This is no way to start the New Year

Today, the terrible scenes I have seen in Gaza can only be described as hell on earth as the enormous black plummes of smoke willowed upwards, it was nothing less than 9/11 visiting us all over again, as countess of bodies, mostly children laid lifeless on the streets and innocent people panicked not knowing where to run whilst Israel plummeted bomb after bomb over their heads, buildings literally cut in half. I ask, in what kind of world we are living when this is alowed to happen ? Why our government and the United States have kept mute whilst all this is going on ? No condemnation from our leaders ? when there has been widespread condemnation from ordinary people who have taken to the streets to protest ? There have been demostrations in London including by Jewish organizations in front of the Israeli Embassy, in Jordan, Venezuela, Iran, Iraq, Spain, Australia, Jakarta etc. The Jordanian people have even asked their king to severe ties with Israel, such has been the outrage felt all around the world.

The Israli state has only been founded 60 years ago, in the heart of Palestine and over its few years of existance, it has only created brutal and deadly confrontations with its neighbours like a cancer in the Middle East. The whole experiment, it is a failed experiment that cannot ever lead to permanent peace in the area but just chaos, death, brutality, aggression and more violence.

Happy New Year!

Not everything is doom and gloom, whilst there are a lot of businesses failing and going bankrupt, there are others who are having an unexpected sales boom. One of these, is the owner of the Istambul shoe company who produced the famous shoes which served as a missile to the Iraqi journalist Muntazar al-Zaidi who threw his shoes to President Bush. The shoe company who made his shoes, has been swamped with orders from across the world, so the owner of the company has had to hire 100 more workers to produce 300,000 extra shoe orders to meet the unexpected demand, model 271, which is four times more than their annual shoe sale. Orders have come mainly from the U.S. and Great Britain and from neighbouring Muslim countries. 120,000 pairs have been ordered from Iraq. A sharp rise in orders has been recorded in Syria, Egypt and Iran where the main shoe federation has offered to provide al-Zaidi and his family with a lifetime supply of shoes.Well, it is just a matter of time before someone produces a stilletto shoe, with a target seeking missile, to have the same sale phenomenom. Have a Happy New Year everyone !

Why do we eat turkey on the big day ?

Hi everyone, talking about quizzes and for a little bit of entertaining on these festive days, does anyone know why the turkey is eaten for Christmas ? When did the Christmas tree become popular ? Why is Christmas celebrated on the 25th of December ? Why are mince pies eaten at Christmas time ? Who is the real Father Christmas ? Any guesses anyone ?

To announce Douglas Baxter has joined the blog.

Hi Dougie ! Dear friend, it is great news to announce your coming to this blog. As the saying says... when one door shuts... 100 doors will open ! The way I have announced it, it is as though I am announcing the coming of the Messiah ! I am very happy to have you here and hear your unique points of view which are always vivid, funny and colourful. You were just too damn happy and carefree for that other unmentionable blasted site, where laughter was frawn upon and dissent was punishable with expulsion. Although in my particular case, it had to do with posting these flower pictures you see here. As soon as I got a compliment these, naturally had to go and quite suddenly afterwards Stephen Ryder announced that it would be Ripper related pictures even though as you quite rightly point out, there are non-Ripper related pictures before and after my flower pictures were deleted. Then I expressed the opinion that Ally had deleted them because she was jealous of the attention I was getting. Then Stephen Ryder wrote me a Private Message accusing me of liabelling his lover and told me he as closing my account for two weeks. I wrote him back a private message telling him where he could put his site and also his lover and it came as no surprise to me that shortly after that, my vanishment had been made permanent. Then I thought if I am in a stupid site where posting flowers at the behest of other is punishable with a two week expulsion, I really don't want to be there and open up a blog where I can publish all the pictures I want, plus talk about Art and life instead of murders the whole time. The reason why I stayed there was because from time to time they mention a distant relative of mine, Sir Bernard Spilsbury who was the precursor of Forensic Medicine. His discoveries about how you can tell the difference when a body found inside a swimming pool has been a drowning or whether the body had suffered an extrangulation its what makes the difference between a murder or an accident.

Cubism

Yes, indeed Cubism is considered the final liberation of painting from accepted traditional values. Its strange sense of space, which rejects any attempt to create an illusion of the real world and yes, several views of a single figure are combined in one image, that sort of thing. But I still fail to understand what you mean by " democratic " since art on the whole, is democratic in the sense that everyone can see it and appreciate it or hate it and unlike a book which needs to be translated if its written in Chinese, a painting has a direct message to the viewer.

Hi Robert, I have never seen Dr. Terrors House of Horrors. But all figurative paintings have an abstract element to them. In every painting you will discover either a circle, a rectangle, a cube, a pentagon or any other geometric figure to bring the picture together. That is called composition. For e.g. if you see here, as an experiment the first picture with half closed eyes, you will discover that I have use circles to depict the top of the trees, and are arranged in a triangle to bring the eyes, towards the middle of the picture. The mountains, in its simplest round shapes are also enclosing the sheep in the middle. Anyone who wants to attempt to do a painting, has to think in those basic abstract forms first, before anything else can be developed, it is, if you like, the skeleton of any painting.

