A time-travelling artist's date

I do like a spot of time travel in my lunch break. And what better way to remove oneself from the tedium of modern transmission than a stroll through the centuries.

Following the winding cobbles down this street, the years peel back as you pass every quaint house and the noise of traffic thundering through Warwick fades. In fact, if you listen not terribly carefully you can actual capture the sound of a jousting contest floating to you from the other side of the river (and that's not actually a flight of fancy, I really could hear one!).

Coming from here... the view at the bottom of the road.

For the uninitiated, an 'Artist Date' is an hour or so a week where you take yourself off to soak up creative inspiration; to 'fill the well'. It's all part of a 'creative finding of yourself course' I'm taking through Julia Cameron's book. Regrettably, I'm a little over-committed at the moment - there's only so much of myself I can handle finding at one go - so I have stuck on Chapter 1 but with a definite ambition to move further once a few of my other creative projects have taken flight. I will however, endeavour to keep up my weekly date. This was actually last week, it's just taken me a while to post. This week was spent in HobbyCraft and cost me a King's ransom. No photos there but hopefully some creative output!

And so, where did this first date take me? Did we wander romantic battlements or lurk in haunted dungeons. Actually none of these, for the castle was merely decorative backdrop to a wander around a quintessential English country garden in a setting of such beauty as to send any pre-Raphaelite painter into a frenzy of oil and canvas.

Imagine what trysts and assignations were carried out in the shadow of this bridge. Did you ever see anything quite so romantic? And how kind of that swan to just glide by at the precise moment I chose to click my shutter. Then, dear readers, if you've not swooned enough over ruined bridges, how about diving in, all guns blazing into this riot of colour!

... all the more dramatic when you spend a patient time in Photoshop

I feel quite wistful composing this posting. Tomorrow I return to work after an absence of a week nursing a minor illness. I feel the garden calling me again. I want to envelop myself in the soft scents and drink in the magical elixir of colour and then stand, bankside and dream of ghostly knights in shining armour galloping over long-gone bridges fresh from slaying evil demons and back to claim the fair lady's hand. This lady of course would have been busy in his heroic absence saving the castle from the torment and starvation of a lengthy siege. By her wit alone, was she able to defeat.... Yeah, yeah, another time perhaps.....

And was the date with my creative muse a success? Is my well over-brimming? Well, actually YES, IT WORKED! Tune in later this week to see the output of what happened when I immersed myself in a magic garden and mixed it with an ear infection!

Season of mist

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Spider webs are carefully spun;

Laden with conkers and acorns we bless

With fruit the vines that provide such fun;

To crunch the fall among the golden trees

And fill the heart with pleasure to the core;

To carry pumpkin, rich with earthy smell

becoming sweet soup; we all desire more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees

Until they think warm days will never cease

For Summer's songs will always tell

Lisa Wright (with a little quite a bit of help from a certain Mr John Keats)

This morning was beautifully autumnal. I admit no mist, but that special crispness in the air alight with sparkling colour and charm. It was wonderful to be out soaking it all in, feet sniffing through the leaves looking for conkers, wiping the sticky webs out of your face and dusting the very same web-makers from your hair. I felt most lyrical upon my return, so poor Mr Keats was subjected to a little 'tampering'. He's probably turning in his grave poor fellow.

I've realised that early Autumn really is a special time of year that is too soon forgotten. Today reminded me of how September hangs onto Summer's beauty - rich and ripe before October's damp and the icy claws of November reach out and drag away all the colour and warmth. I so love the crunch of dried leaves underfoot and watching them swirl down around me dancing in the muted light. If you're not familiar with the (unmessed with) version of Keats' Ode to Autumn, you should google it. A stunningly evocative piece of poetry.

I feel the need to paint acorns now and partake a little of the fruit of the vine... (though reading this, you'd be forgiven for thinking I'd already enjoyed a little Bacchus nectar!

Of airy tongues...

Of calling shapes, and beck'ning shadows dire,
And airy tongues that syllable men's names.
John Milton

Yesterday's post proclaimed loudly that I still feel Summer's gentle touch, yet today I am thinking Halloween...

