MAY 2024

Wednesday 1.5.24

Still working on the lion and will be for the next couple of weeks.

Delightful e mail from HE Dr Margus in Estonia complimenting us on the little film Richard has made and put on the site He even recognises that the music is Eric Satie’s Gymnopedie. He says how wonderful it was that the painting came to life. He also tells us that in Tallin they had 15 cms of snow the other night. So not just us waiting for the good weather.

Thursday 2.5.24

With all this rain the garden is looking wonderfully verdant; the wisteria and honeysuckle are a joy to perceive, the candles are out on the horse chestnut tree and the lilac is still full and white though I guess they will start to turn towards the end of the month. Richard’s busy reclaiming one of the beautiful Cotswold stone pillars that Eddie built from the rampant ivy. Thus R had many conversations with friends and neighbours including John who tells him that two of the angled frames are finished. Added to the eight which he collected from Sam yesterday is keeping him busy, cutting the birch ply panels with his Japanese hand saw (which is far better than any electric tool). He’s now started to prime some, including one of the frames for Margus’s commissions. Sam has decided that having reached sixty he’s going to retire so that he can do the things he has wanted more time for like playing the piano etc so I’m feeling that I need to get quite a lot of smaller frames cut this month as his birthday is in the middle of June. The frames he makes for me are quite simple out of plain wooden mouldings whereas John makes the heavy Italian poplar frames from the timber cut in Tamworth to my pattern which are much more difficult.

I continue on the lion. It is a big area to cover and I haven’t made life easy for myself in my choice of how and what I paint on him. But I guess we’ll miss him when he goes and we get the kitchen table back to ourselves again.

Friday 3.5.24

Richard goes to collect the two new heavier frames that John has made up for me which he has done beautifully, joining them internally with wooden biscuit joints. They are particularly wonderful being in a hard wood and John says he very much enjoys working in this Italian poplar. He commented on how there are no knots in this delivery. He also discusses, in a roundabout way, at some stage coming to work here in our workshop. He has left a big circular saw here in readiness for doing this at some stage so R makes an appointment at the tip so that he can start to remove the old rugs etc protecting it. When R gets back we discuss ways in which we can enable him to have independent access to it. He’s such a brilliant man and it will be a joy to have him here when he decides to make the transition.

Make more progress on the lion. Whilst I’m working on him in the kitchen, we hear Peter Hitchins, the journalist, writer and broadcaster on Radio 4’s Free Thinking and R reminds me that he ‘phoned up some years ago as he was interested in the newspaper paintings.

Saturday 4.5.24

Although I’d paid Thomas and his assistant Jay to cut back the wisteria and the ivy on the house in February, it is already again encroaching across the frames onto the upstairs windows. So R gallantly goes up to cut it back from around two of them. I have in the past considered having it removed but I love the habitat that it gives to all the little sparrows, tits and insects etc. and Richard always assures me that he’s still happy to go up and cut it back in between Thomas’ visits. But what I’m also keen on is that it gives the house insulation from the cold in the winter and from the heat in the summer.  Whilst he’s up there he notices that the lawn could do with another trim and as he uses a manual hand mower I don’t have to worry about it using electricity or worse still petrol and the carbon that would all emit. Whilst I’m pulling up a few weeds and dead wood R calls me to see some of the cyclamen he put in last year and which are now in flower.  I spot a most beautiful white iris that is in bloom, one that I think my sister Gill gave us from her beautiful garden which although it has some woodland is much more tame than ours.

Then its back to the lion who I have managed to add a couple of pelicans to. before I ventured out into the garden.

Sunday 5.5.24

Time’s running out for the Lion as I have to get him finished this week. I paint several more palm trees across one side whilst Richard is taking stuff to the recycling. We’re rather pleased that there is big sign saying that Gloucestershire Recycles an average of at least 70% of things taken to the site and hopefully this will increase. I think there are tremendous openings for people who are good with the sewing needle or machine to be able to up cycle clothing & textiles. It now seems commonplace to find furnishings or fashion that is made out of recycled materials such as plastic bottles.

Monday 6.5.24

It’s the May Bank Holiday

Richard made another trip to the tip which was re-vamped recently to make it more efficient and user friendly. The valiant men who work there are always so polite and friendly and knowledgable about the recycling that they do and how they generate electricity from the methane gas that comes off the landfill.

