2024 Death and packing and selling and painting

Hand printing the service sheet for my own mothers funeral, and hand making 100’s of paper flowers to dress her coffin was a potent kick-start to a hugely creative UK summer 2024.

With 6 months untill we moved permanently to the southern hemisphere, 2024 was going to be a big summer anyway. The personal events of April gave me a kind of super power that meant i flew through the rest of my year in a whirlwind of back to back mural projects and a vastly successful studio clear-out sale. All intertwined with rainy days of packing and labelling and listing my worldly possesions in order for them to be shipped to NZ. It was a dynamic time, i even also swam long long distances in open water. My time in Glastonbury was finite and that really enhanced the importance of some things, and the irrelevance of most of the rest.

So now i’m writing this from the peace and quiet of my new home in New Plymouth, Taranaki, NZ. It has all been so surreal and amazing and happy and sad and ALL of the things.

There has not been a seconds rest since April. I have only just sat down at my laptop and starting looking at photos from the 4 murals i painted this year.

They were all amazing and i just floated through it all trusting in my processes and here they are:

Private commission in a back garden in Glastonbury. Thanks to Deb and Chris for this ladder-less wall and gorgeous lilly brief.

School commission at St Bonapartes Primary in Bristol. thanks to the PTA for the commission and for bearing with me throughout the design process, to Alex the building manager for making my week there very welcoming and to Ashtanga Bristol for the peaceful mornings i managed to fit in before full days of painting.

Public commission at the end of my road and at the top of Glastonbury High St. Thanks to the never ending community efforts of Kim VonCoels via the Glastonbury Mural Trail, and thanks to Xia Rose, an up and coming Glasto creative who offered her skills for free. Overwhelmed with honour for this one. And.. it’s PINK!

Private commission at Vobster Quay inland diving and swimming centre, Mells, Somerset. Thanks to Amy for being so enthusiastic and accommodating throughout the entire project, Xia Rose again for the assistance and for Alex Clinkard, she’ll never read this, but her companionship throughout this whole year, swimming endless laps for hours and hours around this vast body of dark open water has been utterly invaluable this summer. could not have got through it without all the swimming.

Leaving Glastonbury “properly” this time meant not leaving anything behind. This was my chance to sort through EVERYTHING i’d ever made and cleanse alot of the folders and the drawers and process it all. I managed to arrange a fantastic 2 day sale during which i exhibited 20 years of printmaking work, most of which had never been exhibited. I sold it all cheap, and i sold alot of it. i sold about 60% of my stuff and generated about 5x as much cash as i’d anticipated.

It was all a whirlwind. i was extremely present and also i kept a distance. I had my feet and my heart firmly rooted in Glasto and at the same time was floating and holding my breath just to get it all packed and to get on the plane . A process i am very gratefull for. But not one i want to do ever again.

Glastonbury Town Hall

I was approached almost a year ago by a member of Glastonbury Town Council to design a mural to camouflage a big wall of soundproofing panels that had been installed in the main hall of the Glastonbury Town Hall and was seriously lacking in visual appeal.

Glastonbury is a very eclectic place and the community holds such a wide spectrum of people that i wasn’t too excited about having to design something that represented the whole town past and future, and would have to be approved by a group of people with vastly different taste.

photo by Vicki Steward of www.normalforglastonbury.co.uk

Fresh from my painting success in NZ where i’d learnt valuable skills in simply not taking on any projects that made me stressed whatsoever, i took the project very lightly and focussed intently on the part of the brief that asked me to match the colours of the curtains, rather than illustrate the spiritual and historical depth of the town and its people.

The curtains were peacock blue..

can you see the peacocks in my repeat design? This is the mock design that made it through 4 council meetings and 1 public vote. none of which i participated in. keeping stress minimum.

So i started on Decemeber 28th and here we are on January 21st “unveiling” the mural. it was spacious and welcoming and warm in the hall and i loved watching how the different parts of the Glastonbury community used the space.

This and all of the cycling and running i’ve been doing outside has absolutely without any doubt got me through this most brutal of British winters.

I feel honoured to have had the chance to do this and i hope this mural lives on and on inside this building, along with my reputation as a solid creative member of the Glastonbury community.

Warm kitchen, warm heart, cold fingers

Recently completed interior commission in a lovely converted farmhouse just outside Glastonbury.

A totally lovely and easy project from start to finish, working for an old college friend of mine who since we went to D+B raves in 2001 has come full-circle as a business man, back to his homeland with his family. Lovely .

The British winter decided to fall like a big grey blanket over the entire countryside on the first day of the painting and so my bike commute was seriously impacted and i definitely didn’t have the right gloves!

Every moment spent inside this kitchen standing on the heated concrete floor was 100% better than any minute of the bike commute across the frozen fog. And the end result, after 5 days of work was suprisingly good as i’m not used to working in these colours and i didnt feel that confident about it to begin with.

Lotus corner

Lovely lotus flower mural completed in Glastonbury town June 2022.

Half private commission and half publicly funded by The Glastonbury Mural Trail, as it is on a public footpath, this project was just such a joy to paint. The 1970’s rough pebbledash didnt break my heart or my brushes i somehow just really felt into the challenge and worked hard to get the mural completed in time to spend as much time on the Glastonbury Festival site as possible. ( before the crowds came).

Thanks so much to the community of Manor House Rd Glastonbury, Adam and Laskshmi for their ideas and support and to Glastonbury Town Council for making projects like this a possibility in our town now!

Tor Cottage renovation.

This is a little trip down mural memory lane. Here is me in a way-too familiar photo taken in July 2009 , painting the original Hibiscus and morning glory flowers on Tor Cottage , Wellhouse lane, Glastonbury.

Here i am below in photo taken in May 2015, in the first re-fix of the mural when some cracks formed in the wall of the house and i was called to repaint the flowers where new render had been applied.

And here we are in 2022, this time with scaffolding!(much safer than that photo taken in 2015 !).

The home owner was repainting the whole of his house, window frames and all, and so was the perfect opportunity for me to give the flowers a fresh coat. This time i used Thorndown paint which is manufactured locally and despite the label stating that it is wood paint, it works fantastically as a masonry paint and even bonded very well with this lime render.

Revisiting past projects, through photos, through memories, or like this through actually re painting something really draws attention to the journey of life. My mural journey has come on gradually and modestly for 12 years now and i’m happy that i’ve found a place where i don’t have to prove to anyone how fast, or clean, or effective my work is by busting my ass on every project, because i know it is. Taking my time with my brushes, taking it easy on myself with an many tea breaks or days off for parenting or exercise as necessary is totally cool and it doesn’t get the jobs done any slower.

Learning technical skills is one thing, learning how to make your skills sustainably relate to your life is another. Super grateful for all of my years of experience.

And super grateful to have been able to repaint this as a touching down project in my old/new life after 2.5 years in NewZealand. What a trip

ART SALE! everything must go.

moving back overseas. gulp. selling off everything and it actualy feels like a really positive thing!

Getting motivated to display and attempt to sell and promote art is so hard as its ALOT of work ontop of making the actual artwork BUT its amazing how motivational a flight is!

Obviously i’m going to miss this place, this yard, the beach, the weather. come over and say goodbye on Sat 19th Feb!! xxx