Stephen Powell

There is another friend who wrote to me this morning and he has informed me that he is still busy preparing the draft for his book. I wish him well in his endevours.

Australian Surrealist painters

Victoria, one of my favourite Australian painters is Sir Sidney Nolan, I do not know if you know about The Ern Malley Hoax where two young writers James McAuley and Harold Stewart, believing much contemporary poetry valueless, mixed up a set of poems from arbitrarily selected quotations and references. They submitted these under the pseudonym of ' Erm Malley ' to the literary magazine: Angry Penguins, which published them with a cover by Sir Sidney Nolan. The hoaxers then confessed, but the poems were defended by many for their surreal imagery and suggestive powers.

Victoria thanks for the information and description about the painter Brett Whitely Baci and for your kind comments about my bucolic autumn scene with sheep, unfortunately the sheep in the foreground did not come out completely, as the picture was too big for this format. This painting in itself, its not too large, but it was too big for the scanner. So it was a matter of putting it with just the background or just the foreground, it is an awful compromise that has chopped up my original and complete composition. I gave this painting as a present to my aunt Dora and my aunt Norma liked it so much, that she asked me to paint the exact same scene for her living room too, so now there are two paintings of the same scene !

If someone is colour blind, they cannot see the mellow yellow colours in this painting. I devised this picture in a way that when the sun hits it, it literally glows all around the walls of the painting, it was a phenomenom that I still do not quite understand how I achieved this. One morning I came to work to my studio, and as I went up the stairs, I noticed this unusual mellow light bathing all the walls of the studio, as I arrived to see what it was, to my surprise, this painting upon being illuminated by the rays of the sun, it shone in a way that the mellow colours irradiated the light all around the pink walls as well. So I asked Peter to come up to see this, he could not believe it and neither could I. Now my aunt Dora has positioned her painting where the morning sun shines over it so that she can enjoy watching this mellow effect whilst she has her breakfast.

That is pretty irracional Robert, but I suppose in a panic situation it is possible not to think straight and some people can't quite have the presence of mind to realise the gravity of their predicament. Monty Python is too gruesome to find it remotely funny for me, but some people do find it funny.

Victoria, I tried to find Brett Whitely Baci and found just a quote in Italian, maybe there is more about him, I gather his paintings are on this surrealist vein we are talking about.

War, Religion and Art

Hi Robert,

That's so very funny ! My ribs are still moving up and down. Quite. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter for anyone who loses their legs if it was a " friendly " fire or not.
I didn't know you also had a surrealist humour !

"We would rather be ruled by our own people, even if we don't get much out of it " This is very true. Why would any country allow another one with a different language and culture to be dominated by another ? Anymore than the English didn't allow to be ruled by Germany. There are parallels there with the present situation in Iraq. When the American forces invaded Iraq, president Bush appeared on Iraqi television speaking in English to the Iraqis informing them that they had been " liberated " that was in 2001, now we are in 2008 and the American troops are expected to continue in Iraq until 2011.

Going back to Goya's time, during the period when the Duke of Wellington was general of the British forces in Spain trying to get rid of Napoleon; Goya had a lot of difficulties with his portrait since the Duke of Wellington insisted on having every medal added to his portrait and two years after the painting was finished, Wellington was showered with military honours and he wanted every blessed decoration added to his uniform. It is said to have been Goya's most frustrating commission !

Dear me ! 10 doughnuts ! that is way too many. Were they ring doughnuts or jam ones. Peter says if you can pass him some of your slimming secrets ! Robert, you have to keep cooking a good meal for yourself, even if its only baked beans on toast or a boil egg instead of eating too many sugary treats.

Hi Robert !

Well then, if you take a look at Goya's painting " The Second of May, 1808 " Where Goya commemorated the uprising of the people of Madrid against Napoleon's cavalry in one of the most terrifying and convincing battle scenes in the history of Art, you will see what I mean. There is no sense of good triumphing over evil; instead, Goya shows ghastly and bloody confusion. His theme is not patriotism, but horror at man's inhumanity. Also take a look at his other painting " The Third of May 1808 " this painting depics an execution, in here you can see the terrified eyes of the Spanish insurgent, the cruelty of it all. Goya focuses our attention on the man in their midst, who throws out his arms in a Christ-like gesture of martyrdom.

In the British Museum they have Goya's series of engravings " Disasters Of War " where a man is wielding an axe in the air and about to chop off the head of a French soldier, whilst in the background, there is another Spanish insurgent about to stick a knife in to another French soldier who has been knocked down on his knees. The savagery depicted on these drawings gives you a real glimpse of the horrors of that war.

I think you are craving for chocolates !

William Blake,

Hi Victoria, what you have said is very interesting :

" Art shows the mind of the artist his inner world is somehow portrayed. "
or as Blake put it. " As the man is, so he sees, as the eye is formed, such are its powers. "

This is absolutely right, the artist draws from his/hers living experience, in Blake's case, as well as Fuseli's they were both deeply influenced by religion. In Fuseli's case, he was pushed by his father to enter the church. However, he developed an aversion to religious dogma, preferring to read, Milton, Dante, Homer and Shakespeare.