Meanwhile I’m painting the lion and keep seeing more that I need to do. Even though I have an idea of how he will progress during the day there are always other things that will also suggest themselves. But his time is running out.

Tuesday 7.5.24

Still frantically painting the lion. I’ve still got to turn him upside down to paint his tum and also put him on the floor to paint the top of his head etc. though most of the day spent painting his paws with badgers hedgehogs monkeys and a lamb.

E mail from Ellie asking for bank details to pay for the paintings sold at the Fair and also discussing dates for the show I will have with her in October.

Still hoping to hear on the news that a ceasefire as been agreed by Israel and Hamas although Netanyahu still seems to be bombing around Rafa. All  those poor Palestinian mothers and children who are again forced to move on to areas without water and sanitation.

Wednesday 8.5.24

It’s a beautiful sunny day, in fact the hottest we’ve had so far this year. Sit in the garden to have brunch and we reply to e mails out in the sunshine too with Ellie at the Paragon Gallery, John Paul of the SPG, Mandall’s Gallery and the Hospitals Trust re. the Lion. We are sitting in the little courtyard at the back of the house from which Richard has removed the canvas from the marquee that afforded us a safe place to entertain and meet family and friends during the Covid lockdown. Then a couple of years ago we sadly lost a lot of the palms, & a beautiful fatsia, cod liver oil plant etc. that had lined the inside walls of it, due I suspect to the severe cold. So it was a great joy to spot that there are palm leaves coming out from one of the pots that we’d left the roots in.

Working on the lion - there are still more things I want to do and add.

Thursday 9.5.24

Receive a little text from friend Peta Hoyle saying “I think you might know this lion PJ”. Peta, who was a speech therapist, volunteers at the hospital and has sent me a photograph of the large lion which I think has been painted by Wild In Art who make the lions. He’s over two metres long but in the photograph you can see that his body seems to be just painted in a deep ultramarine with a golden mane. Richard gives me a look knowing how time consuming the intricate and detailed scenario on my lion is being.

After working on him I get changed in the evening  when we go down to the church for the installation of the new team vicar. Interestingly we both have similar thoughts about how much the nature of the services has changed. There are now electronic screens on which you can follow the words for the order of the service, hymns etc. one within the chancel arch and one in each aisle. I have to admit it was easy to read although hard to know which screen to follow as both were slightly obscured. The choir seemed to have less time singing in their beautiful descant voices. We still had the organ for some music but on the their aisle there was a piano, guitars and a singer with a microphone. It was a combination of all the local churches apart from the Roman Catholics which seemed rather sad as they had originally built the church in the eleventh century and until recently held services there. A lot of raising of hands which whilst I love the animation of black gospel seemed unfamiliar and something we had not witnessed here before. I guess from the words of some of the new hymns and the pledges made, it has become very Evangelical so somehow seemed to lose some of the mystery, aesthetic and exquisite music of the old higher church. I sat next to a lovely man, David Aldred, who used to teach history at Cleeve School but during his retirement has written books on Bishops Cleeve and is currently recording all the timber framed buildings here and in Winchcombe especially those with later brick or stone facades.

Friday 10.5.24

Today, at the invitation of Gloucestershire College, I went to the vip  vice presidents’ luncheon cooked and presented by students from the catering academy, the meal was superb. I had pea soup, sea bass then treacle tart with ginger sorbet all exquisitely presented and charmingly served by the students. It was great to catch up as it was five years since our last meeting there, due to Covid. And a glorious sunny day at that. We then went on a tour of the new £3m cyber academy ADA (Advanced Digital Academy) also named after Ada Lovelace, Byron’s daughter who was the first computer programmer, particularly to attract female students. They can study here from GCSE to degree level and have lecturers from the University of the West of England come to teach the more advanced students. Businesses can also pay for their workers to do courses here. It is all very state-of-the-art and cutting edge. In the top circular room there are screens where students will be able to witness daily cyber attacks coming in from other countries. It is also run in conjunction with GCHQ which is just around the corner.

