Teapot & Spoon

Bid for this painting on Ebay!

Before we went climbing this morning I painted this little study. I'm really pleased with the cloth underneath the teapot - I've been thinking about using a Gustave Klimt-style decorative theme for the background of the large Tea Party painting. I happened upon the idea of using floral fabric when I was sketching a mock 'tea party' out on the deck a couple of days ago. By lucky chance I was drying our floral comforter on the washing line, and so it provided a natural backdrop for the compostion. I found this pink fabric in a cupboard whilst I was hunting for still life ideas - it was a curtain from my precious Matilda (the'76 Dodge Camper we travelled for 18 months or so in)

The spoon is deliberately large, and is a referance to the Mad Hatter's Tea Party in Alice in Wonderland. I'm going to play with the scale of things in the painting, partly out of the Wonderland influence, and partly because this painting will be about being young and everything seeming bigger than you. After all, little girl's tea parties are about pretending to be a grown up - mixing sloppy mud in a cup instead of tea, and wearing mum's big shoes and makeup.

Climbing at the Momma Cat Boulder

Taylor & I went out to the Momma Cat Boulder in Woodfords today, and as I'm still not well enough to climb, I sketched Taylor while he pulled down on familiar problems. It was bright and sunny, and a real pleasure to be outside.

What was also brilliant, was that a family was there, climbing, and we got chatting to them. Later, as I was sketching Taylor, the lady, Norah popped her head around the corner of the boulder, "were you on the radio the other day?" Yes! somebody heard it! Anyway, it turns out they'd been wanting to go climbing for ages and hearing me talking about climbing on the radio spurred them on to go out - and it was their son's first time climbing! I was so pleased that I had that effect on them, I'm still grinning! Nice to meet you Norah, Alexander and Houston (with the cool bob hat)