In Goya's case, it was a cruel time for Spain, which became the latest victim of Napoleon's drive for a total domination of Europe. With the French troops occupying Spain's key fortresses, King Charles IV was forced to abdicate in favour of his son Ferdinand. Then both were deposed, as the Emperor Napoleon declared his brother Joseph the new King of Spain. And within weeks the entire country was engulfed in a savage guerrilla warfare. Goya had to witness the dead in the streets during the May riots in Madrid and the new French King soon instituted many reforms, but soon found that the situation in Spain was desperate and three months later he was forced to abandon Madrid.

Also, for 350 years, Spain lay in the grip of The Spanish Inquisition. By Goya's time, thousands had suffered torture and slow death in the cause of Catholic purity, as the Inquisition rooted out heresy. Goya himself was summoned before it when his painting ' The Naked Maja ' was judged both ' obscene ' and ' immoral '.

Victoria, so the monsters were in this case, real for Goya. The church was killing and torturing people, the Catholic church was lost in irracional thought and yes, reason was asleeping as well.

Good to see you two are choc-aholics ! my favourite chocolates are Du Rhone from Geneve who have been doing chocolates since 1875. Monthly dosis of this delicious treat are Belgium chocolates which come in a box from a chocolate Club. All my friends get a box of chocolates for Christmas !

William Blake

Yes, Robert William Blake the visionary and prophetic poet and artist proclaimed:

" The man who raises himself above all is the artist; the prophet is he who is gifted with imagination "

William Blake was a pupil to the Swiss born Henry Fuseli, who after settling in England, transformed the graceful and peaceful scenes of reassuring pastoral tranquility to paintings of raging living organisms like earthquakes, hurricanes and terrifying fires. He transformed the graceful symbolic fauna of Neoclassicism, such as butterflies and horses into strange, ambiguous monsters of the imagination. The dream, with all its irrational implications, became the realm of fantasy of disturbing terryfing images, and erotic temptations. Figures became less heavy and more inmaterial, less concreate and defined, in contrast to the precision of Neoclassicism. Figures no longer portrayed beauty, but were moulded by the energies of the human soul, sometimes distorted or uneasy, often disorderly and impulsive. Artists acquired a new responsibility, almost as the re-creators of a lost paradise, imparting a divine message that could only be revealed through the medium of art.

Victoria, Robert I do not know if you have ever seen Goya's painting: ' The Sleep Of Reason Produces Monsters ' which is an allegory of the irracional fears that lie behind rational thought.
or Henry Fuseli's : ' The Nightmare ' is an enigmatic image that transcends reason.

Robert, I suppose it may be surreal in the sense that I was day dreaming when I painted this picture, these are the red and lilac clouds you see in the tropical sunsets, mixed with the rural scenes we normally see in Wales. But it is not a dream like the Dali paintings are, where a bone is near a an egg yolk or things are in a puzzling way.

These are colours which exist in different countries, so it gives you a dreamy quality, but I am sure, if my Welsh neighbour saw this picture she would say: " The grass is not green, so its not Wales " and she would be right, it is not Wales, its somewhere in my imagination, or shall we say in my dreams as you put it. I like that green colour as a sky, so I put it there, only because I like it, regardless if it exists or not in nature, and it worked with the rest of the mood of the picture. The strangeness of the unrealistic colours, also lends a mystery to the picture giving it an unusual significance to an every day scene.

Autumnal Evening

Thanks Robert, it is an evening scene but an evening more of my imagination; a marriage between the evenings of the tropics and the bucolic scenes of Wales, the colours are autumnal in temperature with the mauves, blues in the horizon and the sheep grazing in the fields of my imagination.

Robert, Victoria, Yes, each picture is an experiment. This painting: Mother And Child, I set out to do it without greys nor blacks, to see what transpired and what I got, was a very luminous picture. All I wanted to have was a rainbow palette, of greens, violets, blues and yellows which are all high key colours. Blacks and greys have a lot of weight in a picture, so I do use black but sparingly and isolated from my very colourful compositions, like when I used it as a background for the yellow daffodils in order to achieve luminous flowers. ( dark against light )

I use black with respect and a great deal of care, and only for effect. Greys are easy to use, in the sense that if you become stumped with a colour harmony, you can always put grey on it, and it will balance any picture, it is, the easy way out.

My Spanish teacher Don Rafael Martinez Diaz, loved the colour grey, he thought grey was elegant. But in the end... it is what you FEEL about a colour, what really counts, and if greys make me sad, there is no point in using it, is there ? In the end a picture for me, it should bring happiness not sadness to have it hanging from your wall and I would not dream of having a grey picture hanging from my walls, when all I can see here, is grey skies, grey stone houses with grey roofs ! so something colourful its me.