When we get back Jenny and her daughter Kate come to collect the Zoo painting that I have been repairing for Kate. It must have got knocked and there was bit of a dent in the top of the frame which I had offered to try and repair for her. I don’t like using fillers so I do it by painting that area with layer upon layer of paint then sanding it and I did this once more last night after working on the lion into the early hours and hadn’t checked it again when we left early this morning  and it now look too indigo so say if she can come back again tomorrow I can make it more turquoise.

Saturday 11.5.24

Another gloriously sunny day so am able to have brunch out in the garden and whilst I’m pottering around I suggest that it might be good to dig up one of the horse chestnut seedlings to plant in a now redundant box planter which R does with comparative ease and looks rather fine. He also repairs a beautiful huge terra cotta pot that had arrived broken last year.

Still obsessively painting the lion because he has to be varnished tomorrow evening

Sunday 12.5.24

Richard cycles down to the village to buy a dwarf apple tree to pant in the newly repaired pot. I manage to have brunch outside again and receive a long ‘phone call from Jane in the afternoon apologising for not coming to the art fair so we fix up a date in a week or two for her to come over.

My last bash on Leon. Whilst in the garden I had write a piece telling his story and giving his name as well as my biographical details. It’s after midnight then Richard assists me with the varnishing, he one side and me on the other. This varnish, which is brilliant once it has dried does have a tendency to drip so you need to be quick and efficient at catching those as well as hairs from the disposable brushes we’re using. Once the catalyst is mixed with the main body of varnish in the can it has a limited lifespan

Monday 13.5.24

We manage to take a few photographs of the lion in my studio before Charlie, whose idea this project was, comes to collect him. A bit later we get ready to go into Cheltenham to the University’s chapel at Francis Close where the Michael Perham lecture will be given by Aleem Maqbool the BBC’s Religion Editor, on Faith and Broadcasting. Bishops Michael was a friend and pro Chancellor of the University who sadly died a few years ago. Aleem was a good speaker and handled the sometime somewhat combative questions with wisdom and integrity. There was of course quite a lot of debate about the Israel Gaza war but he managed also to pull out some moving examples of hope. Personally I always enjoy the BBCs coverage of world news and don’t find it biased and I’ve always enjoyed listening to Beyond Belief presented by Ernie Ray as it covers every perspective and concept of each religion or non religion so that you get a better understanding of their particular thinking. As we’re leaving we meet John Rawson who was a councillor and Mayor when I had the honour of opening the Gardens Gallery and we thought how much more difficult it was for him as he had to remember to thank all the bodies involved whereas I just had to be inspirational. Whilst were talking to him Mark and Julia catch us up so I take this opportunity to congratulate Mark as he has recently become High Sheriff of Gloucestershire

Tuesday 14.5.24

David Elder arrives promptly at 2 bringing with him the text he has written on me for his book Extraordinary Cotswold Women. He also brings two tiny pots with sunflower seedling in that he has grown. Whilst we a sitting and talking two tiny packages arrive which mean I don’t have to use the curtain ring that Richard has cut for me to wear as an earring for the photographs that David is taking of me with my double self portrait Doubla which Wallace, who owns it, has kindly loaned back for the purpose. He’s giving a talk at the Women’s Institute tonight on Literary Cheltenham. He gave a talk last week to the Windrush history society on Edward Wilson. He’s a passionate historian particularly on local history. Yesterday he interviewed Dame Felicity Lott the opera singer for the Extraordinary Cotswold Women book.

We leave shortly after David goes on this beautiful sunny evening, for Blackfriars in Gloucester here the Lions at Large launch is taking place. We arrive just in time for the speeches. It’s good to be able to put faces to some of the names I’ve been getting e mails from. The other, somewhat larger lion was going to be painted by the street artist Andy ‘Dice’ Davis but he’d been so busy that he hadn’t submitted his design so it was painted by a nice young artist called Christina Sadler who told Richard she painted hers in ink and how difficult it was because it kept running. He’s just in indigo with some paler shapes and and gold leaf on the mane and eyes.

One of the real joys of the evening was meeting the consultant who devised Richard’s radiotherapy treatment which has been so successful. She told him he looked well and asked what he was doing there. So he introduced her to me and I told her I had a lot to be grateful to her for and said how incredibly clever she is to have been able to design a treatment that could remove a lymphoma tumour that was wrapping itself round his right lung. She in turn pointed to the lion and inferred that I was the clever one to be able to paint the lion but I bow to her sheer brilliance. She really seemed to be too young to be head of Oncology as she still has children at primary school and was going off to choir practice. Meeting her in particular quite made my evening and I was pleased that the lion was going to benefit her department, enabling them to develop a new Big Space for cancer patients.

