tomwoodhongkongartist

Memories are Made of This

‘The hotel provides an ideal base to support all your hotel requirements from corporate to leisure, business to family weekends. In fact a Choice (sic) destination to cater for all your needs. We have satellite TV in the bedrooms as well as the bar’.

This was day two and like the others I was huddled over my Full English in the half light. In the long dining room the only sound was the crack of toast followed by the stuttering scrape of perma frosted butter interrupted occasionally by the gentle slop of pale gloopy eggs and the squidge of fluorescent beans. You could cut the atmosphere with a very blunt knife which was just as well because that’s all we had. This was breakfast for losers, no seasoned breakfaster would tolerate it but this was one star living in a two star motel and it just got worse.
The big boned girl with the big personality crashed into the silence, with a surly smile and slow pencil her voice grated even when working hard for the meagre tips that barely made her job worthwhile. Smiling and with that voice she announced there were no more teabags as someone, no names mentioned had forgotten to order them, so for the foreseeable future tea was off and don’t bother asking for it as there wasn’t any. Coffee from the machine was OK though and with one final big crooked smile she turned, picked up a cup and crashed back through the doors into the kitchen. There was a collective groan as we resigned ourselves to the nasty acidic brown liquid posing fraudulently as coffee. It was a bad start to the day.
But then Day One had also brought its own disappointments. There had been one plus for two minuses so far. No wireless broadband as advertised, no satellite TV as advertised but you did get a heated towel rail. This was a great big shiny tube that coiled up the wall and at best became lukewarm after being left on overnight. The whole bathroom was a trip down memory lane to a time before bathing became luxurious. It was a no-nonsense functional box not to be lingered in. There were no fripperies or fancies, no stupid cotton wool buds, no rubbishy tissues or wasteful moisturizer just the basics carefully laid out in a line, tiny bottle of shampoo, marble hard soap covered in a layer of dust and a paper cup. It had all the pathos of a Morandi still life, a frozen tableaux of life as lived when pennies not pounds matter. I felt sad just looking at it.
In front of the sink was a large mirror with a spectacular crack running diagonally from top left to bottom right, someone had hit that mirror very, very hard and I didn’t want to think about it.
Behind was the bath, small low and stained, China white with a dusting of Portland grey, the hairy plughole was going to be a problem, I could see that. To one side hung the brittle remnants of a shower curtain, scarred and battered with a drizzle of mould but still standing. I knew I would be only the latest in a long line of victims to struggle in it’s clammy embrace and I wasn’t wrong. That evening we danced together as the boiling water breathed life into my nylon shroud, struggling with shampoo and soap the curtain billowed and writhed at times inflating like a balloon and then without warning gripping me in the full body equivalent of a Chinese Burn. It was like showering with Mick McManus, two falls and a submission; I was exhausted and needed a nice cup of tea.
Instead I took to my bed and explored the pillows. Hotel pillows come in all shapes and sizes from the one big fat square beauty I had in Frankfurt to the concrete bricks I avoided in Madrid. My favourite combo was the threesome found in Amsterdam. Two lovely large, plump feather filled rectangles accompanied by a big firm sturdy bolster, there’s something for everybody and it’s a combination that can’t fail to please. Unfortunately my pillows had had a long and hard life and they seemed to have succumbed to their nightly pummelling. Each one had taken on a consistency that seemed to suggest near liquification. They had that quality where it doesn’t matter how or where you place your head, you end up lying on two sheets of cotton with a lump on either side. The weight of a head just seemed to be too much for each pillow and the stuffing slunk off to hide in the corners. I don’t know where you get such dysfunctional pillows, do they become like that or are they just born that way, personally I blame the parents.

I like to be positive but in all honesty I don’t think I’ll be staying in the Comfort Inn too often. It was like an exercise in reminiscence and reminded me of just how far we’ve come. I recall many happy years as a child spending my summer holidays in boarding houses in Bridlington that felt and smelt just like this place. Maybe they ought to re-brand it and turn it into a themed nostalgia holiday, DisComfort Inn where you get to spend a few days dressed in stripey tank tops with tulip collared shirts, hipsters and platforms eating fish fingers and beans with a side order of Mother’s Pride smeared with marge and all washed down with a big plastic beaker full of fizzy Dandelion and Burdock. In the evening you get to watch a black and white telly showing endless Carry On’s and Doctor Who, the real one with William Hartnell complete with wobbly sets, all this whilst sucking Spangles. They wouldn’t have to change too much after all just try not to forget the Typhoo, it’s just a thought.