That is very kind of you to say, Victoria. When I can, I will post a painting that was done without greys and without blacks; with a modern electric blue light which reflects on the white complexion of the sitter, a young mother and her baby. This painting is a bit like marmite,(vegemite) you either love it or hate it. Since then, I have changed my tactic and just paint people with a traditional old fashioned flesh colour, although, the portrait of the M.P., was done still with this idea, of blues and mauves on the white skin tones by the artificial light.

Peter's sketch

It is faint, for some reason it doesn't come as clear as it is in real life, but it gives you an idea
of how he looks on a near full length picture with him reading a book.

Hi Robert !

Well I think you have pretty much answered your own question. Yes, I have to agree with you it is incongruous ! It makes the poor baby look like a real monster. I have to confess that I was pretty horrified when I saw one of those Madonna pictures with the baby Jesus, half baby and half adult face by Leonardo da Vinci, no less ! at the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg.

I thoroughly recommend this current exhibition ' Renaissance Faces ' being shown at the National Gallery in London which has been organized in collaboration with the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid, I really did enjoy it, it has had very good reviews from the newspapers as well. I especially liked the section of Courtship and Friendship. There is one picture which I really loved of a Venetian couple, where she is shown extending her hand whilst her suitor is placing a golden ring on her finger. The ring is a symbol of love. In the background is cupid holding an ox-yolk behind their shoulders, another sign of marriage, this cupid's gaze is cheekily looking at him alone, rather than her, meaning that it is he who has to observe his marriage vows seriously and has to curb his wayward eyes and ways by accepting his new responsibilities.

This is the sketch I have done of Peter for the new portrait. What do you think ? Or should I do it more formal ? the trouble is that Peter hates formality, if he is portrayed the way you see it here, it would be how he always looks naturally, with his polo neck shirts.

Renaissance Paintings and Drawings

That is true. Before the renaissance there wasn't such an emphasis on painting an exact likeness.
Representing likeness was undoubtedly encouraged by the new emphasis Christianity placed on the humanity of Christ and the emotional response to his image by the worshippers, as portraits represented both outward appearance and, by interpreting a sitter's expression and likeness, the soul. But there was this other belief that a beautiful outward physiognomy was a reflection of the soul and a desired appearance for a woman was to have a blonde hair, pale skin and red lips were mandatory. Such ideals are reflected in the way both religious figures, such as the Virgen Mary and classical gods and goddesses are represented in Renaissance paintings.

Beauty was equated with virtue in the Renaissance. Portraits of real men and women that emphasised their physical perfection were acknowledgements of their virtue. Conversely, ugliness and physical imperfections of all kinds were poorly tolerated and might condemn the unlucky ones to social ostracism. ill-favoured old women were sometimes identified as witches;
A victim of disease was only too easily seen as a subject for mockery and a potential source of evil to be feared.

Actually, I was also thinking of poor Anne of Cleves as well when I wrote the last post ! In the Renaissance, drawings were usually the means of capturing a likeness in the presence of the sitter. They were highly portable and were often used to send information about individuals to friends or family - their state of health and how they had altered or aged. I have now sketched a small drawing of Peter sitting on his chair which I will post as soon as I photograph it.

The veracity of painted portraits was enabled by sophisticated oil techniques developed in Northern Europe, which were taken up in this period by artists around the Mediterranean.

Renaissance Faces

Robert, remember that there was no photography during the renaissance period. The whole business of painting a likeness is essencially exactly what it is today, you take photos to commemorate an occasion, a wedding, an engagement, meeting the Prince of Wales, a graduation and these are not reflections of the cult of the individual. You keep photos of your mum because every so often you want to remember her, without these pictures it would be difficult to remember how a loved one look like, to explain it in words to her Grand-great-great children would not be the same as it is seeing the vivid picture looking back at you. It really would not be the same.

Nowadays we can take pictures of everything and anything and it does not necessarily mean it is to commemorate something, but to illustrate an article for work or for fun. During the Renaissance period you were lucky if you could afford even one portrait ! so the sitter and the painter, made sure that the way the sitter would be portrayed said everything of the person that needed to be said like a biography, essencially it would include something that defined the character of that person, the same way we now include a verse or a frase underneath an email post on website.

It is true that the artists of that time acquired a new status approaching " stardom " but so did the tailors of the time, the same way that nowadays we see Jamie Oliver the chef on television who we see at all the celebrity parties and the gossip columns, he now has a special Jamie Oliver cooking range of utensils and he earns millions of pounds not only appearing on T.V. but selling his books and also cooking for private celebrity parties. So if he ever commissioned a painting, then he could appear with something that denotes why he has become so famous, maybe he could be portrayed looking at one of his cooking books or in a kitchen preparing something difficult like a baked Alaska cake, so in another 500 years from now, anyone who comes across his painting would say: Mmmm... his trade was cooking and if the book nearby has his name... then it will be easy to see what his name was.

The painters of that age acquired their celebrity status not just for painting a portrait of someone famous or for the aristocracy but his work was the means from which the courts of Europe could chose a foreign bride for a future king, so these painters were not just mere painters but were ambassadors as well and for more money, they could even embellish the face of a lady to marry a king for example.

