The Last Supper

It's been some time, huh?It's been an age.There's never a good place to start blogging again, is there?I've got six months of adventures and art and general goings-on to catch you up on, but I thought that maybe the best place to start is today. Right here. Right now.I was just at The Ashmolean Museum to see a special exhibition: The Last Supper in Pompeii.In this exhibition were about 400 artefacts from the tragic city. There were pieces of homes, mosaics, practical everyday objects, and the charred remains of food; including stuffed dormice, roasted flamingos and fermented fish sauce.Oh, and 200 yr old ketchup.What struck me so much about this exhibit was its narrow focus.Not the all expansive life of the Napa Valley of its day, not the crowded narrow double streets or the pumice tombs which encased so many people, but the intimacy of everyday dishes, glasses, kitchen pots.We see a mosaic of ocean life which once was the floor of a house.There's artwork on walls, statues and altars to garnish favour with gods.And everywhere there are reminders of the leading moto of that time:Carpe Diem.Carpe Diem because you can just hear Vesuvius rumbling in the background.Carpe Diem because in a brief moment life could be over.So Carpe the hell out of your Diem everyone.Every day.PS: I'm just going to quietly backdate posts, publish them, be calm, and carry on.

Hello from Sunday night. Wotcha doin? I've been printing my head off!

Hi everyone,It's been an intense and working summer for me so far.Made even more so because I was determined to finish my internship/probationary period at my Oxford Printmakers Guild.So every Tuesday and Saturday I have been walking into Oxford from the park and ride with a small rolling suitcase full of papers, tools, inks and ideas, and organising those ideas out on a table.Then I would tear up my papers to size and get them soaking before anything else.Then I would ink up my plate, wipe the ink off, make a guide for registration, put the plate into one of the old industrial presses, grab one of my soaked papers, blot it off, lay it on the plate, and......cover it with tissue and the felt blankets, and run it thru.I also learned to do soft ground etchings on copper plates.I did three of these plates. So far it's the most exciting and fulfilling plate making intaglio process, but I have to master aquatints yet. Those I think I'd love to pieces.Here is a print of one of these soft ground plates.This is the second one. The twigs were harder to run thru the press than the ferns were.This is a small selection of plates you can see. I made copper plates, zinc, aluminium ones and even some plastic drypoint etchings.Of course, all this came with a great big investment in new tools and materials...as is often the case, but the end result is so wonderful. Here is a registration try at three moth prints.This is the third soft ground copper plate I made. All of these copper plates are supporting my wish to show how wild animals survive and adapt in the urban heat island that is our city scape.Of course, the worst thing about printing is that you have to flatten your prints between tissue and leave them for a few days to dry! No coming home right away with beautiful works of art!But then, there's always a new plate to make at home in the meantime.I was in London recently and the trip led me to make a plate of some London tube mosquitos on a piece of aluminium I got from Robert.They're really interesting. They've evolved to stay in the tube station and not hibernate, to breed all year long instead of seasonally, they have a fresh and adequate supply of blood all year long, and they've separated into different genomes because they cannot travel thru the tubes, (except in the train itself), and there is no need for them to go outside. A whole bunch of subspecies which live and die and evolve different characteristics underground.I'm waffling on, but here is the print.Hope you like this art.Talk soon(er)

ABOUT TIME! I know.