The picture is of me and my friend Dennis in about 1973/4.

The phenomenon of vanity publishing has been around for ages but now it’s even easier with websites like lulu.com. For years I’ve considered pursuing the idea of trying to get a book published which incorporated the best of my sketchbooks, artwork and writing, I’ve never done anything about it, and it’s always remained an idle notion.
However I might sort myself out and do a small print run via an online publisher, if you are interested please let me know. I will do them at cost plus p+p, they might make a good Christmas present for the art inclined. I will do some sample pages and post them soon.

And it came to pass to be with the nintendo for the respiratory challenged

A contribution from guest blogger Chris Durbin

Dearly beloved bloggers
It is a while since I communicated with you all properly. I had a lingering lung infection which has now cleared up so that I am here and ready to go to having an autologous bone marrow transplant. My cryogenically frozen stem cells will be defrosted and transfused and after a high dose of chemo, they will regenerate my bone marrow which will give me a few more years on this planet to bug, cajole and contradict you!!
It has finally come to pass that I have entered the Hotel Queen Mary or the Hilton Pokfulam. I have passed over the threshold of this en-suite private room for three weeks may be a month in a public hospital. Incarceration for one with romany inclinations will be hard to bear. These 12 sq metres are to be my home with only medical staff and the family to see. I have a view through the towers to the island of Lamma over the Hong Kong U Medical School. I am protected behind double doors breathing the cleanest air you will ever have breathed in Hong Kong – double and cold filtered. Everything has to be wiped with alcohol before entering – so I am getting my daily dose of the A stuff through a sniff of the swabs!! Tinned and packet food is to be my diet so last night the family went out for a foodfest at the Mozart Stub’n in central Hong Kong – Adam ate a Frisbee-sized wiener schnitzel and I had some fortifying liver and onions. I decided that a Austrian meat fest is what I needed as a last supper…………forgive the biblical analogy, although it does feel a bit like it entering into this next phase.
You will be pleased to know that the room is full of all mod cons…broadband internet access, tv, dvd’s, music etc. However, the piece de la resistance is not the pedals for exercise where I will shut my eyes and imagine that I am cycling up the Col de Ventoux, it is the breathing exerciser known as the Triball….this is the Nintendo for the respiratory challenged. Picture three plastic tubes side by side, each with silver balls inside and when you breathe …..inspire as the nurse stated when he briefed me on this play station for the hard of breathing. I was about expire after five blows and wanting to score top marks. You are attempting raise the balls to the ceiling of the tube. Now the competitor in me is charmed by this game. You score 600cc/sec when 1 ball raised to the top of the tube, 900cc/sec is 2 balls or 1200cc/sec when you raise to the roof a magnificent 3 balls if you don’t suffer from hyper oxygenation of the blood. This game alone will save me from boredom.

The first medical experience today was an X ray through glass doors…Name rank and serial number. It was a bit like those classic shots from American penitentiaries of prisoners on death row. Prison visiting hours are 4.30=6.30. I will try to set up a camera later when I am recovered from the chemo – it will be the same as a phone looking through the window.
Many thanks for all your support in the last year – I couldn’t have asked for better. It has been very uplifting and helped me fight like a tiger. Next stop bone marrow biopsy and the dietician will police the food items that I have tried to smuggle in. There is money to be made in smuggling in all those banned foods – cheese running…..nut contraband and fresh fruit piracy…keep your fruit and nuts under lock and key!

