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Two medium sized easel paintings in progress

Two medium sized easel paintings in progress

Interesting to see - front-line staff, their numbe

Interesting to see - front-line staff, their numbers cut by half, attending a self-congratulatory parade of managers whose head-count has more than doubled.
Of course, they are the people running things.
Seeing to what goes on, and doesn’t.
It’s with management where decisions lie. Responsibility is outsourced to consultants, the more expensive the better. Advisors who devise systems and strategies which the people tasked with the business can implement (with impunity?).
Seeing as the central philosophy of business administration is to avoid any sentimental attachment which might blur focus on the bottom line MBAs have no idea at the human level of what is actually valuable and really important to any company.
Without a trace of fundamental knowledge of what makes each business tick imported managers do not know which directives to ignore, which to adapt (let alone have an idea how they could be) nor which of them may actually be useful and practicable to adopt. Implemented? They all are.
The level of remuneration makes it a psychological imperative for managers to regulate & cut costs wherever they feel able to.
Anywhere but where they themselves, their immediate circle and support structure is adversely affected.
Essentially sociopathic in nature management networks shape the culture of today, witness Boeing, the Post Office, NHS, UK universities…, anywhere you care to look.
Everywhere.
Congratulations! Doing a great job.

Return to colour. After a spell of monochrome, pe

Return to colour. After a spell of monochrome, pen and black ink on paper, radiant white hot press paper, out came paint, brushes and pallet knife. Did some life- and portrait painting as well this week but have only photographed one picture for here

Crosshatching, happy plotting… Good eggs, Linda

Crosshatching, happy plotting… Good eggs, Linda Hughes and Andrew Baker, have organised an exhibition to celebrate Edward Gorey’s centenary in Edinburgh, at the Custom House, Leith
20 - 26 February 2025
and asked me to take part.
“Phantasmagorey” is the title of the show.
Accordingly I picked up a pad of heavy-weight, hot-press paper from John Purcell before Christmas and as soon as the tinsel had settled picked up my dip pen and bottle of Rohrer & Klingner black drawing ink and set about scritching and scratching.
Some I start and see where they go, leaving them abstract or taking ‘em into figuration, like “Precious Little Wiggle Room” which went so far as to get a caption.
Titles used to be my thing, “Alpine Waiter”, “Windy Chickens”, I called pictures in the past then they lost their importance for me, or rather it was no longer essential for a picture to have a name to go out into the world with.
Regarding Edward Gorey though, the distinctive style and tone of the text he adds to each drawing makes me conscious of either trying to emulate or deviate from his example.
Same, of course it is, with the drawing. Artists who’ve been profoundly influenced by Gorey’s work from the outset, at the beginning of their careers, will later be producing their own stuff in which the connections are sometimes really not obvious at all while for those, like myself, who simply know and admire his books, to make a piece specifically to celebrate Edward Gorey’s work the separation between reference, homage and copy is less easy to distinguish.
Be that as it may, from the drawings, of which I have to choose one to exhibit, there are three sorts - the two improvised types I mentioned, abstract and representational, and compositions I’ve worked up and then inked in. Distinctive differences I’m sure you will be able to recognise easily.
It is likely to be one of the latter sort I shall take to the framers in the morning, probably the cat mask lady, and then once that’s done will send post-haste (Haha) to Edinburgh.

On the third day of Christmas …my Xmas post inc

On the third day of Christmas …my Xmas post
includes a 98th birthday,
my mum’s

Letting the brush play and taking what’s left li

Letting the brush play and taking what’s left literally is a time-honoured way to bring the unexpected (or unbidden) into picture-making. Whether the picture pops out of thin air (thin being the operative word) or is wrenched from swirling fog, how a picture can come about this way is really fascinating for me to work on but as the viewer am I so happy to pass the time with it? Does it get me looking with anywhere near the same interest, let alone intensity ? Sometimes we get there. These aren’t they.

The brush play in bright blue is flat and thin. The shapes the paint-play makes describe the space between things. This leaves the white paper between the brush strokes to appear as solid forms, an optical illusion which renders the brush marks I made invisible. Okay, less obvious.

Then it was that I took the shapes that were left literally, assigned each a character and set to work but all I’ve done is fill ‘em in.