Well, I blame my friends across the pond where clearly this celebration is a much bigger deal than here in the UK, when if we want to get scared, we just look at our politicians! I'm amazed yet also intrigued to see Halloween countdowns abounding on blogs and a whole host of parties to join. Naturally, never being one to turn down an invitation, I am getting my pointy hat ready for one such fanciful twisting of a do.

Today's ghoulish thoughts come courtesy of Theme Thursday and their apple bobbing, pumpkin carving, things-that-go-bang-in-the-night challenge.

A little ATC triptych to tickle your taste buds ahead of the season of spookiness...

Mixed media: acrylics & collage (click to enlarge)

Mwwaaahhaaaaaaahhhhhhh

A schmakerel more mackerel

Well, I started getting all lyrical and decided to rewrite my descriptive prose to go with my Cornish postcard below, but then left it too late to publish before nice folk started commenting. So, might as well make another post. Why not eh? Three in one day is a bit of a first (or, should that be a third? Just get on with it girl...)

It may be September and the mornings already heralding Autumn's chill fingers, but I still feel summer in my heart and bear her honey tones on my skin.

So, I'm sending myself this postcard as a reminder of racing across sandy beaches and tasting the salty tang of sea in nature's fishy harvest.

As the leggy supermodels cry out to be photographed in the season's latest hues, so do the shiny scales of mackerel dare you to attempt to get a grip on their shine in paint. Twice captured - by line and then cast onto canvas and immortalised. A taste of holiday, a feast for the senses.

A mackerel sky

This is cheating a bit. You see, on Sunday I spotted Sunday Postcard art's challenge of fish. So, the old cogs got going and I saw in my mind a Cornish beach postcard with some typical Cornish fish. Then I just didn't get around to painting. Today, Inspiration Avenue invited me to re-visit my summer - which to me meant Cornish beaches and delicious food.

I also had the most incredible urge to paint today. So, a couple of mackerel swam from their acrylic tube hideaways onto the page bursting with Omega 3 and other nutrients! Then they swam onto the beach and were not happy fishes. They looked... well they looked like a fish out of water! Until, staring at the cloud-scudded sky finally the penny dropped. A mackerel sky looked back at me and a mackeral sky it became.

Summer & fish. What an intriguing combination! Just goes to show that inspiration can arrive and slap you round the face like a wet fish when you least expect it!

Feeling strange now. Think it must be these tablets I'm on.... Perhaps I should lie down....

New beginnings...

What do you wish to begin? asks Jamie Ridler as it is indeed Wishcasting Wednesday once more.

Aside from wishing to begin feeling better as my head is still befuddled with dizzyness and feels full of rolling marbles, I know exactly what I wish to begin.

It begins with an 'e...' and ends with... ah what does it end with? The letters are easy but what does the future hold if I head down this path? For tis a most risky track to take where the fierce monsters all strangely known as 'bill' lurk hidden in packs in my enchanted forest. Yet the treasures that lie along the way seem to warrant such a perilous trek.

The next careful steps take us to the letters '..ntre...'. Sounds suspiciously like enter to me - is it beckoning me in do you think?

Have you guessed what it is yet. Shall we add the final 'preneur' to make the wish real. Yes, readers I want to be my own boss, a dabbler in a portfolio of projects from writing to soap-making from internal communications consultant to artist, teacher to troubadour (well maybe not the last one, but it sounded good!). I wish to create and above all I wish to create this new story in the life of Lisa because I think it will be good for her and she for it. Time to stop sitting around writing about it and actually get on and do...

(I used this photo a week or so ago, but it seems quite appropriate for this post - enticing colours for your first steps on the magical stairway to tomorrow...)

I'm so dizzy...

My head is spinning; like a whirlpool it never ends... la la la

Well, yes my diagnosis of yesterday was in fact correct. I do have an ear infection which in itself is not too debilitating. It's the side effect of feeling ten-sheets to the wind all the time that is causing the problem. I just walked into both edges of a doorway while trying to exit the kitchen. My head feels like it has gained 20 pounds in weight and memories of a mis-spent youth drinking too much cheap wine are spinning and gurgling back to the surface.

And curses, despite being signed off work and having a table full of art supplies calling to me, my head hurts too much to create. My memory has become a sieve and I keep having to retire to a darkened room.

It's all too much... Fetch me the smelling salts for I fear another attack of the vapours is upon me...