Dad's the word

I haven't seen my dad in over 9 years.  There's some baggage there but I don't wish to unpack it now - instead, my baggage will be light next week when I go to Wales to visit him at the care home.  Tops, sandals, sunnies... I'll be beside the sea for a few days!... plus notebooks and pens for him, a bottle of his favourite lemonade, a decent newspaper and a book, 'Fermat's Last Theorem', which I'm hoping will light up some of his 96 year old synapses.  It's right over my head - a bestseller about maths? - but my dad is just about holding on to his intellect whilst early signs of dementia (I think) are starting to creep in and our more cerebral phone conversations about climate change and protein in peas are now peppered with references to spies in the care home using "mindbending software".  Or perhaps he's right?!  

Notebooks, pens, lemonade, newspaper, a book, and some daughterly love.  I made peace with the baggage!

I know I'm going to be something of an emotional wreck on my return, but I'm so glad I'm making this visit at last. Steeling myself, though.  Deep breaths...

Mum's the word

 "Look at what the little buggers have done...!  They've shit all down the wall!"  Mum was looking out of the side door and up towards the roof.  A beautifully constructed nest under the eaves was adhered to the apex with mud; the housemartins were well and truly at home here.  How lucky we were to have them - again!  Another Summer of their chattering and swooping and the wonder of tiny chicks to come.  Another Summer of having to sprint down that section of outside passage to avoid an unwanted messy shampoo from above, poo being the operative word.  But Mum, did you really have to say that to my new boyfriend on one of his first visits here?!

That was my mum, though.  She didn't worry about stuff like a few swear words, bugger and shit being her favourites.  Sod and bloody too.  Nothing stronger.  But it had been like that since my last few years in primary school and for a long time I was highly embarrassed by it - my friends' mums never swore. However, I think it probably endeared her to the boyfriend.

Anyway, yes, that was my mum.  And I was thinking about her the other day when I was sorting out some old portfolios and in amongst some of my ancient artworks was a very small selection of hers, even more ancient, which I had kept since she died.  It's a sad irony that her death was the catalyst, and provided a rare opportunity, for me to risk a complete change of career into something artistic.  At 35 with no dependants, the bereavement was the reason for my epiphany and I was young enough to take that chance, old enough to weather a failure.  You could say that the stars aligned, but... Mum, the one I had to thank for so much, wasn't there to witness it.

She was such an artist herself, always encouraging me, even taking me along to her art classes when I was a small nipper, where I could casually observe Joan and Daphne and Gerry magicking up vases of begonias in watercolour while I drew made-up story characters, princesses, cats, children and houses on scrap paper in biro.  Elbows.  Elbows were problematic, I drew arms which curved around with no joint until Mum's tutor stepped away from his paying students and showed me the  trick - dare to draw a sharp angle!  What a difference - never forgotten.  Then Mum witnessed all my personal projects through the years but never got to see me make it my livelihood.  She would've been so chuffed.

Before I put them all away again in a new portfolio I took pics of some of her larger studies from the '60s and '70s and thought I'd put them on here as a way to help preserve them.  There were so many more and I wish I had them, but they're now long lost to time.  

Bugger!

Art and soul

When you take a trip to the big city, you really have to do a few things you can't at home, don't you? So the other week on a visit to London my friends and I had (a very-nice-indeed) lunch accompanied by a sparkling flying horse - not just any old sparkling flying horse, either, this one has a 30ft wingspan.  

The striking sculpture - a crystal-encrusted Pegasus - is a Damien Hirst, and we were in the Brasserie of Light inside Selfridges.  Must admit - I'm not too keen on Selfridges itself, all that materialism/ consumerism, all those impeccable looking people contemplating which £700 pair of shoes to buy - it doesn't do anything for me and I'd far rather be sitting on the edge of a muddy pond looking at frogspawn (genuinely).   But, that said, having lunch in the Brasserie of Light was a lovely experience.  Gorgeous food, super service, and a trippy crystal horse soaring over our heads - they just don't have that down my local.

From there we headed away from the dust and crowds of Oxford Street and ducked down Duke Street, past some Georgian villas with hanging baskets and traditional lamp posts and across Manchester Square to see Grayson Perry's 'Delusions of Grandeur' show at the Wallace Collection. The exhibition really harmonises with its surroundings at the elegant Hertford House and the fanciful, decorative curviness of the Rococo furniture and fine art in many of its other rooms; it was a visual banquet.  And just to mix it all up a bit,  another Grayson alter ego is introduced in the form of an Eastender called Shirley Smith, who herself has another persona, the Hon. Millicent Wallace (do keep up!)  There were also some darker, bleaker references to mental illness and the inclusion of some work by (real) outsider artist Madge Gill intertwined with this.  Maybe that all sounds a bit complicated but, to be honest, I didn't mind - just soaked up the feel and the fantasy alongside the art, went with the flow and loved it.

Here she is - Grayson Perry's alter ego Shirley Smith's alter ego Millicent Wallace:

'The Honourable Millicent Wallace'

Tapestries, carpet, ceramics, paintings, sculptures, wood-cuts, drawings, a dress and even a bedspread made the whole exhibition very multi-layered, colourful, sensual and, sort of, hallucinatory.  I just kept thinking too how much I'd love to witness his creative processes - especially on some of the really big works.  I adored this gorgeously illustrated chest of drawers:

'The Great Beauty'

Detail from 'The Great Beauty'

There was one more thing I really needed to see whilst we were there at the Wallace Collection, though, an unexpected bonus upstairs.  A man whose face and moniker are so familiar and famous that I don't think I've ever really given him too much thought.  And yet...

'The Laughing Cavalier' Frans Hals

It's hard to describe that certain feeling you get when you see the original of such a well-known painting after having only seen it in print, isn't it?... ok, I can't!... apart from saying that the Laughing Cavalier (a name only later given to him by the Victorian press) looked so fresh and flirtatious and knowing and corporeal that I could almost swear I saw his upturned moustache twitch just a little and, as for that look in his eyes -  I think my cheeks may have reddened slightly.  

Doesn't art just make you feel good?