A mega accordion book- 5 feet long!

What a love story this turned out to be! A lovely lady called Lisa asked about an extra special love letter to include a marriage proposal. We decided on a concertina book with a couple of envelopes for keepsakes such as a show ticket & a pressed flower from milestone dates. Well…. the idea sort of grew… and grew.

We decided on colours early on; natural tones, charcoal & sand… layers of watercolour… more water… more colour… some acrylic...

I asked her to think about special events along the way… 

dates, places, songs etc… little things that tell their story...

She told me their tale of synchronicity & bliss, of cold feet & separation; yet always on each others mind…. until they finally re-united...

Just as their story has many strands, I wove snippets of songs alongside tender memories...

 layering their tale in a book of love… 

Extra pages stitched in, for her to write a personal letter in her own hand...

A proposal hidden at the very end...

books within books, pages to unfold...

quotes about love & words they have spoken…

 space for a ring to hide?

Memorial Artwork

 I had quite a challenge to incorporate all the different elements requested in this series of canvasses. It was important to incorporate the skyline of a favourite view visible from a window, so using a photograph, I could tear along the length of the mountain ridge & use it as a template to paint over. My client also loved the blue-black skies & gold lettering seen in earlier work of mine.

Another element required, was a representation of the five trees that a father had planted for his children, and I needed to make each canvas similar but different for each child. This was a touching tribute to their father, and a way for the siblings to share something that honoured his memory.

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Although in reality all the trees had red leaves, I highlighted a different one on each canvas. The layout for the calligraphy was broadly the same, but there is some variation in the line-breaks, and how the trees worked out slightly also affected the placement of text a little. Rather than gold lettering I settled on copper, originally intending to use it for the full poem. However as I highlighted the red tree with a bronze-y red, I realised that it would also pull things together better to use that for the 2nd part of the poem too, especially as the two parts have a different feel to the words.

The poem is "At a Window" by Carl Sandburg~

Give me hunger,

O you gods that sit and give

The world it's orders.

Give me hunger, pain and want,

Shut me out with shame and failure

From your doors of gold and fame,

Give me your shabbiest, weariest hunger!

But leave me a little love,

A voice to speak to me in the day end,

A hand to touch me in the dark room

Breaking the long loneliness.

In the dusk of day-shapes

Blurring the sunset,

One little wandering star

Thrust out from the changing shores of shadow.

Let me go to the window,

Watch there the day-shapes of dusk

And wait the coming

Of a little love.

Falling Stars...

Way back last August (crikey, 2013 seems so far away now), I had a Groom that was planning well ahead for a gift for his Bride on their wedding day.  He came with a romantic tale too...

Very early in my fiancee's and my relationship, we went stargazing at the top of the tallest hill where we live, which was really the night that we realised there was something special going on. She saw a falling star for the first time in her life, and it's one of our favourite memories. Subsequently while browsing a poetry website, I was floored to come across this poem, which seemed to sum up the feeling of that night.

Do you remember still the falling stars

that like swift horses through the heavens raced
and suddenly leaped across the hurdles
of our wishes--do you recall? And we
did make so many! For there were countless numbers
of stars: each time we looked above we were
astounded by the swiftness of their daring play,
while in our hearts we felt safe and secure
watching these brilliant bodies disintegrate,
knowing somehow we had survived their fall.

~Ranier Maria Rilke

He liked the style of the Yeats, Cloths of Heaven canvas and had the idea of hills in the foreground.... of course I was happy oblige! 

I hadn't come across Rilke before, but having looked him up, it seems I've been living in a cave! His quotes have been used in tv, films & self-help books.... In the US he is one of the best selling poets along with Kahlil Gibrahn & Rumi... not sure about in the UK tho'.

The Poetry Foundation begins a quite extensive biography with these words, 

Widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets, Rainer Maria Rilke was unique in his efforts to expand the realm of poetry through new uses of syntax and imagery and in the philosophy that his poems explored. With regard to the former, W. H. Audendeclared in New Republic,"Rilke's most immediate and obvious influence has been upon diction and imagery." Rilke expressed ideas with "physical rather than intellectual symbols. While Shakespeare, for example, thought of the non-human world in terms of the human, Rilke thinks of the human in terms of the non-human, of what he calls Things (Dinge)." Besides this technique, the other important aspect of Rilke's writings was the evolution of his philosophy, which reached a climax in Duineser Elegien ( Duino Elegies ) and Die Sonette an Orpheus (Sonnets to Orpheus). Rejecting the Catholic beliefs of his parents as well as Christianity in general, the poet strove throughout his life to reconcile beauty and suffering, life and death, into one philosophy. As C. M. Bowra observed in Rainer Maria Rilke: Aspects of His Mind and Poetry, "Where others have found a unifying principle for themselves in religion or morality or the search for truth, Rilke found his in the search for impressions and the hope these could be turned into poetry...For him Art was what mattered most in life." 

 Rainier Maria Rilke 1875-1926

Some Rainier Maria Rilke quotes:

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.” ―  Letters to a Young Poet 


“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” 

“Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don't know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better.” 
―Letters to a Young Poet


“Extinguish my eyes, I'll go on seeing you.
Seal my ears, I'll go on hearing you.
And without feet I can make my way to you,
without a mouth I can swear your name.

Break off my arms, I'll take hold of you
with my heart as with a hand.
Stop my heart, and my brain will start to beat.
And if you consume my brain with fire,
I'll feel you burn in every drop of my blood.” 


“Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. 

This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose...

 Many more quotes here

Apologies for the stripey backgrounds to some of the text. For some reason everything I copy & paste includes the background colour & I can't get an exact match to the background of my blog no matter how much I fiddle around!

