Updated biography

Tags

Biography, Personal

I’ve updated my biography page. Most of it is just by-the-by; but I would like to draw attention to the last paragraphs, which I hope should clarify a few important things for those not yet aware. The highlighted words are linked on the page itself.

There is considerable contextual information concerning them which I may or not not write about one day, but I felt this was simplest for now. 🙂

 

The Wish Vendor

Tags

Magician, Personal Work, Wish Vendor, Wishes, Witch

The Wish Vendor ~ Watercolour on Saunders Waterford hot pressed watercolour paper, approximately 138 x 210 mm.

Wishes unrealised are no more substantial than air.

I imagine she is a witch or magician of some description, selling wishes to suit your needs in an array of forms; liquid, powdered, herbal, incense, what-have-you. I think she has southern European and Levantine parentage.

The wishes she peddles do come true. Just perhaps not always in the way you expect.

Detail

Detail

Prints of this piece are available via Redbubble.

 

The House of Dreams

Tags

Personal, Poetry, Sara Teasdale, The House of Dreams

I built a little House of Dreams,
And fenced it all about,
But still I heard the Wind of Truth
That roared without.
I laid a fire of Memories
And sat before the glow,
But through the chinks and round the door
The wind would blow.

I left the House, for all the night
I heard the Wind of Truth; —
I followed where it seemed to lead
Through all my youth.
But when I sought the House of Dreams,
To creep within and die,
The Wind of Truth had levelled it,
And passed it by.

~ Sara Teasdale

Olympia

Tags

Hoffmann, Les Contes d'Hoffmann, Les oiseaux dans la charmille, Music, Offenbach, Olympia, Opera

Olympia ~ Watercolour with gouche highlights on Saunders Waterford hot pressed paper, 135 x 215 mm.

Olympia, from Offenbach’s opera, Les Contes d’Hoffmann, is a mechanical doll with whom the titular Hoffmann falls in love, thanks to a pair of magic spectacles which makes her appear human. Predictably, it all ends rather poorly for all concerned, as, after an argument between her co-creators, Spalanzani and Coppelius, the latter angrily tears her to pieces and Hoffmann is ridiculed for his illusion.

Detail.
I imagine Spalanzani and Coppelius basically agreed to just pile everything but the kitchen sink on her head.

Prints of Olympia are available via Redbubble.

 

Red Hen

Tags

Birds, Chickens, Fowl, Galliformes, Hen, Poultry, Redbubble

Red hen.
Watercolour, 105 x 148 mm.

Available on Redbubble as prints and many other products.

 

‘Theodore’ Process

Tags

Dinosaurs, Edmontosaurus, Palaeo art, Palaeontology

Short process clip of an Edmontosaurus juvenile (whom I decised to call ‘Theodore’) in watercolour. I work so glacially slowly that it’s virtually impossible to film the entire process to create a time-lapse, so this is put together from just the photographs of the various stages and the final scan. A detail from a larger illustration.

‘Theodore’ ~ Watercolour with touches of gouache on Saunders Waterford hot pressed

 

Quatrain XXXII

Tags

folio society, Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, Throwback Thursday

Quatrain XXXII ~ Watercolour and gouache on Arches cold pressed

There was a Door to which I found no KEY:
There was a Veil past which I could not see:
Some little Talk awhile of ME and THEE
There seem’d–and then no more of THEE and ME.

‘Throwback Thursday’ to this illustration for Quatrain XXXII of Rubaiyát of Omar Khayyám, published by The Folio Society, 2009. This piece borrows directly from Rene Bull’s illustration to the same quatrain from 1913.

 

 

Wanderers Nachtlied I

Tags

Goethe, Ian Bostridge, Julius Drake, Lieder, Music, Schubert, Wanderers Nachtlied I

Der du von dem Himmel bist,
Alles Leid und Schmerzen stillst,
Den, der doppelt elend ist,
Doppelt mit Entzückung füllst;
Ach, ich bin des Treibens müde!
Was soll all der Schmerz und Lust?
Süßer Friede,
Komm, ach komm in meine Brust!

Schubert’s setting of Goethe’s Wanderers Nachtlied I is an achingly beautiful jewel of a miniature (even by lieder standards), and is a heartfelt favourite of mine. This performance by tenor, Ian Bostridge and pianist, Julius Drake is one of my favourite recordings of it.

 

Internalise

Tags

Crane, Personal, Self Portrait

Ink and gouache on card, 113 x 230 mm.

I internalise a great deal, but say far less.

 

International Faerie Day

Tags

A Midsummer Night's Dream, Benjamin Britten, Faeries, International Faerie Day, Pictura, Templar Publishing, William Shakespeare

It’s International Faerie Day today! It was Midsummer earlier in the week, and Benjamin Britten’s opera of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is on BBC Radio 3 as I post. An opportune time for a friendly reminder of my Pictura: Faeries colouring book (Templar Publishing, 2013).

Shown here is half of the eight-panel, concertina-folded book. All pennies thrown into my bonnet via the book’s purchase most gratefully received.

From Pictura: Faeries. Pencil on Arches hot pressed watercolour paper.

 

Pudgy Horse takes a bow

Tags

Hi Stranger, Humour, Pudgy Horse, Thank you

‘It’s so hard to make things sometimes, you know?’
~ The ‘Hi, Stranger‘ Stranger.*

Pudgy Horse and I thank you for your support.