Another Day's Downspout

Nowadays I'm only working fairly irregularly...but this past week I did three days on the trot, teaching on the Painting & Drawing degree at the University of Northampton.  For the past four years I have been the External Examiner there and as I knew the course well one of the staff, David Parker, invited me to cover for him whilst he was on research leave.  It was thoroughly enjoyable and I'd love to have something like it on an occasional basis.  Walking to the studios this downspout caught my eye, it could have made an interesting subject for one of the students maybe...

The Old Chapel

We moved into the Old Chapel (called so as there is a newer Methodist Chapel on the High Street) in the latter part of the 1980's.  At that time we were four in number (though number five in the family was to arrive not long after the move).  We acquired it through sheer luck...a casual conversation of my wife's with the owner at the time ...who revealed that she wished for an artist to take it on.  She thought I might know one who would like it!  It was, in retrospect a fairly crazy undertaking as the condition of the building was fairly horrific.  Over the years we kind of learned to live with it though we did do some remedial work to alleviate the most trying aspects.  What it did provide was a marvellous open space, pretty much untouched architecturally, that has made over the years a wonderful studio and ad hoc living space...as nowadays the rabbits Barry & Chloe now live in the space behind the canvases in the picture above...

End of an Era?

Back in Verpiana.  The house around the corner with the window and it's random accretions of items to cover it up as the car headlights pass across has been removed and replaced with a double glazed unit.  Behind this is a proper blind.  I guess there's been a change of ownership and a 'modernisation' that seems all too familiar in contemporary rural Italy.  So I suspect there will be no more 'Wentworth' style ad hoc assemblages.  Though I swear I didn't put the bottle of water there!

Harrington Mill

We took a space each (my wife Sarah & I) at Harrington Mill Studios following a chance introduction by our friend David Ainley to Jackie Berridge.  She and her husband Jem were still building the partition walls when we visited back in 2007 but we immediately saw the potential for them as a great space for us to expand our working practice as artists.  A year or so in and I moved down the complex to a larger space and here's a shot of our Open Studio event from later in that year.

Another Downspout

Of recent months I've been preoccupied with other activities, exhibitions, book projects, family affairs and so on...but the other morning I had to park a fair distance from my studio - in an industrial part of Long Eaton and spotted this one...ruptured as I passed by...