Gold was used mostly on religious paintings and it is not considered a colour even though it does have a golden colour. Gold was used to decorate altars or frames. There are very few pictures with gold around them, like the halo of a saint for instance, but applying gold leaf is another tecnique usually for more decorative purposes. The only modern painter I can think of, who has used real gold leaf on his paintings is Gustave Klimt, and again sparingly.

Renaissance Faces

REMEMBERING

The German artist Albrecht Durer ( 1471-1528 )
Explained that portraiture ' preserves the likenesses of men after their deaths ' Remembering
people was the main purpose of portraiture in the Renaissance.

IDENTITY, ATTRIBUTES, ALLEGORY

Renaissance portraits are notable for their intriguing inclusion of objects not only as a commentary on the status or interests of their subjects, or as a means of their identification like coats of arms. Clothing too plays its part: a particular uniform or any other object can denote an occupation or profession like in the case of the tailor or the Art antiquarian merchant. Gloves, swords, even exotic pets, as well as newly fashionable possessions, such as antique sculptures or astronomical instruments, were all indicative of elevated status. Among the highly educated courtier classes, such objects might also carry hidden meanings, sometimes sophisticated references to classical texts.

Both painted and sculpted portraits, particularly in Italy, were increasingly shaped by the discovery of artefacts - coins and marble sculptures - surviving from ancient Greece and Rome, objects that had ensured that both the lives and times and the physical features of their subjects were remembered, centuries after their deaths.

Renaissance Faces

Robert that is exactly it. If you see the famous painting ' Giovanni Arnolfini and his wife ' by Jan van Eyck, this painting shows off the sumptuous expensive fabrics of their clothes, the chandelier, the mirror ( which in those days, only very wealthy people could afford ) as well as the four poster mahogony bed and even the tangerines which were exotic fruit imported from the Orient and therefore expensive. They wanted to show off their wealth.

Yes, imagine what honour it must have been to be able to paint the most famous and distinguished personalities of their day and since at that time, photography was not available, a painting was the only way they had, to leave a lasting image of themselves for posterity, this is why the artist often painted their coats of arms or anything that would identify them in later centuries to tell us whose image we are looking at today.

It was a two way thing Robert, the more famous the painter was, then the customers would want to be painted by him, so their own prestige would be assured as well. An artist who had painted royalty any member of the nobility would aspire to commission the same artist too.

How much a painting was worth, depended very much on the pigments to be used and that is true then as it is today, since the most expensive pigments are red, followed by blue which in those days could only be done by grinding lapis lazuli, a semi-precious stone, so the more red or blue you used on the painting, the more expensive the picture was going to be. On this day and age, a tiny tube of real lapis lazuli can set you off £80 pounds, but having said that, there are excellent artificial cheaper replacements like ultra-marine blue. The cheapest pigments to get are browns and all earth colours.

Renaissance Portraits from Van Eyck to Titian

The whole idea behind a portrait is: to be remembered. The faces I saw in this exhibition, date back from 1500 to the 1400's. In the years around 1400, the profile was seemingly the favoured format for portraits in the courts of Northern Europe, maybe to emulate the look of the profile portraits on medals and then later in Italy in particular where they became popular for much of the century. Antique portraits were employed as the tools of historical analysis-- image was allied to biography so that portraits came to stand for their virtuous ( and sometimes apalling ) behaviour, like Nero's image in a coin ! By employing a coin-derived profile formula for their own portraits, the pictures asserted similar virtue. This type of profile portrait paintings evokes not just ancient coins but classical bust portraiture.

The portraits were commissioned by the nobility, the church and the monarchs of the time but as the merchant classes later in the 1500's became affluent, they too were able to commission their own portraits depicting their trade. There was a painting called ' The Tailor At Work ' by Giovanni Battista Moroni where the tailor is shown with his scissors cutting the cloth as the tools of his work. He is portrayed wearing fine, sumptuous and expensive clothes like those of a prince, as the status he has reached in society has allowed him to be able to afford to commission his own painting as well.

Then, there was the painting of Andrea Odoni a member of the merchant classes. To some degree he was following fashion; he was not an aristocrat, he was trying to enhance his own status, Andrea Odoni was celebrated for creating a new Rome in Venice. He is shown extending his arm inviting us, to show us his art collection of fine ancient sculptures, where we can see the marble head of Hadrian and a torso of Venus in the foreground and he has enhanced this picture with sculptures which he doesn't own in the background of the painting. Some sculptures are chopped off, reminding us that even great art can crumble with the passage of time. With his left hand, in the middle of the painting, he is clutching a crucifix of Christ on his chest, near his heart which for him, is more prominent than the other sculptures all around him. The fragmented state of the sculptures represents the inevitability of death and the importance of memory. His evocation of human mortality is partly countered by the crucifix of Christ and the promise of eternal life.

Grey colour

Yes, Robert that is right, grey can be so drab. Here where we live, all the stone houses have grey slate roofs and grey skies, this was a sight that took me some time to get used to.