A new short shift for my TVR and a rare birthday in Oxford (not at RBG Kew)Hi everyone,I meant to post this ages ago!You know me...lol...life gets in the way.As a matter of fact, so did a certain orange maniac.Can you believe it? On the one day I go into London and visit Kew...the one day which has happened every year for the past 15 years, the orange one comes to town.Nevermind the though of tainting my special day, the traffic getting into and out of London was enough for me to back out of my tradition.So we went into Oxford instead.The first place we stopped in was my most favourite store Scriptum.Scriptum is so amazingly beautiful. It's like a little jewel box of papers, inks, pens, beautiful journals, vintage books and every other kind of old world library fancy your little heart desires.After having spent a very long time there, we headed off to lunch at our friend Will's restaurant The Vaults Garden Cafe . This is an amazing place in the old vaults under St Mary's church. Will makes the most delicious organic food.After lunch and a lovely chat with Will, we went to the science museum to see the ancientThen off to the Ashmolean Museum of art and archeology in a huge building with five floors to explore. You could easily spend days and days there and still not discover everything there is to see.Actually, the reason I wanted to come here today is because on the third floor the Ashmolean has special exhibits which they change every few months. Right now they have a large and beautiful exhibit called America's Cool Modernism, and it features early 20th-century modernists. There was a no photo policy :( but there is a small link here with a little video from the Ashmolean site.I couldn't help it. I bought the book with all the paintings on exhibit. It's just so inspirational.In other news, I'm back in my TVR.Man, I love this car!However, it does have its challenges.One was the old and clumsy shift which took all my strength to push it down and wrench it into reverse.So this spring I bought a bespoke short shift and Robert and I installed it.Out with the old!and in with the new.That's better. Now it feels like a racing car.I took it for a test drive and I love it to pieces. So much easier to shift.(I must admit to feeling a bit silly when I put it into first instead of third because of the very short distance between them and tried to drive off in a sexy yeah-I'm-all-that-in-my-hot-car sort of way in front of the local village gas station crew, and the car goes "splutter, clunk, clunk", you tend to find first gear really quickly after that! LOLAnd then Robbie did the sweetest thing.I took off the bespoke silver top of my gear shift because it had the previous owner's initials on it and was thinking of what I wanted to replace it with, when R made me a disk made from a real Williams Formula 1 car Inconel exhaust, which has actually been in an F1 race and that's why it changed to all those rainbow colours.Then he stamped out a beautiful scrolled V freehand with a pin punch.Lucky girl.That's me.

Hello from Sunday night...finally!

Hello everyone, I'm back in England.Which may seem like a strange thing, because if you read my posts, it looks like I never left!I did leave England for almost 2 months, but the day I left, my computer left me.That is to say that the hard drive on my pc packed it in.Just like that.The black screen of death.So the past two months have been a bit of a nightmare trying to recover data, trying to see if my old PC (still under warranty) is fixable or replaceable, and getting a new pc for the meantime as it became apparent that the company who made my old pc would take their time, (and need gentle encouragement in the form of an all-out rant on social media by my brilliant SIL), for me to get any recourse.In the meantime, I've been back to Vancouver, became a family dog owner, went to see our little ones in Kelowna...twice, had a garage sale, taught my last journal course before my summer break, collected millions of photos....and had no computer and no Photoshop to share.So, while this is where I am today, I do have a second pc that now has Photoshop, and I will share a sort of back and forth mix of posts, but for now, I'm back in Oxfordshire five fields away from my river.The earth is sun-scorched.I think I got here just in the nick of time to save parts of my garden.But the river is beautiful.I've been walking the jet lag off and my most favourite walk is the Thames right here.It's such a Wind in the Willows area.Any minute it feels like Mr Toad could come paddling by.As a matter of fact, each time I get close to the water, I frighten some creature which immediately splooshes in.In the fields here is a pill box from WWII, looking now more like a relic from some tiny castle rather than a strategic military bunker erected in uncertain times.On the river is a large flock of geese.These guys tend to fly over the cottage later on in the summer.The day is hot, but finally I come to my destination.Today I wanted to come sit under this foot bridge.Those cement footholds are perfect for sitting on and dangling your feet in the cool water.To my left is a metalic green-blue damselfly.He flutters around after some prey or to ward off other damselflies and returns to his perch again and again.On the right, the river bends some reeds which give the stillness a small bubbling sound.I stayed for a few minutes just taking it all in, and then turned back for home.By the time I walked down the field, the geese were fed up wih doging boats and waddled up on the shore.I don't blame them.Even though the river is quieter than normal, there still is a lot of activity.I realised that everyone just might be indoors watching the Fifa World Cup when I walked past this narrow boat and heard a "YESSS!" and a "WHAAAHOOO!", and glanced inside to see the brightly lit screen of the TV.LOL,Back down the river, back home to the cottage and about to send some more posts your way.