Wednesday 15.5.24

On our way back last night we bought more plants so today I spent working in the garden and planted thirty six fuchsias and pelargoniums mainly in pots and Richard planted a small apple tree in the large terracotta pot he repaired last week.

Then I go up to the studio and start work back on Tom’s little commission.

Thursday 16.5.24

Plant more in the garden and transplant one of the jade trees acutting from one tha Robert & Toyah gave us into a Moroccan pot Henrietta bought for me some years ago. The garden is beautiful with the wisteria and now the Rambling Rector rose in showers of white blooms  and the exquisite cerise of the hawthorn or May blossom which reminds me of the stories my father used to tell me of the children who would bring May blossom for his Mother and she would reward them with a piece of bread pudding. Sadly I never knew Hannah as she died when my father was only fourteen years old and likewise my Mum lost her mother when she was only eleven years old. Life is certainly much better now than in either of their London childhoods.

After brunch and another long stint in the garden, catch up on three lots of correspondence for Richard to post, one thanking Matt and his staff at Gloucestershire College for the super lunch and tour of the ADA academy, one to dear Nancy and another to dear Myrtle at the Convent who will be in her mid nineties now and Rachel only a few years behind her. Then I go up to the studio in the house again to work on Tom’s little commission.

Friday 17.5.24

Another warm sunny day where I am able to have brunch in the garden again from where we also sent our e mails. Plant a couple more geraniums then back upstairs to the studio where I’m laying ground colours on three or four framed panels in readiness to start work on a couple of ideas for my October exhibition here in Cheltenham with Ellie at the Paragon Gallery.

Saturday 18.5.24

Hear from Tom who says his little dog commission is ‘wonderful’, so am very pleased.

Sunday 19.5.24

A lovely bright day again and always find myself doing more in the garden than anticipated, accompanied by Richard. I’m still planting geraniums.

Paint more ground colours on new framed panels.

Monday 20.5.24

I think about Isaac sitting one of his business A level papers today and Samuel who has GCSE media.

Start work on one of the frames and panels that Richard had prepared for me some months ago, filling it first with colour then gradually starting to formulate the idea directly onto the gessoed birch ply panel. Unlike most artists I don’t do preparatory drawings so the compositions gradually evolve on canvas or in this case birch panel. Following an idea I’ve been toying with for the theme of the October show

Tuesday 21.5.24

The composition begins to evolve. It’s exciting as I never really know quite how it will look beforehand. Like a leap in the dark one has to trust in one’s own instinct and follow the intuition.

Wednesday 22.5.24

… Reluctant as I am not to be continuing with the painting, we travel to London for the SPG AGM at the Chelsea Arts Club. The meeting takes place in the Ladies Bar and the members are all very generous in welcoming me and telling me how much they like my work and several have seen my last exhibition. They are a delightful and illustrious group all being highly qualified often from the Royal College or Royal Academy Schools often with awards and commissions under their belts. It has a lovely personal informality. Linda who is President reviews the Exhibition they had at Panter & Hall and more recently the Show at Mandell’s Gallery. It only lasts for about an hour after which our meals from the orders we gave to the young man who collected them shortly after we had all assembled arrived. At the end of the meeting I’m invited to join the Council which is both flattering and touching but…

Thursday 23.5.24

… I write e mails to both Linda the president and Barbara the secretary to explain that I would probably find it difficult actually being at the meetings in person due to two exhibitions I Have looming, one in Cheltenham in October and another at the Portland Gallery in London in June next year as well as all the commitments to the charities I am linked with.

Samuel has his English language GCSE paper.

Richard goes for a chest x-ray.

