Liddesdale

This is from a few years ago, which is not my usual practice. Lockdown has made me look into imagery, emails, letters – I am sorting out correspondence, turning up such a trove from the past. I know that many people throw things away, but I am not one of them. In a big chest, recently recovered from storage, layers of documents lie, and reading them ressurects something of what has vanished, including letters that my mother left behind when she moved down south; they are all higgledy-piggeldy at the moment, but trawling them throws scintillas into the darkness. There are letters from before my son was born. Maybe it is not healthy to dwell on the past, but then we are none of us that healthy at the moment. This photograph is from the place where my soul still lives, Liddesdale. The River Liddel (Liddle) is one of the Scottish/English rivers, though it is the Liddel Burn that marks the Border a few minutes walk from the old house where I used to live. Now I live in Coldstream, on the Scottish side, still a few minutes walk from the Border Bridge that crosses River Tweed. What will happen if we secede from England? Strange days indeed.

Reclining on the Wall

Memories of a summer in Liddesdale, that seems so far in the past. Is it my imagination, or is there a Lowry painting with the same imagery?

Music is Amazing, but…

…bears get drowned out.

Screechy Screechy

So long since I posted, something about lockdown has stopped me walking out with a camera, when I go out it is just walking for the sake of exercise. These are strange times. When I go up to my studio, aka The Tardis, everything feels normal again, the birds feeding in the wild flower bed outside the window, the beans growing, music, paint and crayons. Nice. This is a double page illustration for Musical Bears, I am not doing roughs any more, just finished work. My son, who is a web designer, is setting me up with a professional website for my work, it is intimidating, a whole different world, still on WordPress though, so no doubt things will gradually explain themselves. Moi, je suis technophobe. Was on Zoom last week talking to my grandsons and got cut off, couldn’t see anyone but heard them all laughing invisibly at my bad language. Keep safe. Keep well.