cynara de goutiere

working colours

I love how colours working together as light are quite different  than had they been puddled together into solid pigment.   Here is the Oranges and Lemons warp of the previous two posts with a new weft – predominantly brick-rose. Read the rest of this entry »

Harbingers

Spidery Witchhazels and Hellebore buds, like claws from the dark earth.

Say the Bells of St. Clements

Oranges and Lemons

The bowl of oranges and lemons of my previous post would not wait another day, so I cut this twill table runner off the loom last night.

Odd how old nursery rhyme chants roll round and round in the mind.  They are so instilled in us that vague and meaningless as they are, they become cultural references. George Orwell in “Nineteen Eighty Four” uses Oranges and Lemons as a repeated chant – a mnemonic evoked as a touchstone of a lost and irretrievable time.

Oranges and lemons
Say the bells of St Clements
You owe me five farthings
Say the bells of St Martins
When will you pay me?
Say the bells of Old Bailey
When I grow rich
Say the bells of Shoreditch
When will that be?
Say the bells of Stepney
I’m sure I don’t know
Says the great bell at Bow
Here comes a candle to light you to bed
Here comes a chopper to chop off your head

Put to music..

A fascinating and well researched history of the rhyme can be found here.

Oranges and Lemons

oranges and lemons

Maybe it’s our Pacific Northwest winters – gray, gray, gray, with occasional teasers of sparkly bright hoarfrost days.

Maybe it’s the old National Geographic article I’ve been reading about shipwreck treasure and the crew’s likely demise from scurvy,

or just because I’m an incorrigible colour hound and can’t get enough of these happy colours… Read the rest of this entry »

A pomegranate a day

My personal directive of a drawing a day had taken a rest for far too many days!

So woolbegone am I.

I’ve re-arranged my tables and banished some of the wool baskets, and set up my drawing and painting corner in my studio.  The pomegranate that I had picked carefully from the produce stand three weeks ago ( the perfect ones with intact calyxes are hard to find )  is still perfect, potent, and beautiful, and sat perfectly still for its portrait.