Imagine Gallery

It got to the stage that I had left it so long since a post that I thought "is it worth it"?

Just a few lines seems to take so long, but more importantly having decent pictures to show takes up much more time, so in the end I suppose I thought

"why bother who cares"?

I have tended to do the blog in the evenings, and taking into account the fact that I stay here in the gallery far too long in the evenings my late arrivals home have sometimes been blamed on "that blog".

Some of it true [like tonight] but not always as there always seems to be so many unfinished things and so many unattended emails left "for tomorrow" as I leave each night.

So today I really thought shall I carry on with it , or shall I let it just disappear and remove just "one"

more pressure from my life.

But thinking about it seriously I know that like everyone else I do it for my own benefit.

One day I will look back and think "this is what I was doing then , and that is what I achieved".

So for my own sake here are a few more lines.

The past week or so has flown by, nothing memorable has really happened but a lot has been achieved. I have spent a couple of days at the new gallery, firstly to finish off my carpentry and secondly to have a play with the new framing equipment.

I couldn't wait to see if I could make a frame myself.

I did, then another, and another, and another.

It was fun and gave me a sense of achievement, but I did make mistakes and they annoyed me

so it's perhaps just as well I won't be doing too many of them.

They weren't real mistakes and I doubt that anyone would ever spot them, but when on occasions I get a really well framed [not very often] painting by an artist arrive here it tends to set a standard in your mind against which other work is judged, including my own efforts.

Although, I do forgive myself, because I'm that kind of guy [unable to admit a failure].

Since the last post I suppose the one thing that I have been most aware of is the weather.

It was only just a week ago that I was talking to Maureen Minchin the potter who lives in Scotland. I told her "I really must come and see you within the next few weeks, before the winter sets in".

[I intend to write a magazine article about her to coincide with her exhibition next April,

although that sounds a long time off I know that it needs to be written now].

"Oh, no. Don't come for a while, the gales are so bad".

She told me this on a day when in the morning I had stood looking out of the windows at home thinking

"what a perfect autumn day".

Our house has an uninterrupted view over fields, forest and hills, and the trees in the garden framed the whole scene, it was beautiful especially with the clear blue sky contrasting with the golden trees and brown fields.

So hearing that storms raged only a few hundred miles away was hard to imagine,

but since then things have changed and winter has arrived and life just isn't the same with a white sky and pouring rain.

Scotland has arrived in Suffolk, that is with the exception of yesterday which was a morning of clear skies, misty fields and a little of the remaining gold.

Had I the time I would have taken countless pictures but I didn't seem to have time to pause and take even one [or two or twenty], probably because I know once I start I don't stop.

It was a shame as it was one of those 'once a year days'.

Other than that the other most striking vision I have had is the pictures that were sent to me today by Michael Parkes of his latest sculpture.

He not only paints, draws on stone but he also sculpts, and this is a three dimensional interpretation of one of his pictures [which happens to be my favourite].

'The Letter'.

I wasn't sure about it at first and my initial reaction was "it's back to front".

Then thinking about it I realised that it is his stone lithograph that is back to front, as he draws onto the printing stones which are then transposed onto paper, giving a reverse image.

I should have known this instantly as by now I am used to viewing his signature in reverse.

It has bothered me looking at them, as the more I look the more I want one here in the gallery.

Hhhhhmmmmm, I had better check with the bank.

So here we have it all above.

The perfect Suffolk day, looking at Lavenham Church [last year when I had more time].

Pictures of the new sculpture and [yet again] the picture that inspired it.

I am sorry for showing the picture yet again but I love it, and you really can't have too much of a good thing.