I have just learned that one of the common names of astrantia is Melancholy Gentlemen!

This lovely one is called Hadspen's Blood. I told this to a visitor on an open day (we used to open the garden in the yellow book scheme). She exclaimed Husband's Blood! That's a strange name for a plant!

Hadspen was a wonderful garden in Somerset, sadly no longer in existence.

My neighbour's sunflowers bring a big smile to the faces of passers-by...

It took five buses, one train and two ferries to get to Edinburgh and back yesterday on an impulse trip to catch the Joan Eardley exhibition on its penultiimate day.

It was wonderful to be in Edinburgh again, and in an art gallery again! And so worth it to see this exhibition. 42 works of breathtaking honesty, compassion and sheer bravery.  It takes courage to do your own thing and put it out in the world to be judged.

Reproductions are of course pretty amazing,  but nothing is so moving as standing in ftont of the real thing! How I have missed it. Have you?

My favourite little cafe/delicatessen G&T a few doors up from The Scottish Gallery has changed hands after many decades, but they do a nice cappuccino.

Life is looking up.

After a visit to the gallery yesterday to try to assess if I have enough paintings for my forthcoming exhibition -I have! - I allowed myself half an hour in the hammock. Lovely.

I hope you are getting some sunshine too. It's good for the soul.

..to hear this morning of the death of artist Elizabeth Balckadder. Prolific, popular and yet remained an artists' artist, and was hugely influential. Sophisticated and completely without pretension. She freed botanical painting from it's straightjacket. Life in every brushstroke,  she will live on through her wonderful work.


You are sure to recognize some of the images here.

Feeling lighter now that I have 14 paintings completed! What could make you live ligher?

More from the white area of Jennie's garden..

A lovely detail from Jennie's garden which goes from light in one corner, through all the colours, to dark in the opposite corner. Gorgeous.

I started work today on  two new paintings: Thundersnow, Edinburgh and Blizzard.

A day off and two lovely visitors yesterday did me so much good! Do you need some 'time off'? Can you arrange it for yourself?

Suddenly there's a whole new range of plants for picking. Persicaria, montbretia, japanese anemone, agapanthus and eupatorium.

Under a boundary hedge, quietly rotting, is a blue gate. A whole new story! But not now I tell myself. Paint!

I am so interested in your comments and questions and wish I had more time to answer them more fully. I'd like to write  about the magic of being 'in the flow' which occurs once the decisions have been made mosrtly, the way my 'paint first' motto  means that some of the decisions are made while doing the dishes or ironing, and the part that music plays in getting me in work mode...however I have put myself in the position of  having to do the work, not write about it. A bit of a push over the next two weeks I think.

No gardening but time to go out and look at the wonderful agapanthus with a coffee in my hand.

Please keep your comments and questions coming - they encouage me so much and I will always answer them - maybe briefly at the time and in blog posts later when the pressure is off a bit!

I LOVE  titles! One of my favourites is Where There's A Ffish There's A Lemon - the title of a small painting I own by Christine McArthur. The title makes me smile.

I will post a photograph of it soon (my computer is not letting me uploadd photographs today..)


With my painting Ice and Lemon  the thought process went something like this..I used irridescent paint for the sky and found myself adding more and more colours. The icy blue needed some lemon to make it sparkle a bit, and the painting was becoming more and more effervescent - almost party like. I thought of a G&T and being asked would you like Ice and lemon with that - Yes please! A fun title.

Oten the titles are very straightforward. Yellow Gate In The Snow, Snow At Chrissie's House. I am very aware that , especially in semi-abstract works, the title is often the viewrs way into the work.

The painting definitely does take on a life of it's own and evolves as a kind of negotiation.  In fact I have just had an argument with one! Highly unusual . I wanted  an area in Yellow Gate In The Snow to be a clearing in the forest, but the space kept insisting that it was a house.  I gave in in the end. It is now a house, and I love it.

 
How can I describe the creative process.  Demanding, exhausting sometimes. Exhilerating and really exciting. Every brushstroke is a decision (which is probably why it is tiring) and, like all decisions, you are often asking yourself Is it the right one? So between the actual putting of paint on canvas there is a lot of looking and meditating and judging going on. And at the back of your mind, as even the wonderfully talented pianist Vikingur Olafsson says is a nervousness about whether the world will like it! I have to make sure that thought is kept very much in the background or it would paralyse me...

