How does March whizz by like this?  Seems that the lengthy months of Jan and Feb accelerate into March and suddenly it's nearly over!  Then again, having looked over the month I have been busy and around and about to the point of not really looking at dates (only those ahead)   What I have I been up to?  Travel (yay!)  I went to visit friends in Frome and Bath over a long w/end and just prior to that I was in London at the AAF and then yesterday the afternoon and eve in Tunbridge Wells.  I feel as if I need to touch base a little bit.  

Pressing things.  Dentist, renewing daughter's quarterly bus pass and taking work to the framers seemed to consume most of the day.  I seemed to be the only pedestrian in Brighton who was moving at a speed faster than snails pace.  It was 16 degrees and heaving with visitors (overseas, mainly) Visitors are never in a hurry and seem to meander with their heads up and eyes focussed on something that is usually way above eye level.  They are the most likely demographic of pedestrian who will walk into you, unless you see them coming first.

I would have liked to have been going at a slower pace, but with so much time on the car ticket, and other places to be (it also being a week day) I made the most of a very fleeting walk through Pavilion gardens.  Buskers out, cafe terrace busy and the twenty-something hippy-clones were sitting in cross-legged, long-haired groups  looking stoned (or just completely un-harassed to the point of vacantness)

Fortunately the framers keep notes of previous jobs carried out and we had to dig them up to discover what was made last time.  These paintings are on standard canvases (not panel) so they will not require a double tray frame.  I will collect next week.  I always look forward to collection.  Framing can be (and should be when it's well done) really transformative, like having a decent haircut.

With all the best intentions in the world I attempted studio time....... but after making a gallery submission and then a trip to the farm shop for fresh spring ingredients and a few window sill/still life plants, I noticed how dirty the kitchen looked.  Now, don't get me wrong I completely believe in the adage "A Clean House is a Sign of a Wasted Life", but there are certain standards of hygiene that even the least house-proud of us must have.  Why I, personally, do the minimum amount of housework has a lot to do with the fact that there are more pressing things to get on with.  Also I have noticed how, when you start one particular chore, you then notice something else and before you know it you are engrossed in a world of domino-effect housework and then the day has evaporated.

Cleaning window sill, finding appropriately aesthetic vessels for new potted plants led to plant watering (in general) re-potting the Aloe Vera (which had reproduced rapidly over winter) cleaning grease off the window panes, tidying up the front flower bed, pruning the apple tree and ceanothus and .... I can hardly bear to say out loud, cleaning the oven!  Oven cleaning is a disgusting job, the grease was putrid.  Given the choice of cleaning ovens or collecting dog poo, I would say I prefer the latter.

Having done a lot of Spring cleaning, with soda and no harsh chemicals, I can feel the benefits and the stagnant energy has been banished.  And work, of the painting variety?  I managed a couple of hours tweaking work in progress and lots of edge painting.  I feel very on target with my work and i may have another gig lined up for May.  Depletion of available surfaces means that I will have to take the jigsaw to a large piece of panel and cut out more surfaces.  W/end ahoy.  Time out.  

Spring is on it's way.  i made a trip to Green tree Gallery to collect unsold work and discuss delivery of new work.  We had some lunch in the cafe and took Jess on a walk around the grounds.  Lots of blossom, daffodils and Camelias and Magnolias blooming and we sat in full sunshine.  It was warm.  Driving through East and West Sussex was a great diversion to the week ( I feel as if I have barely seen much outside of the studio for weeks now) The leafy roads with deep ridges of trees are traditional commonplace  B roads around the countryside, they were once pig droves which is why they have such steep banks.  Sussex is associated with pig farming and the Sussex expression "We will not be drove" is indicative of the pig farming and droving.

Next stop, Mayfield.  A small village where I went to school for four years.  It hasn't changed much.  I was disappointed to see that 'Fenners' (the old tobacconist and sweet shop) had closed and was now converted back into a house.  The hippy shop was still there, unchanged, and I saw groups of school girls queuing at the chippy van in uniforms that are completely different to the one I used to wear.  The new gallery there was interested in the fact that I went to the school and have a potter who used to teach ceramics at the school.  They were interested in my work and I will have to speak to the boss in order to make a formal admission or visit with a selection.

I saw posters advertising Twelfth Night (Shakespeare) which my dad is performing in next weekend in the village.  I thought how ironic that almost thirty years since leaving school and I'm back there.  I often have dreams about the school, which usually involve a scenario where I am taking exams and re-sitting them at the age I am now, and also dreams about getting school stage fright (I trod the boards once at school but was so petrified with stage fright that I didn't attempt it again) Apparently these dreams signify lack of confidence and a fear of not making the grade!!!  No surprises there, then.  Aptly, it was International Women's day, and I reflected on how a girls school (possibly) encourages independent thinking and self-sufficiency.  

I have a theory that grown women who have a close affinity with the colour pink are not properly evolved.  In other words, they got stuck in their pre-teenage years and didn't emotionally mature.  This theory doesn't include using pink in paintings.  It applies to women who drive pink cars, have pink bedrooms and wear pink clothes (that ucky bubblegum pink)

Today I was using a lot of pink, and it's a colour that I have never used - mainly because of it's association.  Some of the most beautiful flowers are pink, so maybe, this is where the inspiration for pink has come from.

So I got a lot done, mainly tweaking and finishing a couple of pink-based works.  I have also had an obliterating moment in updating a couple of larger canvases.  I was getting iiiiinnnnny-miiiiiiinnnnny tight with the small scale panel and canvas paintings, and then things can become fiddly and ridiculous.  Moving onto larger surfaces allows for loosening up with more gestural brush strokes.  Gallery Road Trip is on the agenda........ and framer will need a visit very soon.        

I will say it again: All things admin take the joy out of life.  Writ large.  This should become a national slogan.  I would like to see it on billboards and posted in all places.

Today started with admin-type jobs and then evolved into a series of other necessary but menial jobs.  All in all I have had a depressingly dissipated day made up of menial and mind-numbing tasks.  I attempted to get into my studio, which lasted less than an hour. My frame of mind was not in the right place.  I have written today off (creatively) and now that the admin and menial jobs of the week are out of the way I should be able to get back into the zone.  I can't have another day like today.  I would not be worth living.

Think positively: I don't have to sit in in office or shuffle paper from nine to five for five days of the week.  This would definitely kill me (as, nearly, did the bureaucracy of teacher-training)  

As Alison knows, there is only one thing to do on a day like this; Bake a cake.  Dutch Apple Cake! I was able to use up all my autumn apples for this, by now all wrinkly and but still edible.

Since the light has changed and things look different, I had a need to brighten up the January-made 'dog series' (for Corte Real, Portugal).  They were wintry.  Now they have some spring glow about them and I am really pleased to have done this, even though they were sitting in a box waiting to be packaged.  The results are now on the 'Figurative' page.  It was an afternoon's work worth doing.  Finished three small oil on panel still life (page Still Life 3) for the Green Tree (who have requested new work for April) and I have more to get on with tomorrow and next week. 

I got into the zone this afternoon and forgot the time and everything else.  Many works in progress at once, which is how I like to work.  I counted 28 surfaces in progress today.  I worked on eight of them today.