A Flavour of France

I recently spent a week in France with a friend at her house, the 2nd time I had been there. The nearest town is Thenon, NE of Bergerac.

 It was a wonderful week of relaxation, walking, wild flower spotting, sketching, reading, eating and drinking - what could be better than sitting on a terrace over looking the fields and woods, glass of wine in hand watching a  deer in the field below and listening to the birds. Luckily the sun shone all week, such a pleasure compared to our current weather. Lots of lizards around, they liked garlic sausage!

Birds we heard included owls, nightingales and orioles; we saw lots of kites, buzzards, jays and green and spotted woodpeckers as well as more usual chaffinches and blackbirds. There were masses of wild flowers, as the small farms with animals are left empty. This is dropwort.

Meadow clary (sage family),

pyramid orchids all round the house,

lesser butterfly orchid on the grass verge

and a man orchid.

This unusal plant we identified as Bath asparagus, it was nearly 3 ft. tall.

We sat by this lake not far from the house one lunchtime with a cold beer in hand.

We visited a fabulous garden, Marquessac near Beynac, mainly topiary with great views of the River Dordogne in the valley below.

Beynac is a delightful place,

 I enjoyed walking round Bergerac again.

This sums up France to me, poppies

and walnut trees.

Happy memories as I wrap up here with an extra cardigan....

.......cheers!



Asthma House and Garden Fair

This is a fair with a good variety of stands, not art based but house and garden bias (as it says on the tin). A worthy cause and takes place at Chilford Hall conference centre, next door to the studio where I print. We were well looked after with tea and homemade cakes during the day and a packed lunch!

My space started like this and transformed into this...

 My kind friend Michelle helped me for the morning so we both managed to have a look round and met some lovely stall holders.

I had a fun but exhausting day with good sales, so it was all worth while!  It was also good to explain to people about printmaking and what's involved; I had a sketchbook, several blocks and my lino tools to show; several people were surprised that this was all my own work!!

A lovely surprise was to see long standing friends out with their new grandson Oliver, congratulations on his arrival!

The weather turned in the afternoon with a downpour and then hail which made an amazing noise on the roof. Luckily I managed to pack the car in between the heavy showers; home to a quiet evening...no, unloaded the car and zoomed round to my daughter's to Barney sit.

 Here he is, 23 months old and what a joy.

Living Crafts at Hatfield House

I belong to the Beds, Bucks and Herts Print Society who run a marquee at this wonderful event. I spent the Friday in welly boots following a lot of rain on the Thursday, demonstrating lino printing and was able to display my prints for the day. Other printmakers were demonstrating etching and solar plate. It wasn't terribly busy on the Friday but it was a fun day with several interested people visiting the tent during the day. It's always good to talk to people about the printmaking process and hopefully lots of people over the weekend learnt about several different types of printmaking.

A selection of my prints.

My fellow printmakers, Paul, Sheila and Rosie. 

                                   

Inking up and printing my field patterns, keeping it small today.

I went back on Sunday in the sunshine to have another look round, there was so much to see. I glazed a pot which was then raku fired, the tent of emerging artists was very interesting and I loved the baskets made by a man from Cumbria. It's certainly worth a visit, let's hope next year the weather is kinder!



Award and books and manic May

Welcome to my manic May; 4 printmaking days, book making, Living Crafts at Hatfield House, a stand at the House and Garden Asthma Fair at Chilford Hall, Linton near Cambridge, a weekend being Granny, tennis tournament, a couple of art exhibitions and.... most exciting of all.....my son Will coming back from Oz via Los Angeles and Vancouver for a few weeks!! Can't wait!!

Last week I had a lovely surprise, Miriam at 77 Belle awarded me the Liebster blog award for a blog she likes to read, started for blogs with less than 200 followers; another thankyou Miriam if you are reading this! I'll be looking out for blogs to pass on the award to.

I am on a course with Gina of Fan My Flame making books, here are a few of the results.

We started with simple and then more complicated folded books.

The next one is made with one piece of A3 paper.

Here's Gina showing us how to do it!

I used a map of Canada for the covers and saw a place KITCHENER, along with lots of other English place names, as it's my maiden name I made sure to use it, just folding and glueing the piece of map to slip over the book to keep it closed.

I like this structure that you can slip pages into the folds.

One without the pages in.

A few weeks ago I was lucky to receive this book from Lesley at Printed Material.

I thought I'd make a similiar one...

...it has a cover cut from one of my prints,

with map 'slots' holding pieces of different prints,

which could be written on the back.

The gift tags I sell could fit into the slots as well, or a larger version with pieces of plain paper would make an interesting note or sketch book. There are not enough hours in the day!!!!

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Recent exhibitions and visits

In March I too went to the David Hockney exhibition at the RA and actually took 2 photos before I was told they weren't allowed, but now I can't find them - an inspiring show; so on to the London Print Fair which I decided to go to last Friday at the last minute. I'm so glad I went, a real feast for the eyes. It was easy to walk round (unlike the Hockney) so you could spend time having a close look at prints and the people manning the stands were friendly and approachable; even though I wasn't spending £42,000 on a beautiful Sybil Andrews print!!!! I've liked her work for a few years, I had no idea how 'in' work by the artists of the Grosvenor school is.

A selection of work by Sybil Andrews and Cyril Powers.

I loved these buildings  by Kristian Krokfors.

 

Exciting work by Paula Rego.

What fun!! I haven't finished yet by Phil Shaw, £1,650 and some more of his work....



This dog is obviously a character, I don't remember the artist.

This porcelain piece was so clever.

This alphabet of London by Tobias Till was outstanding; imagine the hours these prints took!

I coveted the china with  Eric Ravilious designs, the boat race bowl was £4,200 (just in case you see one in a junk shop!), a guy had just bought it. The Coronation mug was only £1,000.

Altogether a great day, even if it was raining when I left. On the way to King's Cross (quite glamourous now) I bought sushi for supper and relaxed with a coffee on the train. I do love my retirement!!! By the way, welcome to my new 'followers'! Do please mention my blog to your fellow artists/ friends.