Christmas at Blenheim

We drove off to Blenheim, like we do most British Christmas years, to see the opulence and festivities at our palace next door.Most years Blenheim is decked to the nines and is so over the top festive that it takes our breath away.I was really pleased that we took the time this year again, however, Blenheim has done something new. Instead of Christmas opulence, Blenheim was featuring a solo exhibition by an artist named Jenny Holzer, whose message is an opposition to war. Therefore, large abstracts featured prominently, and, instead of tables decked in finery and cupboards full of exquisite china and crystal, there were human remains and bones on those tables and in those cupboards. Not really my cup of tea. But parts of the palace were still festive and that's what I'd like to show you.The entrance to the palace had the usual Christmas trees, and the busts were crowned with beautiful ivy or holly crowns.Actually, every room had a Christmas tree.Each Christmas tree had a theme. Some were turquoise and full of peacocks and some, like this one, had these exquisite golden crowns. Also, most of the fires were lit. This is the first time that we can remember seeing the fires lit including both in the great dining room.My favourite room, the great library, had several beautiful Christmas trees.And this is where a more intimate table was set in front of the fire.Look how beautiful each place setting is. We loved the addition of the jewels on each Christmas cracker.We had some lunch, and after lunch, we had a peek into the gift shop. Actually, it may have been more than a peek; it may have been a proper mooch thru, but you can only exit the palace grounds thru the gift shop, so then again...I have to show you this display. It's a life-sized father Christmas and reindeer made from dried plant material.I thought it was fantastic.Here's a closeup on father Christmas so you can see the dried peppers and pinecones.And here's a closeup of the reindeer body. It all smelled amazing!So we bought our usual: butter fudge for me and tablet (a fudge-like sweet) for R, and I also bought this sweet little card. It's by artist Lucy Loveheart and I love her whimsical style. At the moment it's making me feel happy as I sketch the mistletoe I gathered the other day.

The beauty and the beast at Blenheim

Here's something!I learned how to grab a still image from the GoPro movie files!Ha!Prepare to be inundated with more and possibly more interesting photos...lol. (here's a GoPro still)On Monday, Robbie and I jumped into our TVRs and hooned x-Oxfordshire to Blenheim.The drive was glorious and we expected it to take the usual 20 or so minutes, so we had a great time chasing each other (actually, what it looked like was me in my V6, trying to keep up to R's V8 turbo charged engine), but then we got stuck in a 15 minute queue trickling into the palace grounds.By the way, R's car is called Clara, as in Clara Bow, so I have to stop calling it beasty.(Hmm, my car doesn't have a name yet)So we finally got thru the queue and drove the cars straight into the show grounds, instead of into the parking lots. We didn't even ask...lol...and looked around for other TVRs but couldn't see them right away, so we parked up in our car year categories.As soon as I turned the car off, a little steam started escaping from under my hood.More gremlins!This time a bit of a leak somewhere, maybe?I tried to get Robbie's attention, but as soon as he parked up, he had a crowd around him! This always happens.But my pretty car got loads of attention and I saw four people take photos of it within just a few minutes. :DAnd, just parked up for a while, the car cooled off and the temps came down.Then the announcer called all older convertibles and sports cars into the central show.So I said let's do it!Robbie said, "really? No."But I said "please please please", and so he did.Then we went for a little walk and found the TVR club. Now we're not members of any club, but we asked if we could quietly trickle in and join the other TVRs.The club people said, "yes, no problem, the more the merrier". :DI said, "thank you, and, while I'll trickle in, Robert may not be so inconspicuous".So we jumped back into the cars and R blipped the throttle and roared...slowly...into the TVR club area.Yeah, I see you...and so does everyone else...lol.So we parked up the cars and I took the GoPro off the headrest and turned around...And there was another group around Robbie.Half hour later, and the group just got bigger.I was getting pretty hungry, so found a near-by tree, spread out our picnic blanket, took off my shoes and sunhat......walked back to the cars, grabbed our picnic basket and persuaded R to join me.Even with no owner there, Clara attracted a lot of attention.After our lunch, we went for a tour of the show grounds to see the other cars.We started with the TVRs.Here's a beautiful TVR M just like Robert's, but unmodified.That's something. Car club members can sometimes be very purist about their cars and a bit anti modifications, but mostly everyone is friendly and welcoming.Here's a yellow S2 like mine.And here is a classic 1980s wedge.The thing about the wedges; people seem to either love them or hate them.I loved this one in this golden colour.And here is our new friend Barry, who I met thru the TVR S FB group and his lovely S2 Garv.Isn't it stunning? I love the black and white contrast.We toured the rest of the field and I spied my new look!Love the ruby slippers...lol.Also, love the VWsHere is a beautiful mini engine like mine that I'm working on now for my grey mini.And look at this stunning vintage mini with a complete modernisation.Kind of cool.Interesting prismatic paint job.We walked past the bikers who were all called into the show grounds just then.Love that one guy's passenger. :DThen we came across this Batmobile.Oh people know how to have fun!A few more lovely cars......before we went to get icecream.Then we walked back to our cars, said goodbye to our new friends,and raced each other back home.We each got a metal show vehicle plaque for this year, and just before he roared out, a man came running up to Robert and awarded him the TVR car club mug for the best pre 1980s TVR!Well, if you can believe that...lol.

