Hyacinths and Simnel Cake

Hyacinths and Simnel Cake

I have decided to call this finished. There is not one inch of this painting that hasn't been repainted about four times (and three different colours). I'm aware that I could continue faffing about with it for weeks on end if I didn't just decide that is is OK enough to stop. I think it is OK enough to stop. I have learnt a ton of stuff whilst doing this thing and actually can't wait to start another, which is a brilliant feeling.

This painting mainly* owes it's life to a little black book called Steal Like an Artist. If like me you have been stuck in a creative rut I cannot recommend it enough. 7 or 8 years ago I stopped printmaking and this feels like the first image-related thing I have done since then that is properly creative and properly mine: not made to impress anyone, not made for some imagined and hyper-critical audience to buy, just made. The book has been enormously permission giving for me. Go on, it said: just make something you like. And so I did.

*Also largely to my friend Michelle, for her encouragement of me to get the paint and do it. Thanks Michelle x

A little bit of spring

Back in October, my mum handed me a paper bag with five brown bulbs in. 'Put them in the bottom of a tall vase with some stones in and fill the vase with water so it just reaches their bottoms' she said. I took the paper bag and stashed it away in the bread bin (where else?).

At the beginning ot the Christmas holidays I duly followed her instructions, and three weeks later this is the result:


They're paperwhites. Ain't they purdy? They smell nice, too.