Saturday

A day of rain was forecast for the east side of the country although ours came at the beginning of the day and towards teatime. In the meantime it was grey, chilly and damp, all this had the effect of keeping visitor numbers low at Burton Agnes Hall. However, we did have some twenty or so visitors pop their heads into the summer house, in spite of us keeping the door closed to try and keep warm. We had some very interesting conversations with most of them. Few of them actually did paint but some did have other creative hobbies and a number of them were regular collectors of art. Of course, they came from many parts of Yorkshire and further afield; often calling into Burton Agnes enroute to somewhere or coming from somewhere else.

I have often found that socialising can be quite an exciting and stimulating experience but also quite tiring. By the end of the day my mind was buzzing and I was quite 'popped' up but in spite of being tired I had difficulty getting to sleep, hearing the church clock chime at every hour. Somewhere around 2am I did fall asleep but awoke before 6am, a regular summertime waking time.

I did expect to have aching shoulders for I have been painting quite a lot; standing and stooping at not a very high table. I am very pleased with my discipline as I came with a list of things I wanted to do e.g. Paint every day on wooden panels in a small series , paint on a canvas roll, colour mixing, mark making etc. I may not have done all each day but when I can I have painted. It felt good to have that framework rather than arriving each morning and thinking what shall I do today.

I am not taking any of this work seriously, they are just play boards, a way of getting paint onto a surface. I have no expectations of making 10 masterpieces and most of my boards appear like the above after a day of painting. After a couple of passes /layers on the above board I kept seeing a face like shape. It was the end of the day so I thought what the heck let's have some fun . So with one or two tweaks a face emerged. I quite liked it in a quirky way so I think I will live with it for a while!