Test drive to lunch at the palace next door.

It's a long weekend here in the UK and a festival of speed at Blenheim, our palace next door.We thought it would be loads of fun to drive our his and her's TVRs to the festival.But we decided to make a test run to the palace first because Robert has made some modifications to my TVR engine and wanted to test it out, and also, our season's passes have run out and we didn;t want to be stuck in line waiting to renew them on Sunday.So we hopped in my TVR and Robert drove it out to Blenheim listening to the engine.We drove thru winding little streets and sleepy little Cotswold villages. It's a beautiful drive.And arrived at Blenheim just in time for lunch and just a few minutes before a rain shower.So we plonked the roof panels back on, which is when I had a brainwave which reminded me that the roof of our own house was in need of a roof service. We then locked the car, sprinted to the palace and had some lunch. Locksmith Walnut Creek installs best spares and locks to ensure the safety of your vehicle is not compromised.We stayed inside the palace until the rain shower passed and then went for a walk in the grounds.Here are the upper terrace water gardens.And the lower terrace water gardens.Oops...Here's one wing of Blenheim Palace from the bottom of the water gardens.I wanted to see the roses and so we walked out thru the Capability Brown landscape to the rose garden.Autumn is definitely on the way.But the wildflowers are still doing well. It's been a damp summer.The roses are fantastic.Here at the rose garden, there are only about six varieties growing but in large masses, so the effect is stunning.From the rose garden, we walked back to the palace and went inside.I love the eyes above the entrance and often forget to look up to see them. This time I walked back outside because I remembered too late.Actually, looking up in Blenheim is a great idea. Many of the rooms have beautiful painted ceilings.So we had our ususal walk thru of the house...And ended up in the great library.I really love this library. Wish I had permission to pull out and look at all the books.Then a quick stop in the gift shop.I resisted all the temptations. (How good am I?)A last little look around...And I drove the TVR home.Love the new engine modifications.Thank you so much Robbie.Blenheim Festival of Speed is up next.

Oxford day, appointments and chasing the Moors.

