Living in a box

Tricky things, weddings.

You have to remember the names of people who claim to be related to you,  not get too pie-faced and generally behave in a grown up,  responsible way.

Like I say, tricky...

Especially when it's your daughters,  you really,  really don't want to rack up a record hit rate on Youtube;  you have an unfortunate gift for saying spectacularly inappropriate things to the more well upholstered amongst the guest list and everyone in the room knows you are no stranger to the great taste of foot.

The present,  however,  is a piece of cake.

Not literally,  that's what you get given for not doing anything on the day that warrants a restraining order.

Nice and straightforward:  Make two small boxes that open towards each other,  paint the happy couple's portraits on the front and line the inside with felt so they can pin all the memento's of the day inside.

At the risk of getting sentimental,  I like to think it's an appropriate gift;  two separate boxes for keeping things that matter that also match and compliment each other, like bookends.

It all ends well, with much joy in a moistened eye, and no blue flashing lights.

I think I might make this a signature gift for future weddings, with modifications to suit the occasion, such as a Tupperware lining.

Then you could keep cake in them. 

First goodbye

RIP Phylis, the first of my group to go.

Working with bear hands; paws for thought.

2013.

Blimey...

Right, I've had the obligatory 'artist's block' period,  caught up on all the paid work I didn't do because I was painting saucy people,  finally fixed the house up and survived another Christmas.

Time, then, for a fresh start.

One thing I won't be doing is repeating what I've done before.

It has to progress, or I'll just get bored and start painting traffic cones and moustaches onto everything.

No, it has to take what I've learned and build on it.

And it has to have a purpose.

More anon.

In the meantime, a reminder of where I left off - the Lovely Lou-Leigh Blue whose burlesque Metropolis- inspired routine has been known to make small household appliances pull their plugs out and run away to join the circus.

Happy days

 

Taking the Pith

This is not art.

This is what happens when you live in a house where it's ok to play with your food...

It's never too late to make a date with fate.

I'd like to introduce my Grandfather.

I would also have liked to have met him, but since he was born 30 years before man first flew, it made the timing a little unlikely.

None the less, I have always had a profound sense of connection with him, and the more I discover about his life, the more I recognise the similarities with my own.

He appears to have been a romantic, creative soul, much given to painting moody landscapes and photographing pretty ladies.

He ran his own studio in Kinross in Edwardian times, and I have an album of sepia prints and watercolours that my father put together in celebration of him.

He gave up his artistic ambitions when he married my grandmother (as was considered correct in such times) and pursued an altogether more sensible career but he never lost his love of the aesthetic and continued filling notebooks with sketches of damsels, watercolour views, ideas for inventions and decorative designs.

I owe him a lot.

Last weekend, I visited Kinross to see if the town he knew could still be recognised.

Almost nothing has changed.

I stood in the same places that he had over 100 years ago, and took virtually the same photographs.

I wanted to put together some sort of appreciation of his work, as a tribute to the man who had unwittingly influenced me since I first stopped sticking crayons up my nose and started applying them to paper.

It was then that the coincidences started to happen.

A local pointed me to the old family residence.

I knocked the door, and was shown round by a charming gent who, if I'd turned up 10mins later would have been on his way to America.

I visited the recently opened museum and literally bumped into the Prof of Hist as he was leaving to go to Havana.

Even the owner of the B&B turned out to be custodian of the local archives who had just set up a website about the town's history.

The end result is that my Grandfather will finally have an exhibition of his paintings and photographs in the town that knew him as an artist.

I think he'd be pleased.

Big Mouth Rides Again

Ok, nothing clever to say, just a GREAT BIG THANKYOU to everyone who turned out to witness a bloke in a hat waving his hands about on Saturday.

I am truly humbled, and for once, speechless.

Enjoy it while it lasts...

Raising the bar

Oh, by the way, did I mention there'll be a cheap bar?

hmmm...

http://www.jamesalexanderpaintings.com