Not yet Spring

We have been relatively lucky with just a dusting of snow although the cold is certainly bitter.  Today I was cosy indoors, watching the birds in the glorious sunshine.

(image above from here)
My favourites of the day were thrushes smashing snails for hearty meals, and a jay busy pecking for beasties etc. among the snow covered grass.

(image above from here)

Diversionary doodle

I was scanning this snap of a burned out car when an idea came to me.  

This is a preliminary doodle - quickly drawn before the idea disappears.

Wondrous Frink heads ... with one extra

I never tire of photographing Frink sculptures when I can, especially her figures - and most especially her heads.

These were snapped some years ago at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and on Salisbury Cathedral Green ...

where a young man decided that an extra head was necessary!

Encounters

In scanning my photographs I have been encountering snaps taken but since forgotten.  Under the heading of gardens I found these, taken in a shed of a National Trust house, I think.  It was one with a splendid vegetable garden and several greenhouses, I believe.  Unfortunately I have not been able to remember which house it was.

And these two perhaps lurid images below were at a garden festival at a Chateau on the Loire which we visited on the way back from a stay in the Languedoc several years ago.  I remember that very well, not only because we enjoyed the holiday, and the visit to the garden festival - but also because of the food poisoning I picked up that evening from what I thought had been a lovely meal at a restaurant in Blois!

Interesting pots

This morning we visited the Crafts Study Centre in Farnham.  One of the two exhibitions on at present is of ceramics by Emilie Taylor.  More links about the work are here, and here, here, and here.

At first glimpse I thought that the work might be derivative, Grayson Perry-a-like; but I quickly realised that this is a wholly superficial view.  The works are similar in so far as they are ceramics which have a social message.  But Taylor's pieces very much have a glow of personal authenticity, and made a powerful impression.  There are dramatic large pots with figurative narrative as well as purely decorative slipware pattern, and striking smaller pieces with an individual figure - in this case called Portrait Pots (Persephone) - both as photographed below by Michael J Davis. 

The outing provided an uplifting break from the huge pile of photographs which I'm scanning.  The task I have set myself is to digitise all my photos so that I can discard the physical prints - as well as sorting through them at the same time.

In life and online

When we were away on our trip recently we visited the Gracefield Arts Centre in Dumfries.  There we saw a couple of exhibitions full of delightful works.  I was particularly taken by a small Robin Philipson: Whisper II, and now back home wanted to see if I could find it online.

Robin Philipson: Whisper II (image from here)
The gallery does have an online presence of its own, as well as on ArtUk, and indeed I found the image I wanted to revisit.  I decided to have a stroll through the online gallery, and was pleased to encounter an artist previously unkown to me: Dorothy Black.  In trying to find out more, I stumbled across one picture which appealed to the juggler obsessive in me. It is good to see that I am not alone!

Dorothy Black: Me and the sea (image from here)