The Old Town Hall, acrylic ink and collage, 20 x 30 cm, 2017

Not so much a Sunday painter today but a Sunday doodler, inking up some paper and cutting and snipping to make a collage of the old town hall in Margate.

It’s only just along the coast from us here but we’d only been to Margate once before, in the winter, and so with the wonderful weather early this week we thought we’d have another go. Margate is pretty much the epicentre of the horrendously titled Kentrification   phenomenon and a place this hyped up can usually only fail to live up to expectations. We enjoyed our trip, though, and the streets around the old town that have been done up now look really charming. The wall to wall vintage shops are a but much and the place is in danger of becoming a retro theme park – hang on, there IS a retro theme park here in the shape of the reopened Dreamland <sigh>. Anyway, despite the main new attraction of the Turner Contemporary gallery leaving us pretty cold – a dullsville white shed of a building and underwhelming content inside – it is at least free to enter which is to be applauded. And there’s a wide sandy beach which makes a nice change from the shingle we have in Whitstable, some decent shops and cafes and good swimming to be had. As I mentioned in my last post we had a really great ice cream here, although we did have to take out a mortgage to pay for it; well that’s Kentrification I suppose….

The Chapel of Bliss, mixed media, 30 x 40 cm, 2017

Well, I got back to the UK from a holiday in Ibiza to find a proper heatwave going on and this week we had the hottest day of the year so far. So a good time to break out the hot hot hot colours for this image I made today,  inspired by the amazing chapel of San Miguel de Lillo near Oviedo in Asturias, which was consecrated way back in the 9th century. I do love these old Romanesque and pre-Romanesque chapels in France and Spain; they’re beautiful but there’s something very touching about how people so long ago managed to create something so wonderful without any of the sophisticated means we have today. I despair of the church these days; this week I read yet another story about how senior figures in the Church of England colluded with a bishop who sexually abused boys for over 20 YEARS. It’s both heartbreaking and infuriating that it could happen. So, my chapel here has been taken of the church and made into a guilt-free, shame-free house of fun for everyone. There’s probably a big slide inside you can whizz down, a bar, cinema, disco and ice cream parlour. Well, I had an ice cream in Margate last week that was so good it was a kind of spiritual experience 🙂

What glorious weather we’re having! You know summer’s arrived when people start to moan about it being too hot!

I’ve been away on holiday in Ibiza so not much blogging activity here,  but i’m looking forward to catching up with what people have been posting recently. The wonderful rich light in Ibiza has put in the mood for more colour so I’ve made a little image of some woods in the evening this morning which is going back to the Hansel and Gretel work I did last year. There’s also a hint of a 1930s seed packet illustration for me about this image too which I’m happy about as I adore those beautiful drawings of flowers and cottage gardens that old seed packets used to have.

Speaking of Hansel and Gretel I just got hold of a copy of the Neil Gaiman version of the story with the fabulous illustrations by Lorenzo Mattotti, it really is terrific.

But more inspiring still is this wonderful post on the subject by my friend Clive Hicks-Jenkins who has reimagined the tale as both a picture book and a toy theatre recently to stunning effect. You can see the post here.  Clive’s Hansel and Gretel work really is the most imaginative and enjoyable retelling of the story I’ve seen, I could lose myself in the worlds that Clive creates for a very long time!

I’m very taken with this tale; the forbidding forest, the dysfunctional family dynamics, the evil witch; what’s not to love? I’ll be making some more work on these themes this year, and i’ll be returning to working in 3D as well.

When I work in 3D I save any packaging that comes into the house to recycle and make the models from. It’s at this point that I realise just how much flipping packaging we get through as within a couple of weeks i’m drowning in the stuff and have enough raw material to make a whole city let alone a cottage and a few trees. Anyway, here’s a couple of pics of some 3D work from the last couple of years to finish….