Saint-Émilion with Pastels

Another workout with my new pastels. I'm trying to explore what's possible in this medium both in stylistic and practical terms. Saint-Émilion is another preferred stop on our journeys through France, not only for the charm of the village, but of course, for it's fabulous product, it's wine. Saint-Émilion's history goes back to prehistoric times and is a World Heritage site. It has fascinating churches and old, ruinous buildings stretching along steep and narrow streets. Since Roman times there were vineyards on it's slopes. The photograph, from which I have taken this image, was taken near a lovely bistro/cave called L'Envers du Décor, where you can take your meal and your glass of Grand Cru Classé Château Soutard wine in the troglodyte garden, a small outside space at the back of the cafe overshadowed and enclosed by the 8th Century carved hermitage. The poster was a gift from the proprietor, I admired the design and loved the "English spoken with a French accent" finish.

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Spring Has Sprung

My birthday is on the first day of Spring. I was serenaded each teenage birthday, causing typical youthful embarrassment, by my Dad singing Harry Secombe’s ‘If I ruled the world, ev'ry day would be the first day of spring, ...’ in his sweetheart tenor voice, oh, how I miss it now. Nick and Dan once made me a fabulous birthday card, the surface made of Astroturf with carefully wrought springs bobbing up and down with paper birds, inside this verse,
Spring has sprung
The grass has ris
I wonder were those birdies is
Some say the birds are on the wing
but that’s absurd
the wing is on the bird.
There is something so glorious about receiving a card, hand crafted, just for you… and clever to boot!
This weekend I feel Spring is nearly here, it gladdens the heart. There are snowdrops under the apple trees and my neighbour’s orchard is festooned with crocuses. I read long ago, that one is most happy and content at the same time of year when one was born. Maybe that’s why Nick wants to grow grapes for the harvest time, his birthday, and I’m transported by a simple vase of daffodils?

Nunc est bibendum - Now we must drink. (Horace)

The room that sealed the deal when we were reconnoitring our present house to buy, was the butler’s pantry. Just a small room off the dining room, designed to catch the cool northerly breeze though vents in the wall, a cold room or larder. Nick, however, realised at once, he could use it as his ‘cave’. The alcoholic equivalent of the garden shed.
It immediately became a shrine to Ricard, Pastis 51, Gauloises, Gitanes and his best vintage, laying down wines. He can trace this addiction for all things French and Bar, to his first days on tour in France on the road in the 1960’s, when the advertising was hand painted on the sides of houses. (Most have now disappeared, see a couple of survivors we snapped along the Loire, below.) There was a need in him to drink the drink of the French movies of Jean-Pierre Melville and smoke the smoke of ‘À bout de soufflé’;-)
In trying to re-live a lost age of La Belle France we scoured the flea markets and bricolage, to find the advertising ashtrays, glasses and water carafes to set the scene. Then there are the bottles of aperitifs bought, seduced by their old world labels. Of course, one needed the appropriate glass for each and every drink. All French bar memorabilia found it’s way to Nick’s ‘cave’.
With the Euro rapidly becoming equal to the Pound, trips, 'en vacance' in the camper van, buying ‘produit de région’ is fast becoming a bygone age in itself.

Inherited Memory of the Basque Country?

The first time I visited the Basque, I both astounded and irritated my husband and son, in equal measure, by my oft-repeated mantra “I know this place”. As we journeyed about highways and byways of the Basque country the landscape seemed just shockingly familiar to me, a strong feeling of déjà vu or more correctly déjâ vécu (roughly translated as ‘having already lived through’) or could it have been inherited memory? Whether I believe in ancestral memories or not, and after this experience I am leaning towards belief, the consequence of this feeling was to make me believe I had returned to a long forgotten home.
The Basques say when God created Adam, he got his bones from a Basque cemetery, certainly the question of their heritage and genetics is still being researched, but all agree they are amongst the oldest Europeans with a language with no demonstrable genealogical relationship with any other living language. Basques have a close attachment to their homes and the family house names have transmuted in to Basque surnames, much the same as my own family who took the name ‘woodhouse’ or ‘wodehouse’ from the ancestral home in Wombourne, Staffordshire in the 13th century.
I love the Basque country and long to return for another psychic fix.

