Winter wood wraiths

It would seem that the winteriness has well and truly burrowed its way into my subconscious as a while ago I had a weird dream (aren’t they all?) in which two indistinct, ghostly figures with insubstantial, attenuated bodies and shadowy mask-like faces were moving through the hushed silence of a snow covered forest. A white rabbit and a brown owl were their travelling companions. They appeared to hover just above the thick drifts of snow and made their way tentatively through the trees.

When I woke up I had a single vivid image in my mind, like a film still, and I thought it might make a cool diorama / mixed media assemblage thingy. So I set to work with watercolour & pencil crayons, paper & scalpel, and a couple of blobs of polymer clay for those elusive mask-like faces.

Although the finished diorama isn’t quite how I’d envisioned it in my mind’s eye (that clear ‘still image’ I had immediately on waking has faded and been distorted in the making) it was a really fun project. Admittedly lots of the fun was had in mucking around with the component parts during construction…

component parts in the making…

forget the yeti – giant owl spotted in local woods!

it’s raining Fimo face failures!

my studio companion, the inimitable chibi totoro, tries the work-in-progress forest on for size (his verdict: “I can unequivocally say that I prefer the Teutoburg Forest“)

when imaginary and real world trees meet

‘winter wood wraiths’ diorama, ±22×22cm

In search of inspiration and wonder

I popped across the road to my local Inspiration Emporium (a.k.a. the small zoological museum at Artis) a few days ago, armed with my camera and sketchbook.

While I find these creature displays infinitely fascinating and inspirational they also fill me with a deep sense of melancholy I can’t quite put my finger on… something to do with humanity’s desire to catalogue and control and what that implies. There’s the need to try to understand and bring order to a complex and chaotic world, but there is also an inherently destructive element to it (an impulse which seems to be, in greater or smaller measure, in all human beings). And I think it’s this that makes me feel a little sad…

But despite, or perhaps entirely because of, my mixed feelings about these things I know exactly what I’ll be drawing more of this weekend! Whatever you’re up to I hope you have a good one.

On a dark and misty day in Rotterdam…

destination Kunsthal…

At the end of last week we visited Rotterdam to catch the second last day of the ‘Modern Life: Edward Hopper and His Time’ exhibition at the Kunsthal. Rotterdam is not a city I had visited before (apart from a few blissful hours spent at the Ahoy in March 2008 listening to Robert Smith coax all manner of strange and sublime sounds out of his guitar… but that doesn’t really count as having visited the place) and I was struck by how different it seems to all the other Dutch cities I have visited.

Having suffered devastating damage as a result of severe bombing during World War II vast swathes of the city were redeveloped (and judging by the number of building sites we passed it’s an ongoing work-in-progress). There’s a gritty urban modernity about the place (particularly on a dark and misty day) but it’s not without a certain charm (of the gritty urban variety :). Street art – in the form of an apparently very active public sculpture programme, city sanctioned murals and, of course, the ever ubiquitous graffiti – abounds. On our rambling walk from Centraal Station to the Kunsthal and back again we barely scratched the surface and I’d loved to go back, on a sunny day, to see more (particularly this beautiful mural by Brazilian artist Dante Horoiwa).

mist softened architectural angles…

Rotterdam’s (sometimes crazy) line in public sculpture…

from top, left to right:
Screw Arch, 1982, Claes Oldenburg  |  Zwarte Kraai, 2007, Florentijn Hofman  |  Qwertz, 2000, Franz West  |  Another Time II, 2008 (?), Antony Gormley  |  Santa Claus, 2001, Paul McCarthy

Eye-poppingly, brain-meltingly colourful graffiti on building site hoardings…

And I particularly liked these beautifully patterned monochromatic offerings…

a handsome owl peering down from the back of a street sign

and Onio’s densely patterned mural made during the R.U.A festival
in Summer 2009

Simulating spring

To counteract the brrrrr factor around here I’ve been making some more ‘rare blooms’… and imagining balmy tropical breezes and warm, golden sand between my toes.

These blooms are now in my shop – one as a greeting card and the other two as little ‘art pieces‘, mounted and ready to frame. My hope is that they will brighten up any space, whether it be icy cold or scorchingly hot :)

Waiting…

… for it to warm up already!

These herons are a common sight in Amsterdam, so I thought they’d be well accustomed to the cold. But when I met these guys while out on a walk today it looked like they were feeling it just as much as me!

Is it my imagination or are they looking a little vexed?

Desaturated

It may not have been a colourful (or warm!) first few days of the new year but for me there is much beauty and inspiration to be found in the subtleties of tone, texture and pattern in the frozen world out there.

That said, I do like a good colour fix and have been getting mine here, here, and when these unexpected fellas visit at my window…

It remains a mystery to me as to how these parakeets have taken to Amsterdam’s chilly northern climes with such success!

Let there be (a wintery) light

papercut trees against a dark winter sky

At this time of year in the cold, dark Northern Hemisphere light is at a premium. So it’s always a bit of a thrill when it shows itself! Today is not one of those days but there have been plenty of them, and I’m sure there will be plenty more to come. Perhaps it’s the fleeting and transient nature of winter light that makes it so beautiful…

Thanks very much to all of you who visited in 2009, for your positive energy, and for all your encouraging comments… each one like a little ray of warm light (cheesy, I know, but true nonetheless :)

Wishing you all a great new decade, and a happy, peaceful & fun-filled 2010!

(Im)perfect

Still savouring the long, lazy (Christmas) weekend, and already looking forward to the next one (just two short days away). The three-day-weekend has my vote!

< old friends (and neighbours) were visited

new friends were made >

the sun came out >

< and some ice thawed

veggies were roasted >

< and paper snowflakes cut >

< a wish came true!

pictures were made >

< and much music was listened to

RIP Vic Chesnutt

[thank you for the poetry and the music]