Little cottage room made good

 

For the first time since moving into the cottage over ten years ago, I have a functioning front room. There are many reasons why it has remained a 'zombie' room, mostly due to my being overwhelmed by the sheer muddle of it all (one of the many symptoms of my ADHD) and needing to get the wood burner swept. It has only been briefly lit once, when Andy was alive and has been unused ever since.

However, with a very small electric budget and the ongoing issue of rising bills, I decided to leave my upstairs studio storage heater off this winter, with the result that I've been unable to work in there without catching a chill (even with several layers of clothing and a dressing gown on top). And I can't afford not to work.

So last month I used some Christmas money to get the sweep in. He declared the fire fit for purpose and Brian-next-door helped me put a rudimentary curtain rail over the open doorway, to block the cold upstairs air off. I finally got this neglected space sorted out; I now have dedicated painting and printing space, and a place where I can work in the warm with the fire going. 

It's made a huge difference, as I can pick things up and put them down without losing sight of them, as happened with the other space, where my work table had several roles, and had to be cleared for each one.  Life is slowly starting to make sense and ideas are beginning to return. Little bits of my brain, the ones that dreamed of silly, whimsical things, are waking up again and the results are finding their way onto paper.

My aim is to expand what I do, on top of needle felting and bring in enough extra money to cover the mortgage and be able to stay here. It's been a long struggle to maintain things and at times hasn't seemed worth it, without Andy to share it with.

My drive to be an artist and to earn a living creating has seen me through tougher times than this. As a young person in the care system, trying to fend for myself, my ambition to be an artist saved me from many pitfalls; nothing else mattered apart from that one thing that drove me forward and to make a better life for myself. In retrospect, I'm amazed I achieved what I did, especially now I know I had undiagnosed ADHD on top of everything else. 

If I'd known how long and hard my journey would be, I might have given up, but I didn't, so I'm not about to throw the towel in now, not without a final effort. I owe it to my younger self.

(The ceramic cat in front of the fire is one I made when I was a 20 year old art student and it looks totally at home underneath the warmth). 

Playing with horses

Now that Christmas and January are out of the way for a while, I’m back into a normal work pattern. I’ve been trying to set aside at least one day for playing around with ideas just for the sake of it. Needle felting is very much my ‘day job’ and my only other form of income, apart from my Patreon page, therefore any time spent being randomly creative is a luxury. So last weekend I set my needles aside and riffled through my everyday sketch book, to find a sketch I could work up and colourise. 

This sketch and the larger pastel piece are based on some little textile figures I created a hundred years ago. They form part of an internal world I’ve built up over time and I think of them as ‘the Walkers’ who travel silently and ominously through my imaginary lands (though sometimes I fancy I sense them creeping behind the field hedge at dusk). 

The next morning, I began setting up a scene for a painting I have in mind. I found a small fish motif in another sketch book and cut it out to make a pond.

Then, in need of a night sky, I roughly coloured up half of the backdrop…

…and made each Walker a fish amulet, using some lovely buttons. Worship the Fish! 

All of this is based around another roughly sketched idea, hastily scribbled down before it could escape. 

I took a final shot and edited it to produce the kind of lighting effect I will be aiming for, when I come to do the actual artwork. But playtime is over for a while, so the Walkers sleep until another day.

Another studio make over

So the time came when my studio needed a serious make over. It's been a bit of a tidy pickle for the last three years, and there were so many things on the floor that there wasn't enough room for my big feet to move around without stubbing a  toe. Or even work properly.

And this area was particularly confused. I seem to remember that I just shoved a few bits of spare furniture up so that I could unpack some favorite books and it became a bit of a dumping ground. So the mammoth task of sorting out began.

The key to the entire operation was this lovely old (apparently Georgian) bookcase that Joe bought me well over a year ago, for the studio and which had become another dumping ground downstairs. 

We shifted the old futon out and I began reorganising my books. And stuff. 

The first day was complete carnage. 

But by the second day it began to take take shape. And I found I had masses of floor space!

 

 

 

 

I'm still not sure how I found the energy to blitz it into shape in 48 hours, but I now know where everything is. This is the only area which remained untouched. 

The old fireplace (sadly blocked up by the previous tenants) has been set aside for a printing area. The next task is to renovate my poor old flat bed press.

So I did finally get round to finishing a batch of small paintings and yesterday I reopened my very first Etsy shop which I've had since 2007 and listed them all at £35 (about $45) each. I was amazed to sell two paintings overnight. and somewhat relieved. 

Little house artworks at 'Lost Arcadia'

So here I am in yet another studio, painting again and enjoying my books. It's nice but odd, just another layer of things coming around, the same but different. And a little fragile. Like my tiny houses.