Old Town Pamplona

I took a photograph of Nick beside a beautiful advertisement we found down an alley in the old town of Pamplona. This week, looking for a subject to test out some new pastels, a medium I’ve not used before, I decided to try to reproduce it. The advertisement, produced in the 40’s or 50’s, was a reverse glass painting, a great survivor, undamaged by vandals, bulls or runners!
Realistic reverse paintings are challenging to create, as one must, for example, in painting a face, put the pupil of an eye on the glass before the iris, etc, exactly the opposite of normal painting. If this is neglected the artist will not be able to correct the error as he or she will not get in between the glass and the paint already applied. Anyway, above is the result, I hope I have done the original painter justice.

A Little Life

I promised (myself) I would keep posting my life drawings, however painful to my pride. I'm a little disappointed by my lack of progress so far. I think it's because I've made my living as a so called artist, albeit, without often putting pencil to paper. I'm trying lots of techniques, papers, mediums, including photographing the scene, in the hope of checking the perspective, but in the end it comes down to me needing a lot more practice. Must try to be kind to myself and less frustrated!

Surface Design Runs Deep

I was amazingly lucky to study under two maestros of art who conducted me though my time at Chelsea School of Art. I was excepted to study ceramics but was talked into switching to Surface Design by the great Steven Sykes mainly because his course was looking depleted as only one student had signed up for his three year DipAD Surface Design. In the end he managed to talk two others into trying the course making the four of us probably the best taught ever, as the student to teacher ratio, including technicians, was 1:1. Part of the problem was that nobody knew what Steven had in mind with ‘surface’ design, but the truth was just about anything. These (late1970’s) were heady days in art colleges, decisions on direction, aesthetics, materials, influences were left to students, all things were possible, the staff helped you fulfill your wildest dreams by nudging you along the route. Turning you on to obscure art, suggesting resources and also, in Steven’s case, introducing you to respected artists in your field. To help him there was Lesley Sunderland, a master of textiles and all their ramifications. I remember, with her encouragement, one of our number choosing to dye some cloth by leaving onions, beetroot and other colour-giving botanicals, encased in bags made in the plastics workshop, which hung across the room to stew in the heat and light of the studio for three terms. In the end the bags with their coloured grunge became the art and a distinction mark followed. Experimentation leads to virtue, it frees the mind. Steven’s course was so before it’s time, nothing we made would be out of place in a so-called Brit Art collection now.
Steven lived at Hopkiln, near Midhurst in Sussex, a house and garden he created with his usual flare for surfaces out of a piece of rough ground he bought in 1967. “It was a triumph of bricolage and improvisation, incorporating a maze, a grotto, a waterfall and small raised canal, statues and mosaic work. To meet him (naked) beside his swimming pool, which was embellished with a gold peacock, was to encounter a charming sun worshipper from some ancient lost culture who had taken up unexpected residence in a fold of the South Downs”.* The house was amazing and I could try to describe it’s art and design given half a dozen paragraphs, but instead I’ll just mention the swimming pool. Hand made of course, tiled in ceramics, also hand made, of course, but what attracted me was his design solution for heating the water. He had cut the bottoms off wine bottles and threaded them closely on to a hose, then wound the whole into a huge bee-hive looking structure, solar heating long before I ever hear the expression or saw the concept. And this, I think, helps to explain what made him a genius tutor.

Both have obituaries available online at the The Independent
Steven Sykes (1914-1999) http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-steven-sykes-1072852.html
Lesley Sunderland (1947- 1995) http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19951005/ai_n14010332
*taken from the Independent Obit by Tanya Harrod

A Crust of Bread

“If thou tastest a crust of bread, thou tastest all the stars and all the heavens.” Robert Browning (1812-1889)
Baking bread is the most satisfying and the most time consuming of all my kitchen chores. I have a love/hate relationship with it. Love the results, the creative slashing and shaping, the smell of it baking, playing with the living dough, hate and resent the time involved, sometimes spanning weeks, as in liquid levains or nights as in pâte fermentée or a biga. The trouble stems from liking our bread cultivated by naturally occurring yeasts and bacteria or at the very least over-night matured commercial yeasts. In other words we like Old World Breads with rustic and artisan charm. The housewife of medieval England brewed her beer and her made bread together most days and then worked in the fields, washed linen against stones, wove on the loom, and died an early death fulfilling the many other chores, so why can’t I find time to make bread? Well, this week I have, but I know it will be a two or three-week phase and then it will be back to the supermarket. Part of this is the downright mess, after a while I’m finding flour in the most remote areas of the kitchen. And then there are the cultures, each needing nurturing each day, Little Shop of Horrors style “Feed me, Fay, feed me” and of course, there’s the organisation, requiring knowing your plans days in advance, i.e. if you fancy a German farmhouse rye on Saturday you better start making the rye sourdough culture the preceding Sunday! Patience and organisation are not two of my virtues. But no bread ever tastes as good, smells as good, or keeps as well as your own, so you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. Above is Italian Filone, a herb bread made with rosemary and winter savory from the garden, homemade rosemary and savory salt made last summer and herb infused olive oil, a wheat levain and a pâte fermentée. (see photo) This could just be the best bread known to humanity. Below are some Alsace sticks with spelt, after cooking you soak the spelt berries in Alsace wine overnight which can’t help making this loaf another all time winner.

