Such a Lovely Lass!

I drew this a couple of months ago while we were travelling on a train down to the coast and she was all wrapped up against the cold, which now seems a million miles away, and another country:

Pencil on paper, 2xA6.
The days fly by so quickly and now we are approaching what we laughingly call 'summer', and I still think I'm a young thing, but know I am not.
I've spent the last half-hour watching a big grey cat in our garden that I call 'Smokey-the-Bandit' because he used to come and eat some of the food I left out for Leo! Until I know better, I call him "he", but he won't come anywhere near me (much to Jacqui's relief), but I would love to make contact with him.
And now I am eating the first rhubarb crumble of the season, with ice-cream.
Such a good day, and my football team, Rangers, also won their league game against Hibernian.
I am happy , and everything is right with the world (even though I know it is not).

OCA Exhibition at Ocean Terminal

Taking a moment's breather from the confusion of abstracted thoughts so I'm doing a bit of tidying round and catching up.

Time flies when you are enjoying yourself, as they say, and I've been having lots of fun recently but it appears that five weeks have passed since I put my three paintings into this exhibition, organised by the Open College of the Arts (OCA), and a whole month since I went back for a visit to see how it all looked.

I thought you might like to see what the exhibition looked like in-situ:


This is one of the better areas (above), albeit a corridor, but don't let that lady with the serious look on her face kid you - I know for a fact she is skint and has no intention of buying!

Looking down the length of the mall. My paintings are somewhere along there on the third floor's thirty-fourth column:




The exhibition is made up of both present and past students, and this past student's work (below) is also by my present Tutor, Jane Mitchell:



Ah, here's what I'm looking for:

Goldenbury Hill in all it's glory, but what's this...nobody looking at it? Hey everybody, up here --->>>>>!


Apparently six paintings were sold, but I don't need to tell you that none of them were mine. If any of them had then you wouldn't have needed the internet to hear about it!!!

OCA Changeing Lives Exhibition

Yesterday I drove through from the Wild West (of Scotland) to the Erudite East to submit three paintings into an Open College of the Arts (OCA) exhibition at Ocean Terminal, Leith Docks, Edinburgh.
I could have submitted three more recent paintings but I didn't really have anything else created under the auspices of the OCA. These three were done circa 2005 when I last painted anything for the "Painting 2: Finding Your Way" Course, or as I like to term it: "Painting 2: Losing Your Way". I lost all confidence in my painting at that time, although when I look back I now feel perhaps I shouldn't have.
Ce'st la vie, can't re-live time, I can only move forward from here. And these are what I chose to put into this exhibition:



All three are painted in acrylics on paper, and framed in natural wood.

The exhibition space is not ideal, being 3 or 4 stories up on a kind of top-level open gallery of a shopping mall with the paintings displayed high on widely spaced columns. I'll go back there again next week and take some photo's to show you what I mean. Still, I understand it is almost impossible to get affordable gallery space anywhere in our nation's capital city, or anywhere for that matter.
So, I shouldn't complain - I am just happy to have three paintings hanging anywhere in public at the moment without me nailed up there beside them :o{

First Album

I must be off my head - this has taken me just about all day to assemble but I'm sure you'll a' think it's worth it and be clamouring for copies!

And it is Melanie at My Croft that's all to blame. You see I was checking to see if she was back blogging again and sure enough there she was, the wee lamb, blethering away about this fabby new Blogger-Land game she herself was caught up in and I thought it was brilliant too!

The game is to follow a set of instructions and randomly come up with the name of your band, the title of your first album, and the cover artwork. This is doing the rounds so I'll give a mention to those from whence it apparently has come:
66squarefeet
Secretnotebookswildpages , and
moreidlethoughts


And here are the instructions:
To create your own band name and album cover, follow these easy instructions from m. heart:
1. Click wikipedia. The first random article you get is the name of your band.

2. Click quotations. The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
3. Click flicker. Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4. Use Photoshop (or similar) to put it all together.

Anyway, here's my take on it:

"Emotions are Violent" by Danskammer.



Danskammer Point Light is, of course, a lighthouse sitting out on some exposed coastal headland near New York (I'm sure you know it well Melanie?), and the quote comes from W.Somerset Maugham - "When you're eighteen your emotions are violent but they're not durable".

And the excellent photo of a lovely lassie is by Stink Poop on Flickr.

I thought the three parts came together rather well with the Scandanavian name, the coldly lit girl, and the raw emotional tag.

Anyway if all of that hasn't made you weep yet, then this will: My first track on the album will be "La Campursita" by Gerardo Matos Rodriguez, played deftly on an A+ Moon mandolin by that Plucky Plectrum all the way from East Kilbride -
yours truly, "Wee Davey Twangathon" :




[standing ovation and thunderous applause]

Thank you, thank you, thank you, don't throw flowers, just throw money!

Les Ballets Trocadero de Monte Carlo

Absolutely fantastic!

Ballet Trocadero at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow.

What a show, what movement, what colour, what grace, what technique, what broad shoulders!

These guys were just fantastic..a brilliant parody on female ballerina's, and their facial expressions as well :o{

The dying swan from Swan Lake was...to die laughing for, with his/her tutu shedding feathers like a hen being plucked!

I cannot really do any justice to the fun and amazement this bunch of guys provided, but, for what it's worth, here goes:
















If only I was 40 years younger and didn't give a toss!

Change of Name.

Having thought this ower for a few days (who said ah wisnae quick?) ah hae decided that "Sleekit" is far too derogatory a term fur sich a nice lady from New Zealand, whom I hardly even ken (yet).
So, since it's ma game and ah can dae whit ah like, ah'm gonnae gae her a new nom-de-plume: Hens Forth she sall be lumbered wi'...Lady Neeps!!! Yayyyyyayayay!!!

So, wi' Lady Haggis, and now Lady Neeps, a' that's needed is fur us tae find a 'Lord, or Lady Tatties'.

Any offers oot there?

Anybody daft enough?

Ye ken whit ye huv tae dae!

Dinnae be shy :o)

Lady Sleekit!

And my second award for services to the Scottish Vernacular goes to...dinahmow (http://moreidlethoughts.wordpress.com/)! Yayyy!!!




She is only the second person (with an empty brain) to receive this prestigous accolade, and from Hens Forth will be known as...Lady Sleekit (as in "Wee sleekit, cowrin', tim'rous beastie) frae Aft Agley (as in "the best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley").

Keep up the guid work, hen!