Friday 24.5.24

Connie, chair of the Friends of the Wilson arrives at 3pm to brief me on the forthcoming AGM. Sadly she is going to stand down from being chair and they are desperately in need of new trustees and volunteers. They particularly need a new chair and treasurer. These roles are very all-embracing and often not that dissimilar to having a full time job and without the noble souls who step up for these rolls I think a lot of the country would come to a standstill. In Gloucestrshire we have  over 150,000 volunteers, many of them working not just for museums and other charities but the NHS, helping in schools, running the guides and scouts, youth clubs, helping to train youngsters in football teams and sports. The list is endless. I’m so full of admiration for them and people like my friend Jane who works tirelessly on different wildlife and environmental trusts, doing everything from clearing knotweed out of rivers to counting eggs in Highnam Wood or endangered species of butterflies and planting wildflower seeds and trees. Another friend, Peta, volunteers at the hospitals and has sometimes sat holding the hand of a dying patient who had no-one else. And on and on they go, making the country work.

In the evening we go to the degree show at the University to select the winner of my award. We meet James the course leader and Olivia their tutor. There’s an amazing diversity of exciting work, it’s always great to see all the innovative ways in which their creativity flows out. It is as always very difficult to decide on one winner especially as I like to feel it will actually help the student in question. After looking at the whole show and asking advice from Olivia and James there seemed to be two very worthy recipients, one young man, Cieran, from Cheltenham who wants to work in film or video games who produced a minecraft-like film of the whole degree show which was rather stunning and a young woman from Newcastle who had painted some very beautiful colourful pastel images using organic shapes on black blinds. She hung them on the wall and drew directly onto them and hers was the first work I felt particularly drawn to. So I will split my award between them when I present them at the graduation ceremony in November.

Saturday 25.5.24

Working into the painting I started a week or two ago for the exhibition in Cheltenham in October.

Sunday 26.5.24

Jane comes to visit in the afternoon. Its always good catching up and she brings us one of the first two lettuces from her garden apart from all the environmental volunteering she is also a passionate gardener.

Shortly after she goes, Henrietta rings. The boys have broken up for half term. It was her and Kev’s anniversary on Friday but both had been working on the day and had two friends (mothers  from the boys’ first school) party so yesterday they went for a walk in the park  and then for something to eat in Greenwich. They went for another walk today in glorious Greenwich Park when there was a torrential downpour so they ‘phoned Isaac who came to pick them up in the car.

Monday 27.5.24

We’re busy in the garden before I go into the studio to paint. The potentilla,  the red hot pokers and the blue geraniums that my sister had given us last year, are all in bloom and a foxglove and columbine.

Over dinner we’re discussing the difficulties the Friends of the Wilson are having in getting new trustees and volunteers. They particularly need a treasurer and a chairman and I comment to Richard that I wonder if Wallace might be interested and he suggest he would be perfect for the treasurer. He’s been a civil servant all his life, specialising in VAT and worked at the Treasury in Whitehall for the last few years.  We’re suddenly very excited by this idea as he would be perfect to fill the role so send him an e mail to see if it would be of interest to him.

Tuesday 28.5.24

Reply from Wallace to say yes he would be interested as he had been thinking of taking on another voluntary role to add to being captain of the tennis team and organising tennis tournaments. A position like treasurer of the Friends of The Wilson would combine the experiences gained from his years in public finance and his passion for the arts. So send one to Connie suggesting Wallace for the position.

Wednesday 29.5.24

Managing to gradually pull the composition of this medium sized painting together.

Thursday 30.5.24

We have another hour or so working in the garden; the weather is fairly overcast.

The painting I’ve been working on is now resolved so indulge myself in starting a new piece that I had blocked in the basic structure of two or three weeks ago; again for my exhibition at the Paragon Gallery in October.

Friday 31.5.24

It is Ian, my sister Gill’s partner’ birthday so we receive an email thanking us for the case of wine.

Although it’s overcast it is still quite mild and we find ourselves checking the three foxgloves Richard had transplanted from the edge of the lawn to under the large bay tree (bought as a seedling from the American Museum in Bath when Richard visited it with Henrietta thirty five years ago. It now towers above us having put on about a foot a year). I thread honeysuckle and ivy through the trellis behind the trees at the end of the garden and collect deadwood. I then suggest it might be goodto put the new dwarf apple tree Malus Domestica “Elstar”in the huge turquoise pot amongst the ferns  and the two sunflowers that David Elder brought us.

Then back into the studio to continue on the piece with the box-like frame that I recommenced yesterday. I can’t believe it is already the last day of May, five months into the year and only four months to go until my Exhibition at the Paragon Gallery!