After our trip to the Discerning Eye ‘Private View’
we had supper at Bill’s in Covent Garden:
Christine, Sally and Peter,
plus Megan,
Kate and Phil.
I had fish pie
and because I wasn’t driving…
…
On Friday, Peter, Jack and I called off at Dulwich Village, where I’d once lived with my Aunt Amy and her husband J.L. Manning and my cousin Katy. We walked around the park, so beautiful at this time of year. As a boy I’d walked there most weekends in term-time, with Katy’s Yorkshire terrier, Bobby.
On Saturday Peter had to remain in Cardiff for a conference at the National Museum of Wales, where he’s Director of Collections and Research. I headed for home, calling off en route at the Art Shop Gallery in Abergavenny
to see the beautiful exhibition of puppets and paintings
by my friend Philippa Robbins.
Philippa produced her first puppets earlier this year for the Artlog Puppet Challenge
and has quickly become most expert and inventive in making them.
All her ‘puppet portrait’ paintings… made on newspaper… are beautiful
but I particularly love this one of her ‘Frida Kahlo’ glove-puppet.
From Abergavenny I began the long drive home to Ty Isaf. But I cannot pass Tretower without my heart nearly stopping for love of the place. I approached by the route I always followed when I worked there for seven years as the relief custodian, because it reveals the castle at its most lovely. Winding its way across the valley, the lane crosses a stream, and then, quite suddenly from around a bend, this appears.
Tretower was where I came to rest and heal, and where my work as a painter began.
…
…
Clive Hicks-Jenkins' Artlog: 
Oh, the cold little hut, the birds tweeting, swooping and you rescuing some.
A magical place, I’m so glad to see it again, remembering younger days with affection and do I remember a certain aroma, was it the herbs?
Love as ever
B xxx
What a wonderful post, happy/sad , evocative. Have to say what I’ve said before, you should write about your life, the full story. It would make a fascinating book. You have the ability!
Xx
You packed an awful lot in to your few days away. And congratulations! Your work in the Discerning Eye looks very good, and I’m glad to hear that it was so well attended.
Dear mr. Clive,
I want to congratulate you again with your award recently 🙂 but…. Seeing your work hung up like this made me a bit sad. It is nice, sometimes, to see a lot of work from the same master in one room or on one wall. And this wall would not be less decorated than the walls of the Hermitage, I think. But what a shame to hang it up like this. Very difficult to say it via email, would be much better in a face to face discussion and at best at the gallery itself. I am sure they did a splendid job in organising. But i thought it would be better to mix up the colours, like a tableau and place them al in a rectangual square, sometimes with a little space between the works because the frames are obviously uneven, but this way you would create a sort of ease in the variety of works and mixing up the works would make the wall more in balance. Hope I don’t offend you, but had to say this. Enjoy your weekend and get some rest.
Kindly,
Mathijs
Dear Mathijs, thank you for your good wishes and comments.
I don’t enter big, open submission exhibitions. But in this instance, the selector Simon Martin invited me to be in his part of the exhibition, and that was quite an honour.
I knew from the start that it would be a ‘salon’ hang, with the work of over three hundred artists on show at the Mall Galleries. This is one of the big exhibitions that everyone wants to be in. And yes, the work is crammed in, which is not the way I show in my solo exhibitions. Nevertheless it was lovely to be asked, and even better to win a prize among so many.
Although it is quite hard to see works of art properly when there are so many vying for attention, I thought there were some wonderful paintings, drawings and prints on view. I would have happily had a car-boot load of them to take away with me, had I been buying. (-;
It’s lovely to see you enjoying life with family and friends. I have been thinking of you a lot the last few days, and I am glad it’s because you are happy!
Your works really catch the eye amongst the profusion of others’. (I didn’t comment on the last post, so I am saying it here instead, congratulations on the award)
Philppa’s exhibition looks fascinating, I wish I could see it, I so enjoyed her 2013 exhibition.
Lastly, I love those paintings of Tretower, one can see how important it was to your healing and development as a painter, a symbol of triumph over adversity.xxL
Beautiful. I hope you take the time to write your memories ( memoirs ? ) at length. And with all these photos and drawings. I am sure it would earn you another new prize as a non fiction writer.
Is there anything you are bad at?
Thank you again, for sharing.
María
Ha ha! Maria, there is much that I’m not good at, but I like it that you think there’s nothing I can’t do. (I fear I’d be a terrible disappointment to you in person!)
Not sure about the memoir. I think I probably wrote quite enough in the last chapter of the monograph. It was, after all, the longest chapter in the book, something that Peter frequently reminds me of when he thinks I’m being verbose. But I thank you for the vote of confidence. I do enjoy writing, which probably indicates I am not a writer!
Hope that all is well in your world, and that you enjoy the rest of the weekend.
Oh, but No!
I am sure you DO enjoy painting, and the enjoyment does not mean you are not a painter.
And besides, quite a few of my favourite writers of all time loved to write, and re-write, and the writing was like a cure-all remedy for them. (It did not make their bodies eternal; they died at the end, but it did make their words immortal.)
So there…
By the way : I know you are good at singing, at dancing, at gardening, at design… I hope you are an awful cook. Otherwise , as we say in Spain, It would be
“Demasié”
I don’t know quite how to break the news to you, but I’m a pretty good cook! (-;
Maria, I am suitably chastised. I do love painting, and so you clearly have the last word there. I know when I am beaten! (-;
Demasié !!!
He is definitely a good cook and spoils the visitors! (Clive, so enjoyed going along on the journey here…)