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

Lovely fresh tickets, get 'em while they're hot...

Tickets can be bought on the night but space is limited and they're going fast, so if you're planning on coming it might be worth getting a wiggle on.

Full details on:

http://www.jamesalexanderpaintings.com

Take a gander

Most weeks I try to pop in to the Care Home over the road for a cup of tea and some arty malarky with the residents.

I always come back in a better mood than I started for the simple reason that they're such a jolly bunch you'd have to have the disposition of a traffic warden who's lost his pencil not to.

(By the way, is it true the yellow line round wardens hats is to stop people parking on their heads?)

One thing I've noticed, though, is how seldom our happy band includes any men.

Apart from the obvious fact that the ladies far outnumber the chaps in most retirement homes, it seemed that something else was afoot, so I asked  one particularly distinguished gent why he preferred his own company when there were such larks available.

It transpired that after a lifetime of working with women, coupled with the fact that his hearing was not what it once was, he had had enough.

"It's like being surrounded by geese!" he confided, with a twinkle in his eye.

Tim has reached the age where you can say what you think without people fainting or writing to the Telegraph.

Lucky Tim.

Shortly afterwards I was seized by what I thought was an attack of excitement of the knees, but which I deduced from the smell of burnt dust was in fact A Good Idea hatching.

Working on the principle that everybody needs five portions of art each day, I resolved to trap Tim in his room and inflict a portrait on him for his own good.

Fortunately Tim is a gentleman, and proved to be charming company whilst sitting for me.

And following my art regime, he is now a regular gentleman....

It's taken a while to finish this one as it turned into a bit of a crowd scene, but as soon as it's dry I'll take it over the road and see what Tim thinks.

By the way, the lady in the pink with the wings is Adele, who spends half her life accommodating that most British of requests:

"Be an angel, make us a cup of tea..."

Love 'em.