Update, Artist in Residence Blog, Exciting Things and a Favicon

I realised on Friday that a whole week had gone by without much drawing at all. But I did have a day in the garden and then my creative energies had to be channelled into writing, letters, adverts, proposals, workshop notes and updating my blog, adding some extra pages for workshops and creating a quick new blog for the Residency. We also had two busy workshop days

Workshops

We had the most beautiful day at Barnesdale Gardens for the first Illustrated Garden Workshop and the most horrible freezing and foggy day for our first Easton Walled Gardens Workshop day. Luckily the Easton Painters are a sturdy and resolute group who turn out, have a laugh, produce great work and always make my day a real pleasure. Thank you to all participants.

Artist in Residence Grafham Water

A small pen illustration to accompany a piece about the residency

and adjusted to B/W for our village newsletter .

Meanwhile I have started my research and planning for the Artist in Residence year. There are many different kinds of residency. Some you pay for (I have seen some lovely but very expensive ones recently), some will pay you (not many). I am self funding and wanted the local community and Anglian Water’s customers to rest easy, knowing that the company are not frittering away money on something so frivolous as Art! 

So why do this you may ask? Mainly because we don’t have very much going on in the arts locally and I thought it was time there was more! Jackie has done a wonderful job in getting the Village Art group going, but we have no local art spaces, no wonderful barn workshop conversions, no galleries, no art shops or studio spaces. We are neither underprivileged enough to get funding or sufficiently privileged to have huge amounts of spare money around.  We are on the edge of 3 counties, just in Cambridgeshire but quite a long way from its artsy centre.
Of course one of the things  I love about this area is the very fact of its curious isolation, bypassed and tucked away as it is, but I also think it is such a beautiful area with so much potential that it could be used and enjoyed by more creative people. 

So we have 5 workshops planned, exhibitions and a possible celebration for next Easter time which will combine my end of residency show and a project I am in the middle of developing which will be great if I can make it work!

I have written a little about the Residency HERE at the other blog. I hope you will join me there to see what is happening.

The Exciting Things
..are the opportunities that are beginning to arise.
As part of the residency I will be able to learn so much more about what goes on at the Nature Reserve over at the West side of the Reservoir, where we will hold the workshops. It is managed by the Wildlife Trusts the Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire branch who also look after the nearby Brampton Woods. They organise some great activities and there are some fascinating species hidden away. Here is a link to a PDF about the Reserve

And our Easton Group show will be happening over August Bank Holiday from 21st to the 25th of August at Easton Walled Gardens. It’s a great opportunity to show our work at this lovely venue.

… and yes Pencil and Leaf Blog has a little bee  favicon (what else!)..it took a lot of time and bad language to make this tiny thing but it is rather sweet. So if you lose me in your tabs  look for the bee!

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Meanwhile the Foot is back under the knife tomorrow, the pin has slipped and is sticking into the joint. Yes, excruciating, but hopefully recovery not too long this time. This is not my foot but Leonardo’s drawing. I think mine is nicer.
Reading is lined up:  “Fludd”  ( more Hilary Mantel bliss) and “Edge of the Orison” by Iain Sinclair about the poet John Clare’s eighty mile trudge home after escaping from the Asylum. Sinclair will be describing a part of the UK I know well. His insights will be interesting.