Hello everybody, how's your week going?I've had a rare treat!Robert came with me into Oxford and we had a beautiful day.I must say that Robert rarely comes into Oxford with me, but he had an appointment in town and so we decided we would do a little more research into the Moors together.I stopped at Pret-a-Manger for a croissant and tea.Do you know this lovely little UK coffee bar? I understand that now they have a few locations in the US as well.Our Pret is located in one of the oldest buildings here. Right beside a little church.The church is surrounded by this fence with "do not park your bike here" signs.I guess the signs mean something to someone...lol.Like I said in my previous post, the only clue I have to the Medieval frescos are the faded circa 1930 photographs saying that the originals are in the Bodleian Library.But that was then.The Bodleian Library no longer functions as it once did. Over the years, the discovery of more history and scores of documents have made it necessary to relocate branches of the library. The most likely place for my drawings seemed to the Westin Library, (where Medieval scripts and paintings are recorded in photographs and books.) After speaking to the chief historian, in now looks more likely that the paintings have been moved into the vaults on the Ashmolean museum...although no one knows where they actually are.So we set off to the Ashmolean, spoke to the clerk...who said everyone in the history department is stopped for lunch.Nice! We didn't mind. We had a lovely hour mooching around the museum.When everyone came back from lunch, they sent word to the clerk to supply us with email addresses and have us make a formal enquiry and they would look into it.So there we are.We had another two hours before R's appointment, and so we decided to visit the botanical garden.The botanical garden here in Ox is a beautiful little spot right on a canal of the Thames.Tons of people were out punting and generally mucking about in boats, and so R had a seat on the bank to watch the hilarity of the punters trying not to fall in or play bumper boats, and I went for a walk thru the gardens.This is not a very big garden...as botanical gardens go...it's only 4.5 acres, but it's an important one. It started life as a university physic garden and is the oldest botanical garden in all of the UK. For all its compact size, it contains over 8000 species, making it one of the most important gardens in the world.It is divided into two sections by a great stone wall.The first section is a sort of park (above), and the second section is comprised of veg, fruit, wild meadow, damp shade and water gardens, plus an orchard.Here are a few shots of the veg garden.I love veg gardens and am always learning something new.See these beautiful rhubarb cloches?I wish I could have them in Vancouver. Nothing like this is sold in Van and these are just too heavy to haul on the flight.Just past the veg gardens is a little orchard. That reminds me, I said I would buy a small apple for our garden here to replace the one which had to go to make way for the car port.Past the orchard is the most amazing thing.Look! It's a jumble of flowering plants and grasses, five feet tall!It's a planting called seeds of change.A direct sowing of drought tolerant plants designed to have minimal impact on the environment while providing maximum benefits to wildlife.Amazing!The end of the botanical garden is a shady and damp area for shade loving plants.It's right beside the river and has loads of places to sit and rest around ponds and under trees.That's the view back towards Ox.One more place I want to show you, the south side of the wall and these incredible 12 ft deep borders.Some of the plants are over six feet tall.Oh to have the room...huh?The most fun was walking back to wards a smiling Robbie who has been sitting by the river watching the punters almost knock each other off, hit the banks or trees and get attacked by wildlife! :DThen we walked several miles to R's appointment, and then back into Oxford and we had a very late lunch/early supper at Will's restaurant The Vaults.It was lovely. They were all set up for afternoon tea (you know, scones and jam), but we asked Will if we could have some supper and he made us the best tarragon chicken with veg and roasted potatoes.Then we had a chat and a bit of a catch-up.Then, early evening, we walked out of Oxford and drove home.This beautiful Dutch masters painting at the Ashmolean (A lady sitting at table attributed to Simon Kick (1603 - 1652)) is a little like me right now.Waiting for replies to emails and doing research into the Moores.