The black and white photograph is 'The Dance of Light' by Erik Holmoyvik and you can see more of his work at the brilliant photographic website Photo.net
The colour photograph is of the beautiful Lofoten Archipelago in Norway.
Thanks Chris

Portraits of Helen by Matthew Askey

A contribution from fellow artist and guest blogger Matthew Askey
These three paintings happened accidentally in a way (very accidentally in the case of one of them, more on that to follow…) because I’ve just finished one series of paintings after several weeks and am waiting to start another, so I had a natural ‘gap’ to fill. I’ve discovered that it is often in this way that some new creative path opens up. Artists have a tendency to be a bit pushy and domineering with our approach to work at times so it is sobering and refreshing to live even more dangerously than usual and let more things ‘come in’. It’s important to see these unexpected ideas as the gifts they are. I’ve often found this hard to recognise when the gift is just there being given, even though they are usually plainly obvious later on looking back!

I have just finished a series of 15 paintings on the theme of Gethsemane (depicting the events of Maundy Thursday of Holy Week – the ‘Agony in the Garden’) to be exhibited at Wakefield Cathedral during Lent 2009. Helen and myself are awaiting the birth of our first child (due on 17th April) and I’d planned on working on a long series, as any doting father might, of paintings of the new baby…

…As I waited I realised that I wanted to do it now - getting a bit excited by the whole thing I think – and the nearest model I had was Helen. Put like that it sounds like a bit of a second choice but It turned out to be an important step for me. Alongside the more public ‘Prayer Paintings’ I’ve been working on has grown the need to produce a private or more personal series of prayer paintings. Other than one recent self-portrait these three very small paintings (about 10” diameter) of Helen represent my first experiments with light and life in a domestic setting. My first family paintings, with all the possibilities that could be explored there! I’m particularly thinking perhaps of Rembrandt and the intimate paintings by the Israeli/Parisian artist Avigdor Arikha.

Two of these new pictures of Helen are profiles almost filling the tiny panels and one is more direct, looking back, it is the biggest gift of the three in many ways as I nearly abandoned the painting several times. This painting started out life being based on a full length photograph of Helen pregnant; taking just the head I struggled to make the left side of the portrait work. The right side was working fine…it’s these sort of moments for a painter that can be profoundly frustrating, as the thin paint muddies, the moment passes, the attempts to link the whole form by glazing, brushing over, rubbing back a little; the synthesis that had held the image together only a few moments before falls apart for the umpteenth time…I’d then tried to throw the left side of the face into shadow, an obvious thing to do when working on a dark ground, but this didn’t work after many attempts. What could I do? Well, looking at the painting you can see I added the curtain, completely changing the meaning of the image (and for the better I hope). I would never have thought of starting out with an image like that, but it seemed to need to do this, to become this picture that you now see, and I let it, gladly. It now takes on a mysterious quality, perhaps visible even in my poor photo (with the blacks reflecting light back – sorry).

The more I paint the more I realise that I paint to discover something I didn’t know before; the painting always teaches me something, it is a surprise. I think this is what Francis Bacon meant when he said ‘I paint because I want to be excited’…It is in the discovery of what we didn’t know or think possible before we started that the painting lives, and continues to live in the mind of the viewer, sharing in that surprising act of discovery in creation that the painter stumbled across. All I can hope to do as a painter is to be there, to enable a meditation on a special moment (and all moments are of value) through a meeting of the inner world of our hearts, our prayers, and the exterior world around us. This is for me at the heart of the mystery of all art; to explore where that inner and outer world meets. It is a making special of our finite lives; a making sacred of what we are…

Thank you Matthew, contributions are still very welcome.....email me at tom_wood@tiscali.co.uk

The new banner is a detail from one of my favourite digital images made a few years ago, it's part of a series just called 'Nature', they make great screensavers, if you would like one just email me and I will send you a higher res copy.

