but there are some amazing things happening in the midst of this dreadful pandemic. The kindness of people; strangers, friends, loved ones, is wonderful to see. And to watch our politicians all working together to get us through this is a marvel in itself. The heroic dedication of doctors, nurses, care workers , shop workers  - the list could go on and on - is very humbling indeed. . . .I truly hope and believe the world could be a better place in the future if we hold on to all the values we are showing now, in this worldwide crisis. . . 

And, through it all, the Spring continues in all its glory, families have time to be together, we are all keeping in touch much more, and we are all learning to live simpler lives, as those before us did. 

I hope you stay well, and free of this awful virus, I hope we have good weather to make the lockdown feel less limiting, and I hope you get the opportunity to perhaps try that new hobby or interest that you’ve never tried before. As this time passes - and it will - I wish you joy in the little things 🌸

The Best Laid Plans . . . 

If everything had gone to perfect plan, today I would have been on my first day of recovery after surgery. Unfortunately, I failed my pre-op last week, so everything is delayed while I have more tests and now wait to go to another hospital for my op. It’s very frustrating as the timing was perfect - there is only four months until Artweeks 2020 and there will be so much to do to prepare for that. . . 

Still, as they say, life carries on happening while we are busy making plans, so although I felt fed up yesterday I decided to get on with things anyway, warping up my smaller loom and starting on another scarf, weaving a lap blanket on the bigger loom, and spinning some more lovely, soft Blue Faced Leicester wool to weave into cloth for a waistcoat.

Today I did a painting of the still-soggy fields of elephant grass down by the river. Painting takes so much concentration that it’s completely absorbing, so after two days of filling my time with doing all  the creative things I love, I feel so much better. What creative things lift your spirits? 

New Year resolutions

Over the decades I’ve lost track of how many New Year’s resolutions I have made and promptly broken, so this  year I’ve resolved not to make any at all.  New Year is always a good time to reflect on the past and to look ahead though, and I’ve been doing plenty of that in between all the busyness and enjoyment of the past couple of weeks.

The last six months haven’t been as productive as I had hoped; some of that was due to looking after a poorly dog (who is now thankfully full of beans again, and has just celebrated his 9th Birthday with lots of treats). A lot of the problem though, was that I lost confidence in myself and have had a very long dose of ‘artist’s block’.

Now that I’ve had a bit of a post-Christmas rest and had a bit of time to think things through I’m ready to face 2020 with fresh enthusiasm. I’ve entered a couple of art competitions, and got through the first stage of one of them, with another stage still to get through (not holding out much hope of the other, but will know one way or the other soon enough). I’m also going to try to manage my time much better, especially while the daylight is still so limited, so that I can get more painting time in. I’m going to concentrate more on painting the things I love this year, no more commissions or anything like that (which that I find super-stressful), but spend the time trying to improve instead.  I’m already looking forward to Artweeks in May too, that is always a lot of fun, and as usual will creep up on me before I know it!

There are so many blessings in life, and so much to look forward to - not least, the brighter, warmer days of Spring not too far off now, with all that it promises.  I wish you a very happy, peaceful, healthful 2020 🌸x

Winter Evening 8” x 10” oil on board

It is true that if you wait until you feel inspired to paint, very little painting will happen; so with that in mind and feeling just about as uninspired as I could possibly be, I picked my brushes up today. All I had really wanted to do was stay snuggled in front of the fire, but as always I’m really glad I forced myself  to paint as it’s always a calming thing to do and I always feel better for it. 

It’s been a fraught time lately, not least because we found another lump on our beloved dog Boo. He had only had surgery to remove a cancerous lump from his tummy just four months ago, and here we were facing surgery again - this time for a mast cell tumour, similar to one he had when he was only two years old. That time it had been followed up by several months chemotherapy, so we were very concerned this time. 

Thankfully Boo’s latest surgery went very well, and this evening we saw the vet to discuss if  further treatment is needed, I’m really relieved that the decision was that the surgery should be enough this time. You would think that, after all he has gone through in his (almost) 9 years, Boo would be very wary of going to the vet’s, but no! He loves it, can’t wait to get in there with his waggy tail and lick  all the staff, and do his “puppy eyes” so that he gets lots of treats! We are very fortunate to have such a great veterinary hospital at Chipping Norton; our family has most certainly been glad of it the past few months.

‘Chinese Lanterns” 10” x 8” oil on board.

Every Autumn I see the glorious colours of Chinese Lanterns and determine to plant some for the following year - and then suddenly Autumn is here again and I still haven’t got any in the garden! Thank goodness for kind and lovely village friends who were so generous to bring not only a big bunch for us to enjoy in a vase in the sitting room (where it looks gorgeous in the hearth), but also another bunch ready to hang and dry, which I hung in the Cwtch so that I could paint them - what a joy to mix those vibrant colours!

Speaking of Autumn - how did that happen so quickly? I can hardly believe we are about to say hello to October already. I’m not a person who enjoys the dark, wet, cold days, and even colder nights, very much (it can be very hard to keep oneself warm and dry in a wheelchair when the weather is cold), but I have some friends and family for whom this is their favourite time of year so I am determined to try to embrace their enthusiasm! Certainly, on a clear, frosty day the colours in the countryside are amazing, and even a murky misty day, with the jackdaws cawing in the trees, can have its charm; so I will look forward to trying to capture the changing seasons with my oil paints - and wrap up very warmly while I’m doing it.

I will be taking part in an exhibition with Chipping Norton Arts at Chipping Norton Theatre Gallery from September 30th to October 19th. It is part of the Chipping Norton Arts Festival which is taking place in venues around the town on Saturday October 5th. There will be lots happening on the day, so do go along if you can, and I hope you will also enjoy the CNarts exhibition at the Theatre over the next couple of weeks (I’m not sure of opening times yet but will post on my Facebook page when I find out - and please be aware if you have limited mobility,  that the gallery is up a flight of stairs with no lift or stairlift unfortunately).

Also on October 5th, I will have a stall selling art prints, cards (including some new Christmas designs) and handwoven items at the ‘Dogs for Good’ Autumn Craft Fair, at the Dogs for Good training centre at Blacklocks Hill, Banbury. The Fair runs from 11am - 3pm, and I would love to see you if you can make it. Boo and some of his DfG friends will be there too, ready to give a waggy hello. x