There is still honeysuvkle to pick and summery drinks - elderflower cordial and limoncello, but the weather seems to have turned. Is it the ssame where you are?

A full day's painting today. The weather was good for that!

Or not!  The garden has collapsed, the birthday cake for a friend collapsed, but I am still standing.

The cake didn't collapse as much as overflowed and burnt on the floor of the oven. Same recipe, same ingredients, same tin as I have always made it in. Does this ever happen to you? The cake turned out all right in the end, but it took a while to get rid of the smell of burning and cleaning the oven wasn't much fun.

I am finding both music and the talk about music and creativity inspiring. You can hear this pianist on BBC Sounds in In Tune of 12th August, and in a video on YouTube -Vikingur Olafsson  Debussy Rameau   EPK/Trailer. I would love to know what you think..

The days are flying by and I am feeling quite tired, not having worked this hard for years!

This is the start of Ice And Lemon.

I am enjoying The Proms on Radio Three and the wonderful Icelandic  pianist Vikingur Olafsson. I love listening to him talk about his art. When someone commented that he made it look easy, he replied that it is easy. You have to love it, he said. If you love it enough to spend the time required on it, then it becomes easy.

What an excellent point.

I am looking forward to his concert this Saturday.

It's the time of the Perseids meteor shower,  but I saw only one shooting star before the cloud came in from the west.

But one star is enough to make a wish on!

Have any of you ever grown this pretty climber ? It is cardiospermum halicacabum or balloon vine or more poetically, Love in a Puff. The tiny flowers produce a large seed pod and the seed is black wth a white heart shape on it.  Waiting impatiently - it has been very slow to get going..

..teabreaks in the sun, and this lovely little Mexican daisy, erigeron karvinskianus.

Twilight Snow, Scotland..

My painting clothes are even worse than my gardening clothes! Though you do get away with a lot as an artist. People expect you to look a little bit, shall we say, eccentric? Which can be  quite fun.

I lost my shoelaces somehow, and thought I should have my shoes firmly attached to my feet for that little boat ride, and a friend had kindly brought me a lovely box of amaretti biscuits tied up with beautiful yellow string...

I used to cut the mini-meadow areas before they got to this stage, but every time I open the door, both back and front, little flocks of finches pop up out of the long grass where they are feasting on the seed heads of the wild flowers and the grasses.

Delightful! I haven't the heart to cut it yet.

..find an exact complementary colour.
You night like to try this first with bright primary colours. For example find something red. A book cover, or napkin, or an apple, and a piece of plain white paper. Now gaze for a slow count of twenty, without blinking, at the red object. Then transfer your gaze to the white paper. You will see what is called an after-image which will be green, the complementary colour of red.

If you stare at blue the after-image will be orange, at yellow the after-image will be purple.

It works even with the most subtle colours. If you are trying to mix the compementary colour in paint, you have to memorize what you see on the white paper- takes  practice - but you can always gaze at the original again to get a match.

You can probably look up charts, but this is more exciting! Let me know if it works for you..

I get a bit messy when I am working. I try to tidy the table when I have a break, and at the end of the day, though sometimes I am tired and just want to walk away, or go to sleep. I am sleeping much beter since I got back to work!

I'm sometimes to tired to post the blog at night and leave it till the morning....

Paper plates make good palettes. I rarely mix black and white to make a grey. Much more interesting greys can be made from the three primary clours, and wonderfully subtle neutrals.

Yellow Gate  In The Snow is about the interplay of the bright yellow against the beautiful winter neutrals...quite a way to go with this.

Today's work is to find the exact coplementary colour of the lilac. I use complementary colours a lot for vibrancy and a very 'active' surface to the canvas. Much inspired by Bonnard who wasa a master of this. I've used an iridescent oil paint for the first time. I was worried it might be a bit gimicky or tacky, but it's very subtle and interesting....

I had to roll up the rug in the sitting room for Japanese Snow. The studio isn't big enough.

The big black pots are bursting with bloom. Lime green and lilac petunias and  shooting out of the tops nicotiana sylvestris with their gorgeous evening scent. I had forgotten how huge the leaves of this nicotiana are and had to keep cutting them off as they were smothering everything else.
How is your garden growing this summer?