Singing the Blues

But in a good way!

Nothing says Spring quite like a walk through a wood full of bluebells…

But for now, I’ll take what I can. Brief interludes of blue sky. Increasing warmth - (admittedly, only on the odd occasion). Visits from a pair of robins nesting in next door’s garden. That first apricot blush sunset. A fallow deer crossing my path before melting away in the hedgerow. Watching a heron fly by from the comfort of my sofa. Tulip petals scattered on the path. A blackbird bathing in a puddle, droplets of water scattering… The call of geese. The abundance of blossom. Being on the cusp.

There’s an air of anticipation, a sense of ‘holding one’s breath’. The knowledge that, with a little more warmth, Mother Nature is literally going to erupt; that everywhere will be swathed in green, colour bursting forth, heady with perfume and the sounds of bees…And I, for one, can’t wait.

“And the Spring arose on the garden fair,
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;
And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast
Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Complete Poems

I talked last week about goal setting…

A personal aim is to read more.

An avid bibliophile when young, I fell out of the habit when life, marriage, children etc came along. Now, I’m making a conscious effort to catch up on all those years. To date, in 2024, I’ve read 12 books - all fiction. I seem to have a mental block about reading business related/self-help books; the thought being that I should be doing the business, not ‘wasting time’ reading about it. Go figure. This week I tried a little experiment. Yes, it cost me the price of a cup of coffee, but…success!

I read more pages in 45 minutes (well, how long can you make one cup last…?) than I have all year!! Obviously this is the way to go, although perhaps taking my own thermos of coffee and finding a park bench might be cheaper in the long run! Do you have a particular ‘reading’ ritual?

My studio week looked a little like this:

I also sploshed around and created this study (in case you missed it on my YouTube channel):

There’s definitely a ‘blue’ theme going on…

“Blue has no dimensions; it is beyond dimensions, whereas the other colours are not… All colours arouse specific associative ideas…while blue suggests at most the sea and sky, and they, after all, are in actual, visible nature what is most abstract.” Yves Klein

Apart from the colour blue, here’s what else has caught my attention this week:

• The Orange Book Artist - a.k.a Claire Wilder - just loving her Instagram feed & fluid, interpretive style

• Finding out about a new gallery in Lincoln - Indigo Crow. Always great to have a new artistic outlet in the neighbourhood! Am looking forward to visiting!

• Reading about friends taking trips that pushed them out of their comfort zones, but doing them anyway - giving me a nudge to up my game!!

• Taking lessons from nature - especially trees - by Mackenzie, who writes ‘the lovely road’…

• Receiving wonderful feedback from a recent buyer, who just loved ‘Kissed by the Water’s Edge’…

• And the combination of Seamus Heaney & Liam Neeson is a match made in heaven…

Until next time…

P.S. Just an idea I had, and keep watching for the Bloopers at the end: