Aren't these fun? Dozens of little packages of colour! Each containing buttons, tags, brads, ribbon and, as they say, so much more!
I like to arrange the packages to try out different colour combinations and I must admit they really appeal to my tidy nature.
Distressed copper sheeting, a copper painted cross and a WWI era ha'penny provide the finishing touches. A companion piece to Angel of the Air, both will be part of my upcoming show The Pity of War, which opens April 8 at Cambria's Allied Arts Gallery.
I recently been re-reading this old favourite. One of the first of the ex-pat memoirs that have since flooded the book market. I think we all love to read these because there's a part of us - maybe down deep inside, or, not so deep - that hungers after the idea of leaving all behind and starting anew in a foreign clime. And, reading about others doing it often will feed the desire while we can remain safely at home! By the end of this story and the many others that followed it, Mayle's friends and neighbours are ours, we can feel the sun on our backs, smell the lavender, and taste the anise tang of the pastis as it glides slowly down our throats. A return trip to Provence is always a pleasure, well worth reading again.
The first day of Spring and we've been loving the profusion of bulbs at all the local farmer's markets. I can never decide if I love tulips best, or daffodils or iris. Or all three!
Baby lambs in the fields along Highway One. This one's for our daughter Bronwyn, who spins and weaves and wants to run a sheep farm someday.
The canvas was prepped with cheese cloth, pumice gel and gesso. I was going for four semi-horizontal layers representing the sea, sand, hills and sky. Craft acrylics in greens, cream, medium browns and light blues were used. Palm trees were added, and xerox copies of temporary graves and disembarking soldiers were adhered with matte medium.
The cheesecloth clouds were coloured in with cream glaze
with a touch of denim blue.
The soldier's epitaph furls across the sky and sand. The entire canvas was spattered with the palette of colours.
A small wooden cross, made of broken coffee stirrers and twine,
provides the finishing touch.
I have no idea what's going on with the font size, style and placement - but after 6 attempts to fix it, I've given up - I do apologize for the inconsistency.
What fun! This book goes way beyond altered books. Vases, placements, dresses, you name it - you can find out how to make it from used books in this delightful and well put-together volume.
DULCE ET DECORUM EST
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
I prepped the canvas with gesso, cheesecloth, and netting Acrylics in the colours of mud, smoke, and dead vegetation were splashed, spattered and dripped across the surface. Xerox copies of various WWI battles were coloured with water soluble oil pastels and adhered with matte medium.
Rusty bits and pieces of metal, old bullet casings, pieces of torn cloth, bits of brick and rock litter the canvas. As they littered the fields of Ypres, the Marne and Verdun, where men lay dying, with the echo of the guns overhead and "the old lie" whispered on the rising wind.