Burial Prayer

When I first came across this poem, years ago, it was credited as being an Old Indian Burial Prayer. The words are beautiful, speaking of life continuing in the spirit of nature. I think this may have been one of the first things that nudged me to consciously consider what might happen beyond physical death. The poem is so comforting... uplifting.... it's the one I went to straight away when my Mum died,  along with countless others who have chosen it to be read at funeral services! 

After I wrote it on a canvas recently, I realised that I had a couple of different versions scribbled in my notebooks, so went online to check the wording. That's when I found that the Burial Prayer is a poem written by Mary Elizabeth Frye in 1932, in response to a Jewish friend saying that she couldn't return home to shed a tear at her mother's grave, due to the situation developing in Germany. It's hardly surprising that it's chosen so often for a funeral eulogy.

Do not stand at my grave and weep,

I am not there; I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow,

I am the diamond glints on snow,

I am the sunlight on ripened grain,

I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the morning’s hush

I am the swift uplifting rush

Of quiet birds in circled flight.

I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry,

I am not there; I did not die.

Mary Elizabeth Frye

A request for something bright & uplifting inspired these versions, one on paper & one on canvas. The second one works fine as a print... just need to get a card version done now!

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Whether on canvas or to frame, this poem is one I regularly get requests for. Not everyone likes the dark, midnight blue background though.... I reversed the colour scheme a while back, when someone made a request for something lighter...

10 x 14 x 1.75 inches on stretched canvas

 A layer of diamonds are scattered, to echo the idea of stars spread across the heavens 

& dreams being spread underfoot...

a mixture of blues, greys & nearly black form "the blue and the dim and the dark cloths 

Of night and light and the half light"...

 available to purchase here

One idea leads to another... often to be painted over but sometimes they just work...

Gold and silver powder dropped into wet acrylic gives some random sparkliness

providing the "gold and silver light". The paint acts as a binder 

& fixes the powder to the canvas, but I also add varnish later.

I'm quite happy to add a short message when people ask, sometimes just names & a date,

sometimes something a little more personal!

Remembering My Mother ~ Poem

A little while ago, these canvasses were heading in a slightly different direction, 

but as always, they eventually told me the way to go... 

once i stopped thinking so much and tuned in to who they were for... 

the Mom being remembered...

in my mind were the colours of the white shores of Hawaii...
i printed some photos for colour inspiration...
don't you just love how the colours on the print have run & merged together? 

They are to form the background for the poem

 "Remembering My Mother" by Belinda Stotler...

just trying different ways to emphasise the last verse...

& then doing something totally different!

Actually it combines both ideas & I could see from the roughs where I needed to be.

Even when a death is not unexpected, it can still be incredibly hard for those left behind,

but this poem gave a little comfort through it's words...

Their Mom & Dad used to spend time together in Hawaii... 

on 'those white shores across the sea'...

There are many layers of colour & texture in these, giving plenty of depth in the background,

also the blue line of acrylic & the white splashes are raised adding even more...

two canvasses the same, or at least very similar.... 

one for my customer & one for her sister

Remembering My Mother

by Belinda Stotler

My Mother seems so far away from me,

On that beautiful white shore across the sea.

Yet I remember love’s soft glow upon her face,

And the feel of her touch and tender embrace.

When I am weary from the burdens I’ve borne,

And the path is unclear and I feel so forlorn,

I remember her loving support was always near,

And her advice made the path ahead seem clear.

When I feel there is no one who seems to care,

Or when the heartache seems too hard to bear,

I remember how she always stood by my side,

And would tenderly wipe away the tears I cried.

When there are moments of great joy and pride,

And I wish my Mother was standing at my side,

I remember she saw more than I thought I could be,

And know I owe my triumphs to her belief in me.

When I reminisce about the things she used to say, 

And I miss her and think she is so far away,

I remember what she gave lives on through me,

And one day I’ll see her on the shore across the sea.

Cloths of Heaven

 Canvas size: 10 x 12 x 1.75 inches / 25 x 30 x 3 cm

The Cloths of Heaven by WB Yeats

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams

available to purchase in here the shop

I've used gold gouache for the lettering with splashes of gold & silver powder & paint. Aluminium leaf, 22ct gold leaf, & metal leaf form a textural strip of 'cloth'. The layered dark blues form a midnight blue backdrop.

Because I love....

I recently discovered the 'Poetsy' team on etsy... so now i take an occasional diversion creating a treasury based on a favourite poem. (not that i need any more diversions, but it's fun!). This one is based on the Kathleen Raine poem, Amo Ergo Sum. I hope you can see the connection between the  words & work shown... you can see the treasury in full <here>



Because I love
      The sun pours out its rays of living gold
      Pours out its gold and silver on the sea.

Because I love
      The earth upon her astral spindle winds
      Her ecstasy-producing dance.

Because I love
      Clouds travel on the winds through wide skies,
      Skies wide and beautiful, blue and deep.

Because I love
      Wind blows white sails,
      The wind blows over flowers, the sweet wind blows.

Because I love
      The ferns grow green, and green the grass, and green
      The transparent sunlit trees.

Because I love
      Larks rise up from the grass
      And all the leaves are full of singing birds.

Because I love
      The summer air quivers with a thousand wings,
      Myriads of jewelled eyes burn in the light.

Because I love
      The iridescnt shells upon the sand
      Takes forms as fine and intricate as thought.

Because I love
      There is an invisible way across the sky,
      Birds travel by that way, the sun and moon
      And all the stars travel that path by night.

Because I love
      There is a river flowing all night long.

Because I love
      All night the river flows into my sleep,
      Ten thousand living things are sleeping in my arms,
      And sleeping wake, and flowing are at rest.