Handmade Christmas

Bethany has been writing about the handmade and Christmas and included my cards in her blog :)

Bethany Robinson

So… I LOVE handmade gifts as you may have guessed. In the last two years I have experimented a little with my Christmas gifts because I feel mass produced items aren’t always the most personal or best quality gifts, heres what I discovered!

In 2014 I found myself surrounded by a lot of beautiful handmade items because I did a lot of fairs. So naturally this gave me the opportunity to buy lots of handmade gifts.

In 2015 I made most of my gifts myself, ironically I was doing more fairs this year, which ill come back to later, but i felt it would give me the opportunity to give more personalised quality gifts.

So 2014…

I bought a selection of beautifully crafted items, from small things like a mulled wine syrup and small food based gifts from truro market to make up a hamper. To larger gifts like jewellery…

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The End is Nigh….100 Things Wild Charity Challenge

Well, only nine days to go and 5 wild things to paint.  I have lots of paintings left in my shop…I think I may have flooded my little market corner of my market!!!  But, all is well I will have raised over £400 for Charity which is entirely positive and a wonderful thing to be able to do.

So what next? 100 days is rather too long a challenge for me and I have found it difficult to remain engaged in the idea.  I will not be repeating the how many can I paint challenge enough is enough :).  In many ways I feel that this could be a device I  use to prevent a deepening engagement with my practice…or an enjoyable distraction.

Anyway if you would like to see, share or of course purchase any of my challenge paintings they can be found in my shop and will remain there at least until the 9th December, the last day of the challenge.

If you have followed me, thank you very much for staying with me.

One of my Hares from day 90…

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Featured Artist: Suzy Sharpe joins The Compassion Collective

Originally posted on The Compassion Collective:

We are extremely pleased to officially introduce our newest artist to join The Compassion Collective. So please welcome Suzy Sharpe…

We were really excited when Suzy got in touch with us via Twitter through her shared support of our favourite charity Compassion in World Farming. She has very generously let us sell gorgeous cards and prints of some of her farm animal pictures and a rather lovely hare too!

Here’s what Suzy says about why she wants to be part of the Compassion Collective:

“I was delighted to be able to donate my images to the Compassion Collective because they support charities that are very close to my heart and can reach a wider audience than I can.  It is important for me to use my work wherever possible to support charities, particularly those which focus on animal welfare and protection.“

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Poetry of Animals and back to my challenge

I feel like I have been away…but I haven’t, I had a little break from the Challenge whilst getting ready for our exhibition at Morvah Schoolhouse Gallery.

We had poetry readings, music, great company and very interesting conversations at the preview and it seems to have been a very successful exhibition for everyone who took part.

Here are a few photos of the show…

Click to view slideshow.

So now it is back to my 100 Things Wild Challenge.   Here are a few of the paintings still available all of them will remain at £50 until the end of the challenge and 50% of all the funds raised will go to my 3 chosen charities Compassion in World Farming, Mousehole WIldbird Hospital and Cornwall Wildlife Trust.  Please click here to browse the available paintings  and here if you would like to join my mailing list to see the paintings first as they are created 

Click to view slideshow.

 

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The Poetry of Animals – Morvah Schoolhouse Gallery

A few months ago I was delighted to be asked to take part in an exhibition with Rowena Scotney and Michelle Cowmeadow at Morvah Schoolhouse Gallery.  We set up tomorrow and the show is open to the public from Thursday, with music and nibbles on Sunday 1st November.

As the woodlouse replied to the poet, ‘Can I close dead ears against the rush and resonance of things? …I am likewise the created, – I the equipoise of thee’.

From ‘The Poet and the Woodlouse’ by A. C. Swinburne (c.1904)

The exhibition is a poetic celebration of animals, both as metaphor for the human condition (as expressed in the many poems which inspired the artworks here) and for the creatures themselves, with ideas explored around experience, curiosity, journeying, growth, transience, life and death. Some of the artworks also communicate the delicate balance and bond between human and animal and how this is disrupted via threat and survival in nature.

From the universal to the tiny insect, with seriousness and with humour, the exhibition aims to celebrate the cosmic life force and energy which suffuses us all, unravelling, as the poet Mary Oliver expresses in ‘Wild Geese’, ‘[our] place in the family of things’.