Fast food and faster words by Nury Vittachi

MY FRIEND’S DAUGHTER works in a fast food shop in an airport. I watched her and her friends in action the other day.
The weird thing is that the staff can communicate perfectly well in English with anyone from Hong Kong, South Asia, East Asia, or pretty much any other part of the region.
But when a fresh-off-the-boat tourist enters the restaurant, communication gets difficult. Monolingual English speakers from America, for example, “hear” Asian-English words differently.
Fast food server: Harlowelcumkaneye L. pyoo?
Customer: What?
Fast food server: Harlowelcumkaneye L. pyoo?
Customer: Er, yes, I’d like one cheeseburger please.
Fast food server: Dull Swiss wit Baygon?
Customer: Excuse me?
Fast food server: Dull Swiss wit Baygon?
Customer: Oh, no, I don’t want a double-Swiss with Baygon, I mean bacon. I just want a normal cheeseburger.
Fast food server: Humbugger wit jees. Setter Al Eckart?
Customer: Pardon me?
Fast food server: Setter Al Eckart?
Customer: Ah, got it. A La carte, please.
Fast food server: One-for-rice wee tat?
Customer: No, I don’t want rice, thank you very much.
Fast food server: One-for-rice wee tat!
Customer: Oh, yes, please, I want fries with that.
Fast food server: Smormy dyumludj?
Customer: I’m sorry, would you mind…?
Fast food server: Smormy dyumludj. U juan smor, me, dyum, ludj?
Customer: Medium.
Fast food server: Ad too duller soup a size.
Customer: What?
Fast food server: Ad too duller soup a size.
Customer: Not supersized, thanks. I’m fat enough already, ha ha!
Fast food server: Wad rink u juan?
Customer: Fresh orange juice, please.
Fast food server: Fray soringe ad too duller. Chippa u buy set.
Customer: Okay, gimme a set.
Fast food server: Wit set you juan?
Customer: Cheeseburger.
Fast food server: Dull Swiss wit Baygon set?
Customer: Excuse me?
Fast food server: You juan dull Swiss wit Baygon set?
Customer: No, I don’t want – actually, maybe I do want Baygon. At least it would kill my appetite.
How come Asians can communicate with other Asians using this bare-bones English, while tourists struggle with it? Because English is really a whole group of languages. A tourist who speaks only “the Queen’s English” limits himself to communicating with speakers of that dialect. But if you speak Asian English—which I propose we call Englasian—you end up with a language the majority of people on Earth can understand.
In fact, I reckon we should train the Queen of England to speak it. I can just picture her on her next tour of Asia stepping off the Royal yacht and saying: “We are most amused to be here. My husband and I would like to say harlowelkumkanwee L. pyoo.”
**
Donated to Tom Wood from Nury Vittachi
The Curious Diary of Mr Jam Have a look at Nury's blog - always well worth a visit - enjoy.
Best wishes
Tom

The Last of the Norwegian Blues

It’s officially Spring and as I look out of the window there is the flicker of snowflakes gently falling. It had better make its mind up soon as we’ve got cricket in a fortnight or at least that’s what I think I heard on the radio, although looking out of the window surely I must be wrong.
Anyway in uncertain times it’s good to have something a little more reliable so I’ve been working on some paintings of dead animals, a squirrel and two partridges to be exact. I know it seems like an odd subject but there are a number of reasons why I’m finding them fascinating.

Firstly I suppose once you transcend the inherent pathos of a sad little creature’s death, then you can start to look a bit more dispassionately and in my case notice the subtle and lovely transitions of colour and tone within the fur and feathers. You can spend a good amount of time just looking at the different textures, how they catch the light and how this in turn describes the form of each creature and then how this form then suggests the dead weight.
You can also play around with context, for example, how do you present this object to give it both meaning and dignity? What about scale, my paintings are above life-size so the animals don’t look dinky or cute so if you do paint them bigger, how much detail should you record and how accurate should that recording be. Where does the art start and the natural history illustration end and does it really matter?
What about historical precedent? All those incredible Dutch Still Lifes with great oak tables creaking under the weight of dead swans, widgeons, ducks, partridges, pheasants, pigeons, geese, turkeys, fish, foul and fruit these incredible ostentatious depictions of fabulous wealth and greed need to be at least looked at if not overtly acknowledged. To our delicate sensibilities they appear like killing fields, gross, unnecessary, excessive and callous, on the whole I suspect we don’t approve. And yet I can’t help but drool at the sheer skill of these master technicians, just look at how they catch the iridescent glint of a peacock’s feather whilst simultaneously delicately recording the dead leaden stare of its eye in repose. The feathers ironically shimmer with life whilst the body inelegantly sprawled speaks only of death; these painters were at the absolute pinnacle of their craft and through the clarity of their language even now they tell us powerful eternal truths about mortality. Blimey I wish I could just do a fraction of what they routinely did every day of the week.

