Was that our Summer?

At last it seems as if we might be about to get some rain!

This Spring we've had weather in the UK that would normally be very welcome in 'Summer'. Practically the only cloudy day was the day of the Royal Wedding!

The plants in my garden are all well ahead. I looked back at last year's blog posts to check if things were really as early flowering as they seemed. And yes, this post from last year about 'Gardening on a Shoestring' shows my 'Dreaming Spires' rose starting to bloom at the end of May. Whereas the photo below is from the last day of April, this year!

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Last year I was anxious about whether my 'Albertine' rose would be out in time for my birthday in June, as usual, but this year it's already begun to bloom, though most of the flowers are too high to photograph easily. Last year I hung out of the bedroom window to take the photos but I'd have to move the tomato plants from the window sill this year as it's still too cold at night to plant them outdoors.

Yesterday I noticed that my second 'Dreaming Spires', planted a year later than the first one, has finally reached the top of the 6ft garden wall and is peeping over onto the pavement, in spite of competition from the honeysuckle! When I visited some friends in Wiltshire a few years ago and went for a walk around their village, I was impressed by the way so many of the houses had great swathes of roses draped over their high walls for passers-by to enjoy. And now, at last, mine are nearly there too!

This April was the warmest in the UK since records began and the southern half of the UK has only had about 10% of its usual rainfall. I've been pleased to be able to wash curtains and covers and have them dry outdoors in a few hours. But there have been disadvantages to this long dry and sunny spell with temperatures that we would normally be very pleased to see in August.

Apart from the 'smog' that was a problem over the Easter Weekend and everyone, including myself, suffering more than usual from 'hay fever' symptoms, there have been wild-fires in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales - and now in England! I heard on the news a couple of nights ago that there were currently more than 300 grass and forest fires raging in South Wales alone, fire-fighting efforts being hampered by the stiff breeze that got up earlier in the week. It seems almost incredible to see footage of helicopters dumping water on the fires, especially so early in the year!

Reservoirs are very low - though hosepipe bans haven't yet been mentioned - and farmers are very worried about their crops because of the lack of rainfall. This will quite possibly result in even higher food prices than we already have!

I'm convinced that the next few months will be our usual summer diet of one or two sunny days, followed by a week or more of rain! We all try very hard to pretend it's Summer but I have memories of many family Summer holidays spent largely huddled in a steamed up car, eating our picnic and saying hopefully, 'I think it's brightening up over there!'

But maybe there are reasons we should be grateful for our usual damp to downright wet Summer weather. For me it means less time Spring-cleaning and gardening - and more time for painting. And that's something to treasure!

The Red Hat Society -

Cards and Gifts

for

Ladies in Red Hats! 

'Red Hatters' Coffee Mug by helikettle

Too Cute!

A few weeks ago, one of my favourite painters, Nicki Ault, posted on her blog, two stages of a painting of the view from her studio window. 

Something she said about adding the snowflakes in the second stage, made me think about how we want our artwork to be perceived.

“I do have a bit of a fear that they make the painting a bit cute."

Why was Nicki afraid of the painting being ‘cute’? It’s a term that is used pretty widely in the world of art and design, particularly in relation to greeting card design. In that case it’s usually a compliment so why is ‘cute’ something we try to avoid in the world of Fine Art?

I looked up some dictionary definitions and wasn’t too surprised to find that the word isn’t even included in some of my older English dictionaries. I think it’s only through the internet that the word has become part of our UK vocabulary, though my mother did use it in its original, now outdated sense, meaning ‘shrewd’ ‘ingenious’ or ‘clever’.

Definitions I found included:

• attractive
• pretty
• charming
• delightfully pretty or dainty

All quite positive meanings  - so why are we afraid of our work being dubbed ‘cute’?

I think one of the definitions I found, hints at the answer:

‘obviously contrived to charm’

This, for me, at least, suggests something less ‘worthy’, something shallow or insincere, maybe with overtones of deception, manipulation, not something that came from the heart!

