Snood for Grace

This could be wishful thinking and the photos are only a rough guide too, but I'm hoping this piece of knitting will fit gracefully over my friend's beautiful greyhound dog, Grace, when she's out in the snow and cold wind. She'll be wearing her winter doggie coat but needs something to keep her ears warm, so hopefully I can sew a button on to the coat to hold this in place.

Not having a dog  nearby to model it, I used someone's leg to show how it'll bend to the right shape!

If this turns out to be OK, Ros, then hopefully the slightly bigger one that I'm working on, on the 15mm knitting needles with 8 yarns, will be about right for Henri... and then all they'll need is some very cold weather!

Blue Is Not Sad

I love wearing red, it makes me feel better.

Not an unusual statement: it's a known scientific fact that certain colours have effects on the people who wear them. However, I am coming to realise that colours are far more integral to my sanity than to many humankind. It's one of those things you live with all your life and presume everyone else does until discovering otherwise, like having tinnitus or tunnel-vision.


I was listening to Jacky Niven, and watching her art demo. She has a condition called synaesthesia and although I don't have it in such a clear-cut way as her, some of what she was saying rang a bell and made perfect sense to me. Others in the audience simply found the phenomenon downright peculiar and even frightening. Heavens, no.

Acrylic on paper - size A3

Many of my paintings are blue, or based on blue. I love blue sky. I love the sea. I love living in Stonehaven because we get plenty of blue skies. The sky is blue – even behind the clouds – because air scatters short-wavelength light more than longer wavelengths, and of all the rainbow colours on this earth from the sun, blue has the shortest wavelengths. We are surrounded by the blue! Blue is uplifting, a breath of fresh air.

So blue is not sad.

Red is not angry. Red is confident, warm, cosy and bright. For me it stands for brilliance, intensity, clarity of thought and positivity. Red needs to be in a painting, if only in a hint or a streak. Sometimes I need to paint a large canvas with red in a huge wide arc, with bold, dramatic brushstrokes, steeping myself in the beauty of red. Every house, every room, needs a red painting.

Jacky Niven described her synaesthesia as so clear-cut that triangles are yellow.

I could go through all the colours here, discussing the various shades and their nuances, what they mean to me and how I like to use them or not in my paintings but if I have any kind of synaesthesia (and I doubt I have, just an artistic brain) then my emotions, thoughts and memories are connected with colours – but they are not always the same colours. That would be too simple and … dare I say it: boring.

Extremely Knitted

My Extreme Knitting drew a lot of attention when I demonstrated it throughout my stewarding stints at Johnshaven Gallery for NEOS (North East Open Studios). I regretted the feeling that it took attention away from all my paintings on the walls but I was pleased to engage people's interest and let them have a go. Some were absolutely fascinated by it, others surprised me by being almost frightened; but everyone loved the colours and boldness, the warmth and heaviness of what I was creating.

Here's a photo of it - nearly finished - awaiting more tassles and some big buttons (and other finishing touches).

Big Strokes

Back to work and I'm loving it. This is an oil painting with a LOT of texture and it's intended to be quite abstract, at the moment. It's at the stage where I might be tempted to make it a seascape and I would probably be resisting realism if I didn't... but what I want to do is transform reality to make this painting into something special so that the viewer decides how real it is.

Here are two stages:

There's more work to be done but the oil paint will make me wait and leave it to think about instead of being tempted to make it look finished before I've given it enough thought.

I'm disappointed that the photo doesn't show the variety of blues used. Oh well, you get the gist.