In my own little humble way I’m giving it a go and I’m trying to invest these sad creatures with some dignity but then again most serious figurative art is trying to do that, the dignity part not the sad creatures bit.

It can go wrong and this week I’ve had a bit of a disaster. I will keep it short and try and avoid any hint of self pity although that might not be easy.
I made a painting of a red legged partridge on its back with a muted but accurate and real landscape at the top. The landscape part was my favourite bit, in reality, it is a lovely place we often walk the dogs, however the partridge bit of the painting, was problematic from the start. It just didn’t look right and the more I looked the more it became John Cleese’s parrot, Michael Palin’s Norwegian Blue, you know the one and it was well and truly dead.

I persuaded myself the problems were all compositional and could easily be solved with the addition of an extra strip at the bottom of the painting. The painting is acrylic on paper collage glued onto canvas, so the solution seemed easy enough. Take the canvas off the stretcher and glue it onto a wooden panel of the correct dimensions with the additional space at the bottom. Simple.
Off we go, canvas comes off stretcher without a hitch, panel is generously rollered with strong PVA glue, canvas is carefully positioned and vigorously rollered with hard roller to fix position. Voila, job done, soon the dead parrot will transform wondrously into a lustrous partridge, boldly painted shadows elegantly fading off to the bottom of the newly proportioned panel. All is well time for tea.
Not so fast Mr Smug, whilst tea is slurped great mountains and ridges have formed and the canvas looks like a child’s model of tectonic plate theory as evidenced in the Alps. In other words what was flat a few minutes ago is now rumpled and bumpy as hell. This is a disaster, weeks and weeks of work are buckling in front of our very eyes. Together Elaine and I leap at the panel and start to tear off the canvas, I promise you all those ads where the glue is so strong you can hang a man of generous proportions off an airplane, well they are true, absolutely true because here was a man with a great round red face pulling with all his might at this canvas, trying to separate it from it’s panel and I swear on all that is pure, this bugger would not budge an inch, not a millimetre.

We pulled and tore at it like things possessed and together bracing the panel with our knees the canvas very, very gradually peeled off, stuttering and snapping as the mighty glue begrudgingly gave up its captive. After many minutes of this fantastically stubborn labour with backs aching, muscles burning, faces red and ears popping, the canvas finally came off. The glue sat like a million angry spikes on the panel and the canvas looked like a well wrung dish cloth, from a near disaster we snatched a certain disaster, it was time for more tea.

I still like the landscape but now it looks both muted and knackered and as such it has the charm of a retrieved fragment, which of course it is. On reflection if it were presented as it is, unrestored in a smart box frame with a fancy title alluding to the de-construction of painting and the demise of allegory it might just have a second life as Art or I might just accept that it is in fact a dead parrot, a good old Norwegian Blue. In fact there are some interesting philosophical points to be considered, did it ever stop being art, was there a transition from art to rubbish to art, if so how and finally how the hell do they make glue that strong. I’m off to Poland at the weekend and I will be visiting a school where I daresay through the medium of sign language and diagrams we shall continue our philosophical pondering. I can feel a Joseph Beuy's moment coming on, in fact I actually do have a dead hare, honest. Google Joseph Beuy's, you'll get it!

New Bins - Power to the People!

Following on from my last post, there has been an important update – the Park now has two shiny new bins which may or may not be the result of my correspondence with the Council. I would like to think that in my own small way I have contributed to a cleaner environment and therefore in a small private ceremony they have been named, ‘The Tom Wood Memorial Bins (Unofficial)’, it brings a little tear to my eye.

I’m having fun with my camera at the moment and using it on manual, it reminds me of my old SLR although the results are so much better.

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Whinger whilst confronting a Sea of Indifference.