I find it funny how people react to different colours. For instance, my mother was horrified to see me buy a purple garment, I told her I loved purple ! She looked at me as though I was from Mars, so when we got home I asked her why she seemed to look so scared about purple, at first, she said she did not know why and then she said it reminded her of the Holy Week when the priest dressed all in purple and the Christ was brought into the church with all the wounds in his hands and feet, hanging from an enormous cross, looking so sad with his crown of thorns. This is what purple means to her.

People react to colours in different ways. Another time, I noticed some beautiful yellow roses and my aunt who was with me that day told me that any yellow flowers made her feel sad. I asked her why and she replied that the church was completely filled with yellow flowers when my grand-father died. I had planned to give her the painting that you see here with the yellow daffodils to take home with her, but after having heard that, I refrained from presenting it to her, thinking that this painting was clearly not meant for her, when she left, she said to me: When are you going to paint me another picture ?

I think that for me, the saddest colour is grey. I can wear it only if I put on a colourful scarf, I do the same thing with black to jazz it up a little bit. A long time ago, I used to use pure black but it did not do anything to illuminate my face. Now, I'm using bright colours, even in winter to brighten up the drab grey skies. One thing I always used when I was a teen-ager was red shoes, I love red shoes, they somehow make me feel very happy. I find it strange how colour does have an emotional impact or a certain positive or negative reaction on each person and maybe this is why a painting has a different impact on people as we each view it from a very personal experience.

Hello Victoria

I think that it would be a real good idea, to arrange and get myself to be invited to meet Prince Charles and you are quite right, I should do it before it is too late and the opportunity passes me by.

I also adore boots too, since I was in university in Spain, I wore blue-jeans, boots, a leather hand-bag to match the boots, a polo sweater and a fox fur coat and I felt dressed to go anywhere, from university to a restaurant. In Britain you cannot wear fur, when I do, I tell my friends its a good fake ! but the strange thing is, that they do not mind wearing leather shoes and hand-bags made out of leather, they eat meat, so I do not understand what is all the fuss about wearing a fox fur coat, its warm, its practical and it lasts for years and years.

No, I don't think your mother had a strange idea Victoria, since Prince Charles lived for a while in Australia and going by what you describe about your present life, she is right you would have been an ideal candidate. Prince Charles had a good Australian friend amongst his confidants who he nicknamed Kanga. She was married to a very wealthy man here in Britain from an aristocratic family and also Prince Michael of Kent is married to a lady whose mother is from Australia. Anyway, going back to Prince Charles confidant, she died in mysterious circumstances, shortly before she died, she said someone in the night had pushed her down an open window from where she was found, at a hospital she was staying at. There was no investigation done about the incident and all the letters that Prince Charles wrote to her that she kept in a special embroidered pauch behind her bed had disappeared, she told this to a journalist woman who was a friend of hers before she died of blood poisoning. It was all a very strange affair.

What is your favourite colour ?

On Painting,

Sir Winston Churchill said: ' I prefer landscapes. A tree doesn't complain that I haven't done it justice.' And: 'I cannot pretend to feel impartial about colours. I rejoice with the brilliant ones and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns. '

Victoria, I was saying to Robert that when Camilla Parker-Bowles was introduced to Prince Charles upon meeting the Prince for the first time, she said : ' Sir, my Great-great-Aunt was your Great-great-Grandfather's Mistress, so how about it then ? and so as we know, Camilla became Prince Charles's Mistress. If one day I ever meet the Prince of Wales, I would say to him: ' Sir, my Great-great-grand Aunt painted your Great-great-Grandfather's portrait so how about it then ? ' And probably I too, would become his Court portrait painter. This is in reality true. My Great-great-Grand Aunt Maria Spilsbury painted the Prince when he was regent.

Actually... I do like browns specially against the green grass, the colours I feel sorry for, are the greys. I cannot stand the greys, they made me feel the grey skies from outside, sorrow and rain, it makes me think of dark dungeons. Maybe the only way I could live with them is.... if they are contrasted against a red colour, a bit like the red London buses in a grey rainy day, or for that matter, a red letter box or a red phone booth, I know greys are important in every artist palette as grey is a neutral colour but there is something in my psichic that prohibits me to use grey, being just the muddy result of mixing 3 colours, in fact, any three colours you mix will give you a grey.

Hi Robert,

The thing is... you already own a bank. Since they were nationalised and bought with our tax money they are... ours to keep.

You are quite right, now Peter's beard has become more Nordic with time, so his new portrait will reflect the " New Me "

Peter

Hi Victoria !

Yes, the handsome one on the right is Peter my dear husband, and yes, its just the hair which has turned silver now apart from that, he looks the same !

Yes, this is true. The projects have to mature in your mind before you commit the brush to paint and that is done by doing sketches first, in very rare occasions, the whole idea comes like a flash, all finished to the last detail, a vision if you like and you must try to paint it as quickly as possible before the whole idea vanishes into thin air, never to return again. When you grab it and succeed, its a bit like catching a bird in mid-air, it is a wonderful feeling.