Home Made Liqueurs, Sgroppino and Bas-Armagnac

Oh joy, all the liqueurs we made in the summer and autumn are maturing around now. I always make sloe gin if there are sloes to be picked, usually around the end October but this year yielded a poor harvest and what few there were disappeared quickly. So I had to raid my sister’s freezer for some 2007 berries. However, freezing seems to help in this case and the finished drink is indistinguishable from previous vintages. By the way, if you are put off by the idea of using a needle to prick each and every berry before adding the sugar and gin, forget it, use the prickly side of a cheese grater to run over the berries on a baking tray, works a treat and saves hours of time. In fact, it’s the only use I ever found for that side of the grater! I thought I’d try plum gin as well, as usual one of our plum trees, an Early Rivers type, produced more plums than we could eat, jam, pickle, bottle, cook and give away. The drink produced is less strong as the plums are juicer, which dilutes the alcohol, but the advantage is you can place a plum in the bottom of the glass to eat.
Also, I like to make limoncello, as I use it as an ingredient in Sgroppino (dialect in Venice for a lemon sherbet digestif) along with prosecco, vodka, lemon ice cream. Like sorbet it cleans the palette, but this concoction sends you to the stratosphere. I make my limoncello by using the rind only (no pith) of 10 large, unwaxed, organic lemons, placing them in a bowl with 50cl of pure grain vodka and putting the whole, covered with cling film, in full sun for 7-10 days, not easy to forecast in the UK, to bleach out the aromatic lemon oils. Then add sugar to taste and bottle.
We inherited four blackcurrant bushes when we took over our plot at the allotment, so maybe we could try cassis this year or morello cherries in armagnac, which we made once in more prosperous times. Nick and I have been dreaming and plotting about revisiting La Bastide d’ Armagnac and calling into see the delightful and educational M. le Baron, Philippe de Bouglon at the Chateau du Prada, who makes dam fine Bas-Armagnac in the most glorious surroundings. He is most generous with his time and will take you though the many vintages, while tasting using a glass vial he keeps attached to a ribbon around his neck to dip in the huge oak barrels. You can see the baron’s pad at
http://leprada.com/bienvenue.htm and le Baron himself at http://www.vinoteca.ru/en/about/ChateauxDuPrada/a man, I think you’d agree, who looks as if he enjoys his own products.

Paul Dunmall at Cafe OTO

The last time I studied life drawing was at Chelsea School of Art in the 70's but I've discovered a local class and last week when along. Boy, was I rusty! As with all arts the more you practice the better the chance of performing well, so this week I have been taking pens and paper when ever I'm out and about. Yesterday evening, that meant Cafe OTO in Dalston, where Nick was playing with Paul Dunmall, Tony Marsh. The trio have recorded on our Loose Torque label and if you are interested you can put sound to image at All Said and Dun where there is also video of Paul playing with same lineup. Of course, I was heading for the deep end for as subject matters, musicians, in frantic, dynamic, flow are difficult, to say the least, to 'catch'. Some artists manage the trick of motion brilliantly, but I've still to master a still life. I chose Paul to sketch (well, to show you, anyway, even with horribly inaccurate legs). I will post a drawing regularly, if nothing else to enable me to see some improvement over time, well hopefully. To see how it should be done check out Julie's Pictures

A Discerning Client Version Two

After uming and arghing over the design and artwork for the new CD cover for Loose Torque see blog A Discerning Client and to stop the artistic bickering, a brilliant solution has been found by prevailing on my sister for one of her nature photographs. This image, which she took in a birch wood, fits the criteria perfectly as it's suitably nordic, wintery and abstract. Still some design issues for me to settle but at least we're on the road!