On another note - in the old house-style, a little

Portrait of Ulrich, Mr Rosendahl; Painting for a s

Portrait of Ulrich, Mr Rosendahl; Painting for a surgeon; Stephanie being seen by Professor Collins; Monotypes after learning of diagnosis.

Four weeks since Stephanie’s open heart surgery.
So far so painful but I can see - huge improvement.
Echo & X-ray yesterday, surgeon happy with results.
Follow-up today, saw Mr Rosendahl (not in his scrubs but in his office in a suit)I and seeing him be pleased with a job done well - immensely reassuring. He did add that Stephanie’s stenosis was critical, her heart could have failed any day.
It’s an odd thing anxiety - it’s there and then, if we’re lucky enough to know its cause and know it’s not there anymore, it isn’t. It goes away, Evaporates.
I only noticed a difference taking the hospital stairs yesterday from four weeks ago. It wasn’t in my step, it was the way I examined the walls, a hundred worries simply were not there anymore.
Now I can only reflect on the Insidious effect it has when you are in its grip. It’s not an emotion you want to hang onto. It must have its uses. When unwelcome events crowd in but…. Anxiety, when it isn’t hanging heavily penetrates everywhere in everything you do even when you think you’re distracted, fully-focused on other things, a brittle edge creeps in …when flexible is wot wheeze likes to be

New Valve for Stephanie It happened happened fast

New Valve for Stephanie It happened happened fast .
On 3rd June in the space of an hour a pain in Stephanie’s foot made it impossible to stand on it.
“This is different. This isn’t the chronic fatigue. Something has changed.” Her GP dismissed her concerns, “It’s normal in old-age to have aches and pains” and offered support stockings. Within three weeks we were in A&E at St Mary’s in Paddington. Stephanie’s blood pressure had shot up to over 240. We were lucky to have a very good doctor look at Stephanie- who, when it got to your turn, was totally focused, very gentle and listened. Carefully. Not only to what you say but with his stethoscope. Doctors don’t do this anymore.
“There is something wrong with a valve in your heart.” He said. “Your GP must refer you for an echo cardiogram” Dr Sayeed, I think was his name, did what tests he could do in the midnight hours and around three or four in the morning he sent us home. Weirdly the GP continued to baulk at the idea. Eventually on 2nd September Stephanie had the echo at Willesden Community Health Centre. Heard nothing until a phone call on Saturday morning, 25th Sept. “Has anyone been in touch to tell you result of the echo? You have aortic stenosis. The aortic valve in your heart is struggling to work. It’s serious approaching critical. It is urgent you seek treatment.

We were lucky again. Someone who knows said you don’t want a cardiologist you want a valve specialist.
On Wednesday we were in Professor Collins office. He is Mr Optimism. He gave us over to his top man, Ulrich Rosendahl, who, when we got to see him is forthright, blunt but sharp, immensely reassuring. “People who have heart valves in your condition are not usually able to walk across a room.”

We only got to have one day of shiny, happy-eyed confidence. By the day after Stephanie was scheduled for the knife in the next few days.
Hop, skip and a jump!
Within three weeks of hearing about the problem Stephanie was in pre-op prep which is where these drawings begin. Day zero is the day of the procedure and on day seven they send you home. That’s tomorrow, Friday. And these are some of the drawings I’ve been doing sitting beside the girl

Two hours of rapid-fire free-form drawing Muji ma

Two hours of rapid-fire free-form drawing
Muji make a brush pen. I buy a handful at a time use them randomly never know when one will run out of ink. Here I’ve allowed a stream of consciousness to determine where I take the line. Which means I barely pause to consider before where next to make a move.
Had a bunch of distractions which have kept me away from painting recently. There are always little observations to go in the sketchbook between engagements but a couple of hours to myself with no calls on my time - I start a line and see where it takes me. First it is all along the ground, everything the line describes seems to be planted firmly on an imaginary plane…, plain.., on the level, as they say in the Masons Arms.
Then as the ink runs out forms fade away into a field. Take a new brush pen and stay with the flat field. Delicate touch as soft as clouds then coming out of, through there, the forms and figures which emerge float free of gravity whether in water or in air, fish or fowl….

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