Robert I finally got a letter from Nick Clegg's office this morning, first they thank me for my email to them and after saying that my comments have been well noted. It goes to say: ' The government have invested substancial public money in major U.K. banks, as you note, and have guaranteed interbank lending. This is critical for the day-to-day functioning of the economy; small businesses, for instance, depend on the availability of credit. Similarly, banks need to be able to lend to each other ( generally overnight) for day-to-day transactions to function properly. By guaranteeing loans between banks, the government hopes to unfreeze the credit markets; the evidence so far is that, to a limited extent at least, this may be happening '

Its hardly justifies the billions they have commited, considering what the last sentence above says , does it ?

Painting projects

Well I'm not saying that its impossible Robert, I think it would be an interesting project to do, when you first mentioned it, the vision of a pinata came to me, you know... the pinata hanging in the air and the children around it gathering the sweets as the pinata swings up above after being hit with a colourful stick by a blind-folded child holding that stick, I have no idea why this image was conjured up in my mind when you asked me why I haven't painted Mexico, so this is something I ought to do, the same way as I can visualise the bull fights, the red colour of the cape, the golden suit of lights, the black bull, the pink stockings against a Prussian blue sky or... the flowing red and white polka dot, flamenco dresses, which it is uniquely and unmistakably Spain which we are talking about, this is another country that I hold dear to my heart too. Spain its my second home for me and I visit it as often as I can, as I have lived, studied and also have family and friends there too. These are projects worthy of painting Robert, lets see how the ideas mature in my mind as I can see a real potential there.

Hola Robert,

The problem is time. Painting is time consuming as Victoria is saying to us. I have the patience to paint for hours but my husband doesn't. e.g. right now, in January, we will be in several countries, starting in Amsterdam, Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador. In the past, I have tried to paint with pastels only to find that my lovely pastel box arrived in a grey heap of dust ! I'm painting in oils now, it would be impractical to take and bring back my easel, heavy paint tubes, canvass, flying from one country to another, if on top of that, I already have to pack for three weeks worth of clothes for different occasions, no doubt, we will have to pay excess luggage ! Plus the painting would not have time to dry before I have to pack it somewhere to bring it back. The only way is to take a small sketching pad and a box of graphito pencils to make quick sketches and come home and do it by memory, but even then, my husband does not have the patience to wait any time of length, he starts pacing up and down, sighing as in bored, so its not really practical Robert.

Yes, that is true, the light can have a better quality in some places even in the same country. The best place in Mexico for its light, is San Miguel Allende, where the shadows are long even at mid-day and the colours seem clearer than nowhere else, so it has attracted a painting community, there are even painters from Canada, the United States and Europe in permanint residence there.

Welcome Victoria !

Do not underestimate yourself ! painting on the ceiling has its level of difficulty as you know, what you see close-up near the ceiling its completely different from how the eye sees it from down below, so there is the need to allow for distortions when doing a trompe l ' oeil and it requires a great deal of planning to make sure the pattern in the cornices ends up right and not chopped off at the wrong place ! Plus, the cheer physical discomfort of having your arms raised up for a long period of time. Did you know that having your arms raised up was one of the tortures used in jails ? I have to say, when I saw the Sistine Chappel for the first time, I cried, I could not believe how Michaelangelo managed to complete such a titatic work without sacrifying any of the quality, its just remarkable.

I would like to see your painted ceilings Victoria...

In turn, I will place a small oil portrait I painted of my husband whilst he was reading many years ago. He is due for another one now, as his hair has turned grey but he is not too keen in looking older, to me, he looks just the same except that his hair has turned a bit white.

Hola Robert:

Well I always carry Mexico in my heart when I paint. See the colour pink of the roses ? that is called a Mexican pink. I will tell you this much... when I went for my entrance examination in Madrid, the teacher there, a professor of professors upon seeing my work standing behind me commented: " You are not Spanish " very surprised I turned around, looked at him and asked him how the devil did you know without even having heard me speak ? He said: " Its the colours ! that gives you away my dear, you have within you, the vision, the light and the colours of the tropics, these are Latin American colours, our European colours are gray.

Or you mean Mexico as a subject ? I suppose it would be interesting to paint a Mexican scene like the breaking of a pinata, or paint the agave fields in tequila, Jalisco, which are blue in the horizon and the agave plant from where they extract the tequila liquour. Or the time of the Hima in the spring when they cut the leaves of plants which end up looking like giant pineaples. It could be an interesting project which is worth giving it a thought Robert. Thank You !

Outdoor painting can be a dangerous job !

Robert, indeed ! Another time I tried to turn around my car in a narrow lane, reversed it a bit too much when making the U turn, and the car tires got stuck in a ditch ! The more I reved up the car accelerator, the more it splattered the mud around; I was about to call the AA when two Welsh farmers came up and helped me by pushing the car forward from the back, whilst I accelerated it at full speed until it came unstuck ! I was thinking... If I don't get this car forward, the force will make the car roll backwards and I will end up squashing my benefactors, but fortunately it worked.

