Sweet Peas 6” x 8” oil on board

There was so much to enjoy on my walk with Boo today, but the highlight for me was the noisy little housemartin family that had made its nest under the school roof. It was the sound of the noisy youngsters, obviously more than ready for some lunch, that first stopped me in my tracks, and then I watched as one of the parents kept flying back and forth with tasty goodies for them. Boo waited so patiently as I watched the parent bird darting in and out from under the roof, with his children never letting up in their demands for more food. I couldn’t see them in the nest but they must be getting quite big and like hungry teenagers by now. 

When I got home I picked a bunch of sweet peas to put on the mantle piece - amazingly, the strong winds and fierce rainstorms of the weekend hadn’t done any damage to them  and they were still beautiful (unlike our poor, battered geraniums). Once I’d brought them into the house and put them in the little glass vase I couldn’t resist painting them.

Sweet peas have always been a favourite flower of mine and hold lovely memories for me. My Dad grew wonderful long rows of sweet peas every year, and when they were flowering Mum would let me take a bunch to school each week to give to my headmaster’s wife. My headmaster at the junior school was extremely strict, and in all honesty as a little child in the infant class I was quite scared of him - but his wife was very kind and gentle, and I was very fond of her. 

We had a school savings club which she was in charge of, so each week I would take the half of my pocket money that hadn’t been spent on sweets to school and deposit it in the savings club, and each week while they were in flower, I would take a bunch of sweet peas with me too. Dad must have had such green fingers because I seem to remember taking these little bunches of flowers for that lovely lady for weeks on end throughout the summer. 🌸

Porthcawl Lighthouse 20cms x 20cms work in progress

The time has flown by since I wrote my last blog and we are now into harvest time already. Lots has happened too, so my painting time hasn’t been as regular as I would have liked, but it’s been very good to be in the studio this week as I work on this piece.

The most upsetting thing to have happened since my last blog post is that Boo, my assistance dog, was found to have another cancerous lump, this time on his chest, but after surgery to remove it plus a wide margin he has now thankfully been given the all-clear and is completely back to his mischievous self again.

Unfortunately Boo’s post-op recovery meant he couldn’t come on holiday with us. I missed him terribly but knew he was in the best and kindest care as our youngest son looked after him whilst we were away. I had planned to get a quick oil study done most days while we were in South Wales, but the week was very windy and blowing my painting stuff about . . . I did get one tiny oil sketch done as the clouds broke up to let the setting sun through a little, but other than that I just used  my sketchbook and pen. Having a break on the beautiful South Wales coast after Artweeks was lovely , and both dear hubby and I felt so much more relaxed after it.

I’ve had a couple of paintings in exhibitions lately too. The first one, a little oil painting of our peony plant in the garden, was painted as I sat  in the garden in between my studio visitors during Artweeks, and was exhibited and then sold at a charity auction at Little Buckland Gallery near Broadway. The peonies started off in my Mum and Dad’s cottage garden when I was little, went with them through two house moves and then ended up in our garden. The peony plant is decades old and positively thrives on neglect.

The second painting is one I did called ‘The Art Stall, Genoa’, which I entered into The Artist magazine/Patchings Festival Open Art Competition. It received a ‘Highly Commended’ and is in their online exhibition through July/early August. It is also eligible for the People’s Choice award which is lovely, but I am highly unlikely to win that as there are some incredibly gifted artists also exhibiting. I am very relieved to have had my work judged at that level and to get that ‘Highly Commended’, it helps me gauge my progress and assess where I am on my painting journey. It takes a lot of courage to enter these juried art competitions, and I’ve had to grow a thick skin so that at those times when work isn’t selected the feelings of rejection and dejection aren’t too painful.- they say that rejection is good for one’s growth as an artist and I’m sure that’s true; I still feel very vulnerable when I enter these things though (although The Art Stall did well, two other paintings I also entered weren’t selected).

The painting I am working on presently is of the lighthouse on the end of Porthcawl pier. I took a photo and did a quick sketch of it one wild and windy July day a couple of years ago when we were down there for a friend’s special birthday. I love being on that pier in wild weather, but it would be reckless to try to paint there from my wheelchair flanked on both sides by raging seas, so a studio painting it has to be for this one. It is still a work in progress but I’m enjoying it very much, remembering the feeling of the salt spray on my face as I sat there watching the stormy sea.

If you watch the BBC weather forecast, you will often see a picture the BBC use when gales are forecast, of enormous waves towering over Porthcawl Lighthouse. It is a very dramatic image, and incredible to see in real life.