To me this is fine for a greeting card, which is likely to be ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ but not for a piece of art that we hope will stand the test of time, the sort of work that, as in Van Gogh’s case, may not be appreciated until many years later!

Nothing wrong with 'cute' 

‘Cute’ is a word that is often quite appropriately applied to small children and baby animals. But then the cute child grows up – and rightly so! – and their ‘cuteness’ fades away. Again, this may be a clue as to why ‘cute’ is not something that a fine artist like Nicki would take as a compliment. It’s a bit like comparing a catchy pop song that is top of the hit parade one week then fades to obscurity, with the lasting work of classical composers or even the work of the real ‘greats’, like John Lennon and others.

There’s nothing wrong with ‘cute’ in the right context but I can understand why Nicki wanted to avoid it in her snow painting.

How to avoid it? I don’t have an answer except that every artist probably has to sense for themselves the whereabouts of the fine line that separates the ‘cute’ from the ‘non-cute’!

The dictionary gives ‘homely’ and ‘ugly’ as the opposites to ‘cute’. I think this is rather limiting. A work of art can avoid being cute without being ugly, though I do think that there is plenty of room for ‘ugly’ in fine art.

I think Nicki clearly avoided allowing the snowflakes to make her painting ‘cute’. What do you think?

The Race of the Roses

There I was, wondering which of my climbing roses would be first to bloom this year - it's usually the 'Dreaming Spires' and it's looking promising, covered in buds and almost ready to open -

But the 'Albertine', the one that usually flowers for my birthday in June, is a close contender this year -

But it was only while I was taking these photos that I noticed that the 'Alchemist' has quietly pipped both of them at the post!

Nobody seems to have told it that it's still only April!

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The Trouble with Boys....

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The Knots Prayer

I thought this was worth sharing -

Happy Easter!

Is Your Art Original?

I’m sure we all like to think that our art is entirely original.

The idea of copying someone else’s work or ‘borrowing’ their ideas is something that has probably been instilled in us as not only wrong, but particularly despicable, since our schooldays because it is cheating!

When I first started designing greeting cards for sale, I began in my usual ‘pen and wash’ style – and then I discovered Quentin Blake! Worse still, I read that many had tried to copy Quentin Blake's style but that nobody had ever really succeeded.  And here I was doing something very much like an inferior version of the great man’s style! How awful! I became terribly self-conscious as I struggled to make my little drawings ‘not like Quentin Blake’  - and that’s one of the reasons I switched to other styles.

But really I needn’t have worried so much. Unless one sets out to make careful copies, I think one’s own individual style will inevitably, always show through. As Robert Henri says:

‘Do not worry about your originality. You could not get rid of it even if you wanted to.’

On the other hand, I think it’s equally inevitable that we will be influenced by seeing the work of other artists, usually unconsciously. I know that I pick up ideas and influences ‘by osmosis’ and I think that’s perfectly legitimate. It’s the way that ideas are developed, that trends emerge and move us forward, both individually and collectively. It’s extremely rare that anything we do is likely to be 100% new, even though we may like to think our work is totally original. Down through the ages, we’ve tended to build on what’s gone before and give it our personal ‘twist’; it's perhaps the difference between being ‘unique’ and being ‘original’.

Sometimes we see another artist’s work and think, ‘I’d like to create something like that.’ Is this copying? It could be; but more often it just a prompt to try something new, a ‘giving ourselves’ permission’ to do something bold and different now that we’ve seen that something similar works for another artist.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Picasso describes the real ‘copying’ we need to watch out for:

‘Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility.’

Have you ever suspected that you were beginning to ‘copy’ yourself? Have you ever produced a painting that has been much admired, or a design that has sold well, and decided to do more of the same? I have!

I think the ‘sterility’ that Picasso is referring to is that, once we find a winning formula and stick to it, our progress grinds to a halt. We no longer explore uncharted territory but stick to the safe ground that we know.

Maybe we need to do this kind of ‘production line’ painting sometimes to earn our living but I think we know, in our heart of hearts, that we have within us a  pressing need to grow and develop and that ‘copying ourselves’ is no part of that process!