Than you Victoria and Robert

I was very touched and surprised to read such nice comments from both of you this morning. And due to your requests... I will put up more of my pictures later on today. Lately, I'm painting flowers but I also enjoy doing portrait painting commissions, not just of people but of pets too and I am also a landscape painter which is considered the most difficult of all, since the weather changes in seconds and where you could minutes before see a fluffy cloud, moments later it has disappeared into thin air or a sunny spot or an interesting shade has gone when the clouds above moved away with the wind. And you have to resort to your memory of what was it that inspired you when you first saw the scene in the first place, since what was at first a sunny wonderful day does change into a grey rainy scene and nothing to what originally led you to paint it to start with. Landscape painting is very challenging but very rewarding too. Lately, I have been doing landscapes where I have allowed my imagination to dictate the colours which are not naturalistic, exaggerating the colours of the shadows with mauves and the hills with orange where its warm. But I still love to do landscapes from nature when the weather allows, tricky here in Britain where your easel can be blown away by a gust of wind or... be chased out of a field by a cow ! That was very scary. The cow ran towards me so fast, I had to scamper out of this field without having any time to collect my things, I got safely to the gate and closed it, then I watched the cow sniffing the paint brushes thinking to myself, this is the moment when my picture will get trampled with mud, but no, after she had smelled the paints brushes and noticed there was nothing that moved, she glanced at me and the cow walked back to the end of the field where she had her two calves. The moral of this story, is never get in a field where there is a cow with calves. The farmer who owns the land told me that cows can be as dangerous as bulls when they are looking after their calves.

I have had a lot of pleasant but also scary adventures when painting outdoors. One of the other episodes was when I was painting beside a lovely stone bridge, concentrating in the ripples of the water when a lady stopped her car and she shouted: ' haven't you heard the warnings above you ? ' I said: No, where ? she pointed up at a helicopter hovering around us, she said they are asking people to stay clear of this area since there is a rapist on the lose and the helicopter above is chasing him along this river, whilst the police on the ground were trying to catch him with sniffer dogs to track him down somewhere around here. The lady told me to please pack my things and leave as soon as possible. I thank her very much for her advise and that was a landscape session interrupted for the day. They did catch the man.

Hi Robert

But his cousin Count Alucard loves the sun !

On the side of this blog is an example of my flower paintings which were deleted from the JTR Casebook. I hope that Count Dracula is playing up with that site !

I have decided to have my own blog as one finds now that virtually every form of public discussion is to a greater or lesser extent infected with political correctness and the only way to bypass that, is to own one's newspaper, website or T.V or blog !

As you may have guessed by now, I was banned from a site called Jack the Ripper Casebook for daring to post some pictures, you could be thinking maybe these pictures are obsene or offensive in some quarters but no. I was banned for posting flowers, my own paintings of flowers, the thread in question said: " Pictures Please " on the middle of the pub section on Creative Writing
It did not specify what kind of pictures, which at first I ignored. Still... there is another thread in the pub section named: " Is Modern Art... A Scam ? I was writing on that one when someone asked me if I could post my flower paintings, I said I was not that versed in posting pictures, then another woman called Suzi starting egging me in by saying it is not Rocket Science Maria, I replied that I would see what I could do. No sooner had I got the first compliment when the pictures vanished like magic. In a place like Casebook I did not expected to get a compliment even if I were Van Gogh, from the group of women who live there for the exception of Victoria and Claire. For years, people have been posting all kinds of pictures in Casebook but when I asked for explanations why the flower pictures had been deleted for no reason at all, the rules suddenly changed over night and the Admon said that you can only post Ripper related pictures even though the thread still says: " Pictures Please " and after my pictures were deleted and I dared to complain, I got a threat to be banned. A friend of mine Dougie upon knowing my predicament, wrote that surely it was unfair to have me banned for posting two flower paintings and expressing an opinion. So Dougie's post was promply deleted and he was threatened with being banned too and his post was deleted without a trace. He was told by the Admon that the matter was not up for discussion and afterwards someone called Black Cat posted an enormous black square which has nothing to do with Jack the Ripper either ! But her picture is still there. Actually... the black square defines them perfectly since being there is like being in a big black hole where humour is alien to the owner and his lover someone called Ally as in Ally-gator since she has no social graces, no talent whatsoever, further more, she is incapable of even starting a conversation with anyone, as you can see for yourself in the Chat Room where she starts of like this: " I'm bored, come an entertain me " and several weeks later... all that she has managed to say is : " I'm in " does she mean in hell, or in limbo or where ? and everyone else just comes in and says : " I'm in " I think the most original was Dougie's post which were actually very, very funny but as they were too hilarious... well, they had to go too ! No one can dare to say anything which can upstage the Queen Mean Ally-gator, she actually calls herself Queen Mean, no kidding and she runs that place like a fiefdom, if you incur in her displeasure or if she gets jealous of you, then you are out, with no explanations given, like in my case and her hen-pecked lover who is supposed to be the owner of the site has no say. Ally-gator rules !