I find when I’m in the studio I work so much better if I’m listening to something, at the moment that something is BBC’s Five Live. It used to be Radio Four but the constant fetishizing of balsamic vinegar and truffles combined with its grating Middle Class assumptions finally ground me down and drove me to my natural home, Five Live. It’s a radio station built on a simple but clever device. Each programme takes two or three contentious live issues and invites people to ‘comment’. What they mean by comment is an invitation to complain, moan, whinge, and ideally rant; they want people to air all their fervent grudges, voice their bitter prejudices air their dark intolerance and nurse their obsessive grievances.
Day in day out this parade of misery is aired, often with a regional accent, occasionally with a flash of dark humour, from immigration to the economy, from spoilt children to rude pensioners, from chewing gum to cabbages everybody has an opinion and everyone wants to be heard. Nothing is too trivial or too large to be discussed, we’re a nation so convinced of our opinions that we feel quite happy to share them with millions of other people.

Through weeks and weeks of listening to this and sadly recognising all too clearly my own self righteous bleating reflected right back at me I felt inspired to write to my local councillors about the disgraceful rubbish on our local park. Even as I write this I’m embarrassed at how sad my life has become but in mitigation allow me a brief explanation.
Yes I have become a serial moaner but surely that’s genetically programmed into every Yorkshireman when they top the half century, Five Live certainly features a lot of them particularly from Barnsley for some reason. Not long ago we were threatened with floods and our local council like many across the country, took pre-emptive action and started sandbagging everywhere at risk, this included our local park. However long after the risk had disappeared the sandbags remained only now they were strewn across our very neat park, some spilling their sand others dumped and piled to make makeshift bike jumps. With these came other bits of unusual vandalism, branches broken off trees to stick into sandbags, bottles balanced and smashed with suspicious evil smelling wet patches made of god knows what. Anyway it was a mess and getting worse, something had to be done.

I find Five Live is never short of people volubly expressing their disgust at the youth of today and how disgruntled they’ve become at their ineffective, impotent councils. Well after listening to hours and hours of this sort of thing I thought I would put it to the test and write to my own local councillors. I would compose an email with a mix of baffled reasonableness and disappointment that would also hint at my ability to muster the legions of other local whingers just waiting for a noble cause to unleash their relentless complaining. I would be the Dark Master, a cunning Machiavelli of Moaning, a stirring Napoleon of Nattering, the councillors would barely comprehend the vast forces gathering on their horizon. Through Five Live I would send out coded messages ordering my troops to assemble at the War Memorial ready for an assault on the Town Hall.

Well the email went out and lo and behold within an hour or two I had three answers all very jolly and supportive, thanking me for pointing out this mess and assuring me action would be taken and blimey, it was. Within a few days the park was all clean, tidy and tickety boo, not a sandbag in sight. Even more remarkable, today I received a letter thanking me for my interest and once more reassuring me decisive action would be taken, the bins would be renewed and the park closely monitored for any future vandalism. I’m pleased that my first stab at direct action had worked so well, but in another way I’m also a little disappointed because my Five Live moment had been snatched away by those super efficient council folk. I was looking forward to a bit of moaning and whinging with my fellow complainers and now all I can do is praise the council and somehow it doesn’t feel proper, it’s not the natural order of things, anyway here goes, well done Calderdale Council – you see that just doesn’t sound right.

In the studio as well as listening to my diet of disgruntlement I’ve also been finishing off three portraits I’ve had hanging around for awhile. The trouble with an unfinished portrait is that over time it develops the accusatory look of a disappointed lover, it seems to be saying, ‘You know you could have done better, now pull your finger out, turn the radio off and lets get the job done’, and that’s what I’ve done.
The painting of Elaine is gouache on paper stuck on board, it’s a great surface to work on but I find it a real challenge to mix just the right tones with gouache as the paint dries significantly lighter than its wet state. I tend not to glaze with it but rely on accurate colour mixing so there is usually litres of paint on the palette and lots of frustrating to’ing and fro’ing trying to get just the right tone and colour. All the revisions and over painting make for an interesting surface so it’s not all bad.
The Barbara Windsor study was just begging to be worked up, all that weird cockatoo hair was just so much fun to paint, and it’s also gouache on paper on board.
The portrait of Raymond Tsoi is in oil on canvas and is a little larger than life size; it’s a legacy from my Hong Kong days. It has taken ages to paint because there is a lot of glazing and subtle building up of tones to try and get the skin colour correct, I like the detail a lot and might try and paint some over sized close cropped faces (remember you heard it here first!). I’m presently struggling with some large landscapes and object paintings, they are not really still lifes but they have objects in them and they are a real pain to try and get right.