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I am really looking forward to making some more work like these...it feels like time to bring people back into my drawings

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Greenfinch

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Poetry? do you see poetry in any of may paintings,or do my paintings/drawings remind you of a poem, or do you write poetry that I could share? if so I would love to hear them...:) I offer you...William Wordsworth The Green Linnet BENEATH these fruit-tree boughs that shed Their snow-white blossoms on my head, With brightest sunshine round me spread Of Spring's unclouded weather, In this sequester'd nook how sweet To sit upon my orchard-seat, And flowers and birds once more to greet, My last year's friends together! One have I mark'd, the happiest guest In all this covert of the blest:— Hail to thee, far above the rest In joy of voice and pinion! Thou, Linnet! in thy green array Presiding spirit here to-day Dost lead the revels of the May; And this is thy dominion. While birds, and butterflies, and flowers, Make all one band of paramours, Thou, ranging up and down the bowers, Art sole in thy employment; A life, a presence like the air, Scattering thy gladness without care, Too blest with any one to pair, Thyself thy own enjoyment. Amid yon tuft of hazel trees That twinkle to the gusty breeze, Behold him perch'd in ecstasies Yet seeming still to hover;— There! where the flutter of his wings Upon his back and body flings Shadows and sunny glimmerings, That cover him all over. My dazzled sight he oft deceives— A brother of the dancing leaves; Then flits, and from the cottage-eaves Pours forth his song in gushes; As if by that exulting strain He mock'd and treated with disdain The voiceless form he chose to feign, While fluttering in the bushes Heron Rises From The Dark, Summer Pond So heavy is the long-necked, long-bodied heron, always it is a surprise when her smoke-colored wings open and she turns from the thick water, from the black sticks of the summer pond, and slowly rises into the air and is gone. Then, not for the first or the last time, I take the deep breath of happiness, and I think how unlikely it is that death is a hole in the ground, how improbable that ascension is not possible, though everything seems so inert, so nailed back into itself-- the muskrat and his lumpy lodge, the turtle, the fallen gate. And especially it is wonderful that the summers are long and the ponds so dark and so many, and therefore it isn't a miracle but the common thing, this decision, this trailing of the long legs in the water, this opening up of the heavy body into a new life: see how the sudden gray-blue sheets of her wings strive toward the wind; see how the clasp of nothing takes her in.

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The exhibition at Morvah Schoolhouse with Rowena Scotney Feltings will also include the wonderful ceramics of Michelle Cowmeadow - this one based on a poem inspired by the legend of blodeuwedd by Angela Stoner.

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Any poetry suggestions are most welcome, in the meantime, Starlings in Winter by Mary Oliver Chunky and noisy, but with stars in their black feathers, they spring from the telephone wire and instantly they are acrobats in the freezing wind. And now, in the theater of air, they swing over buildings, dipping and rising; they float like one stippled star that opens, becomes for a moment fragmented, then closes again; and you watch and you try but you simply can't imagine how they do it with no articulated instruction, no pause, only the silent confirmation that they are this notable thing, this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin over and over again, full of gorgeous life. Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us, even in the leafless winter, even in the ashy city. I am thinking now of grief, and of getting past it; I feel my boots trying to leave the ground, I feel my heart pumping hard. I want to think again of dangerous and noble things. I want to be light and frolicsome. I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing, as though I had wings.