Hedgerow Tonic

There is a tradition in Italy, of picking hedgerow herbs and preparing them as a spring salad, a form of pick-me-up after the austerity of the winter diet. An ancient knowledge passed through the women of the family, this mix of plants is in part a feast for the taste buds, a source of vitamins lacking in the foods available in the preceding colder periods, but also, because they are rich in minerals, a medical tonic.
This must have happened in Britain up until the Middle Ages or even later, when this island like Italy in the early 20th century was rurally impoverished and food for free was a larder to be plundered. Against the herbs and greens picked are dandelions, chicory, lovage, borage, sorrel, burdock, burnet, as well as wild varieties of the garden herbs, chervil, thyme, mint, watercress, oregano, rocket etc. More are known by local names both in English and Italian. For instance in Kent, Sorrel was known as Tom Thumb’s Thousand Fingers and of course, dandelion was Piss-A-Bed.
Some are hot, some bitter and others acidic, but appear to be used together in the same medicine-chest salad. I prefer to take my dose in a mixed soup, (Italians, unlike most of my family, seem to have a highly developed taste for raw bitter greens and salad leaves) which I will write about in spring with photographs and recipes.
Wild garlic was also picked and I still use it, cut and eaten when the leaf is young or cooked if larger. My sister has a little wood in her garden full of ‘ransoms’, which have never been subjected to herbicides or other chemicals, important when foraging. As I sit here tonight, with the temperature plunging below -6c, I find myself in need of some of that tonic and plan borage fritters, wild garlic tarts, lovage soup and sorrel or rocket pestos. Oh, roll on Spring.
Above is a snap of my borage plot in flower in June, just in time to add to the Pimms.

In the Wood

One of the advantages of living in the ‘wood is that we are still only 25 minutes from Central London. As the tube train strains up the hill out of the metropolis the passengers feel the fresh, cool rush of air into the compartment, a sudden atmospheric change from the sultry fumes and dust of the city streets, the streetlights fall away and some stars can be seen. I love returning from a stunning opera at the ENO or a late night viewing at the Tate Modern and walking home inhaling the scent of spring, sweet night time smells like our front hedge shrub honeysuckle (Lonicera nitida) or linden (Tilia cordata) blossom. The photograph was taken at our local tube station on such an evening.

A Discerning Client

I have a new commission, for a CD cover artwork and layout. The brief, as always with the Loose Torque Label, is to match the visual theme to the music, in this case, as always, free improvisation. I find most music will paint a composition in the mind, however the picture that resonates within me is often far from the intended impression, although as it happens, there is no intended impression here. (Which could make it harder still.)
There is a particular look of a free music album, either hand painted/drawn or textually reproduced digitally, sometimes incorporating postmodern text and implying complex underlying patterns in scribbled form (admittedly, like the music itself), the whole suggesting a sort of quintessence substance that tells you at a glance you are buying into a free form sound. Very cool, but maybe a tad clichéd.
The trouble is that all art is a current reflection of art that's gone before. Worse than that, a down right copy of what has gone before. For instance, a lot of advertising graphics at present hark back to the 70's, swirls, paisley, flower power etc. I did that stuff in the 70's why would I what to do it again? It's the same for me with this free music post-modernist look, been there, done that!
Of course, I can only revolt like this because the client happens to be my husband, otherwise I would be pulling my forelock and saying, aye aye, captain! Above a rejected piece. Ho hum, back to the drawing board and the morning tea in bed (supplied by the client) negotiations.

Italian Night

Tonight, after all the British food indulgence of this seasons fayre, a trip into the sunny realms of the Italian hills seems appropriate. Of course, indulgence aside, the proceedings could not start without an aperitif, tonight a version of an Aviator from Simon Difford's Cocktails No.7, my current favourite, not Italian although it does remind me of the Gin and It (Italian) that my father was so fond of in the ‘60’s. Simple and suitably strong it takes 1 part gin, 1 part dry vermouth, I part cinzano rosso, 1 part Red Dubonnet and an unwaxed lemon zest twist.
Fortified, we set forth onto the primo, my minestrone (no recipe, just anything at hand, but tonight our Cavolo Nero was added as there is so much in kitchen garden right now). For secondi, a rice bombe (although Nick has just pointed out, oh so kindly, mine should be called a rice brick). It's a sort of baked risotto, started with a soffritto made from tiny cubes of leek, carrot, beans, courgette, fennel, peas and herbs and as if that wasn’t enough to feed an army, a huge pizza was thrown together as well. Below is a photograph of the tomatoes and mozzarella draining dry on kitchen paper so that the dough base bakes crispy, my only tip on making good pizza!
It was a nice trip, everything but the suntan and the scenery.