Oxford day

I had one pill of my travel probiotics left and needed to make a trip into Oxford to the larger health food store to buy some more.I stopped in our market town at the small health food store earlier in the week, but they only carried probiotics which are stable at room temperature and have 2-5 billion cultures, and I'm used to taking 50-100 billion cultures. Live cultures, stored in the fridge, not the dry kind stored on the shelves. Well, it would seem that my live kind are not that easy to get in the UK, so I bought a 25 billion kind and am hoping for the best.But while I was going into town anyway, I thought I'd take you with me.I always park two miles out of town in the park and ride, which for me should be called the park and walk, and walk in.The walk is lovely, gets me some fresh air and exercise and goes past garden alotments and various canals of the Thames, until it gets into town.I did pick this day to walk in because once per week is a vintage market day and loads of tents set up and all sorts of interesting goods.I had a good mooch around the market but the prices are so much higher than the car boot sales, the goods that I'm interested in, like ink bottles, paper ephemera, or stoneware, not that much different than the car boot sale finds, and my map seller wasn't there this week, so I didn't buy anything.On to Cornmarket street to get to the covered market where the health food store is.Cornmarket is the typical tourist street so a good deal of crowd surfing goes on to get thru.But a duck down the alley away from the tourists and I'm in the covered market.Note to self, come back and buy some flowers last minute.So I bought the probiotics, had a peek at some of the lovelier stores and stopped at the butcher for some steak and ale pies.Then out of the covered market and down some of the roads, I had a peek thru the gates of some of the universities.Down the lovely streets of warm Cotswold stone buildings......to one of my favourite stores in the whole world; Scriptum.Guys, I just love this store.It's like walking into a jewel box curiosity shop of needful things.It's full of whimsey and fun and vintage books, and the most beautiful, handmade, leather bound, marbled-paper journals in the world.Then out of Scriptum, where I didn;t buy anything...yet...and back thru the streets, peeking into other front gates of universities.Past the Radcliffe Camera, (the ancient university science library), and into St Mary's Church behind it.At the ground floor of the church is a little garden cafe called The Vaults...because it is in the Vaults of the church...with lunch tables and chairs among the gravestones.The cafe belongs to our friend Will and I popped in to say Hi, but he wasn' working today.So, being very restrained in my shopping today and having bought the essentials I came into town for, I walked back out again.But don't worry, I'll be back.

Back home in Oxfordshire

Hello everyone,I'm back in OXON with Robbie and took a few days to recover, adjust and flip into UK living.Look at this little guy!Theo is so much bigger and so much gentler. Robert has him so incredibly well trained and disciplined. I'm so impressed.This week I jumped into the car and drove to the market on the wrong side of the road on the wrong side of the car and felt very easy about it.Also this week I cleared the cobwebs out of my studio and got reacquainted with my space again.Would you like to see some new art supplies?I bought some watercolours in Slovakia, in an art store in Piestany. I bet that's the best place to sell art supplies to all the happy spa customers.These watercolours are so cool because the little pallets hook on top of each other and form a small tower with a plastic lid. So much fun.And in Prague, I bought a new set of chalk pencils. A full set with loads of exquisite colours. Believe it or not, I've never had a full set of chalk pencils in my arsenal and I use them all the time in my art.I've also brought back a ton of ephemera; old maps, old passports, documents...And this little painting, painted by a street artist in Prague. I fell in love witht he bright, happy colours.I'll find a frame for it and it will join my studio collection.It's a small but special to me collection.In it is this large, vintage oil painting I bought at the car boot sale for just a pound or two. I loved it at first sight.I feel really lucky to have one of Robert's mother's paintings in my studio hanging beside my own art.(R's mother's on left, one of my oils on right)I also have three of Robert's father's paintings here on my wall. They are all wonderful inspiration.For a primary little art session the other day, chose a map of the area where my summer cottage used to be.I looked at it for a while but the only obvious choice was to paint that bird I saw flying below me when I was looking down from Strekov Castle. I did a lot more blowing up of the three photos I managed to take of it and concluded that it wasn;t a gyrfalcon but probably a rough-legged buzzard.And so I decided to go with that and paint him.Especially when I'm dealing with an old and delicate map...this one is beyond fragile with old paper glued onto canvas...I will draw my subject on transparent paper to get it right before I place it on the map. Often these papers are a one-shot deal and there is no erasing possible.As soon as I get anywhere with this painting, I'll show you. :DIn other news!I've had the most wonderful day out with Robert at the Thames at our favourite little pub The Rose Revived.And that is because I met this beautiful girl in real life!Thsi is my friend Julie and she lives in New Zeland and writes the blog Frog Pond Farm.Julie and her husband Andrew were in the Uk visiting his father and made the drive over to us so we could meet each other in person.So we had lunch together and sat under the willows......beside Newbridge; the 13C bridge across our area of the Thames.We chatted for hours and fed left-over french fries and peas to the cygnets,and watched the narrow boats float by.