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Coyopa

Speaking of poetry this is also one of my favourite poems. It is one of those poems I hold in the back of my mind. Sometimes a Wild God - by Tom Hirons Sometimes a wild god comes to the table. He is awkward and does not know the ways Of porcelain, of fork and mustard and silver. His voice makes vinegar from wine. When the wild god arrives at the door, You will probably fear him. He reminds you of something dark That you might have dreamt, Or the secret you do not wish to be shared. He will not ring the doorbell; Instead he scrapes with his fingers Leaving blood on the paintwork, Though primroses grow In circles round his feet. You do not want to let him in. You are very busy. It is late, or early, and besides… You cannot look at him straight Because he makes you want to cry. The dog barks. The wild god smiles, Holds out his hand. The dog licks his wounds And leads him inside. The wild god stands in your kitchen. Ivy is taking over your sideboard; Mistletoe has moved into the lampshades And wrens have begun to sing An old song in the mouth of your kettle. ‘I haven’t much,’ you say And give him the worst of your food. He sits at the table, bleeding. He coughs up foxes. There are otters in his eyes. When your wife calls down, You close the door and Tell her it’s fine. You will not let her see The strange guest at your table. The wild god asks for whiskey And you pour a glass for him, Then a glass for yourself. Three snakes are beginning to nest In your voicebox. You cough. Oh, limitless space. Oh, eternal mystery. Oh, endless cycles of death and birth. Oh, miracle of life. Oh, the wondrous dance of it all. You cough again, Expectorate the snakes and Water down the whiskey, Wondering how you got so old And where your passion went. The wild god reaches into a bag Made of moles and nightingale-skin. He pulls out a two-reeded pipe, Raises an eyebrow And all the birds begin to sing. The fox leaps into your eyes. Otters rush from the darkness. The snakes pour through your body. Your dog howls and upstairs Your wife both exults and weeps at once. The wild god dances with your dog. You dance with the sparrows. A white stag pulls up a stool And bellows hymns to enchantments. A pelican leaps from chair to chair. In the distance, warriors pour from their tombs. Ancient gold grows like grass in the fields. Everyone dreams the words to long-forgotten songs. The hills echo and the grey stones ring With laughter and madness and pain. In the middle of the dance, The house takes off from the ground. Clouds climb through the windows; Lightning pounds its fists on the table. The moon leans in through the window. The wild god points to your side. You are bleeding heavily. You have been bleeding for a long time, Possibly since you were born. There is a bear in the wound. ‘Why did you leave me to die?’ Asks the wild god and you say: ‘I was busy surviving. The shops were all closed; I didn’t know how. I’m sorry.’ Listen to them: The fox in your neck and The snakes in your arms and The wren and the sparrow and the deer… The great un-nameable beasts In your liver and your kidneys and your heart… There is a symphony of howling. A cacophony of dissent. The wild god nods his head and You wake on the floor holding a knife, A bottle and a handful of black fur. Your dog is asleep on the table. Your wife is stirring, far above. Your cheeks are wet with tears; Your mouth aches from laughter or shouting. A black bear is sitting by the fire. Sometimes a wild god comes to the table. He is awkward and does not know the ways Of porcelain, of fork and mustard and silver. His voice makes vinegar from wine And brings the dead to life. http://ift.tt/1WqAQqA
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Street Birds

Excellent little film about ATM and Photographer Joshua Burch
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Wonderful conversations about poetry today :) including this one... The Swan by Mary Oliver Across the wide waters something comes floating—a slim and delicate ship, filled with white flowers— and it moves on its miraculous muscles as though time didn’t exist, as though bringing such gifts to the dry shore was a happiness almost beyond bearing. And now it turns its dark eyes, it rearranges the clouds of its wings, it trails an elaborate webbed foot, the color of charcoal. Soon it will be here. Oh, what shall I do when the poppy-colored beak rests in my hand? Said Mrs. Blake of the poet: I miss my husband’s company— he is so often In paradise. Of course! the path to heaven doesn’t lie down in flat miles. It’s in the imagination with which you perceive this world, and the gestures with which you honor it. Oh, what will I do, what will I say when those white wings touch the shore?

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100 paintings100 days £50 with 50% to Cornwall Wildlife Trust, Compassion in World Farming and Mousehole Wild Bird Hospital http://bit.ly/1PKZ0aQ

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100 paintings100 days £50 with 50% to Cornwall Wildlife Trust, Compassion in World Farming and Mousehole Wild Bird Hospital http://bit.ly/1PKZ0aQ

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100 paintings100 days £50 with 50% to Cornwall Wildlife Trust, Compassion in World Farming and Mousehole Wild Bird Hospital http://bit.ly/1PKZ0aQ

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100 paintings100 days £50 with 50% to Cornwall Wildlife Trust, Compassion in World Farming and Mousehole Wild Bird Hospital http://bit.ly/1PKZ0aQ

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Suzy Sharpe Artist & Illustrator | 100 Things Wild

Day 17 of my 100 day charity challenge...I've been painting wild things all day today, those listed and not sold yet can be seen here http://bit.ly/1PKZ0aQ. Please share :)
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Nothing particularly unexcpected happened today in my studio just more birds and tea cups :)

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Some of my paintings are currently being shown at the Lander Gallery in and exhibition entitled "Paper" :)

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I found another little painting in my studio...I painted this ages ago. :)

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100 paintings100 days 100 wild things. All will be £50 incl Uk P & P with 50% to @CornwallNature @ciwf Mousehole Wild Bird Hospital http://bit.ly/1PKZ0aQ

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100 paintings100 days 100 wild things. All will be £50 incl Uk P & P with 50% to @CornwallNature @ciwf Mousehole Wild Bird Hospital http://bit.ly/1PKZ0aQ

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