Finally some news on the dog front. As you know we have a small portly pug who my daughter has diagnosed as a food obsessive and a highly strung delicate Papillion who basically lives off shredded tissues which he prepares nightly. At least we thought that was the case until we started coming across caches of ‘food’ stashed about the house. So far we have found a partly eaten fishfinger hidden amongst a pile of clean socks. (I know what you’re thinking you Radio Four listeners, but the fishfinger is a versatile and nutritious addition to any meal when sprinkled with a little balsamic vinegar and tossed in a truffle salad okay!) A gnarled sausage gave us a nasty surprise when searching for the remote control down the side of the sofa cushion. Various meat products frequently turn up secreted amongst the dirty washing and the acme of his secret hoarding was to place a slimy dog chew under a pillow in our bed, yum yum just ready for that midnight feast. In my more philosophical moments, when the radio is off a little tune drifts through my head and it’s reminiscent of Edwin Starr’s song, ‘War’ but the words go something like this……….’Dogs….What are they good for……absolutely nothing……………..! I might give Five Live a ring.

Loaves and Fishes

From guest blogger, Matthew Askey.
Matthew is based at the College of the Resurrection in Mirfield, Yorkshire, UK where he is training for Ordination as a Priest in the Church of England.
Two versions of the same subject - loaves and fishes, based on the Gospel miracle of the feeding of the 5,000.

Both of these images were painted on the same day, and with broadly the same intentions (as part of an on-going series of ‘Prayer Paintings’ intended for prayerful meditation, with light becoming a central concern), but interestingly they have turned out very differently in their final forms. I think I’ve learned an important lesson to do with both the mysteries of painting and with what is needed when a painting is made. The artist needs to be open to ‘listening’ to the emerging image as it begins to appear, and then to follow what it is telling the painter it needs in order to become itself. Painting is mysterious indeed, and all the more so if the artist lets the image realise itself rather than trying to hammer it down from the start.

The first version of the Loaves and Fishes (the redder image) is much more warm and slow, much quieter, peaceful even. We see fish as an offering, as food, placed with the bread, in harmony, ready to be given, received and eaten gladly. The second version on the other hand (painted immediately after the first) is moody and disturbing. The fish are somehow anthropomorphised (made human); we can sense a psychology in them. The fish balanced on top of the stack of loaves is precarious and wants to topple off onto the lower fish which is stuck under the loaves. The light is more dramatic and focussed too. This looks to me to be a painting out of balance in many ways, it calls for the viewer to resolve it.

The miracle of the Loaves and Fishes is one of my favourite Gospel stories, but it is one which caused me much incredulity and difficulty when I first considered it. In those days (and admittedly as an atheist, before I recognised what I now call God at work in my life) I found the story baffling. How can two fish and five loaves feed thousands of people? This must be some kind of spectacular magic trick or simply a made-up story with no meaning at all? But later on I realised how wrong I was…The story of the loaves and fishes is a great symbol (and even greater than a symbol really, like much of what Jesus did) and it is a symbol of what can be achieved with the little we have to offer if we offer it to God in faith and in all honesty. Others will see our generosity and hope (the 5,000) and respond in kind – providing enough for all of us, as what was held previously in private for ourselves is brought out and shared together, leaving more than enough for all – a true miracle!

Which brings me back to the paintings…Two versions of the Loaves and Fishes; which is closest to the heart of this miracle story? The one at peace and in harmony or the one struggling to survive, even under the generous light of God? Well, both are fine with me, but I’ll let you decide for yourself.

Winter Warmer

I've succumbed to the Englishman's disease which is to talk endlessly about the weather and yet this is quite understandable when each day seems to bring something new and surprising. A few days ago it was clear bright blue skies, reasonable temperatures and a sense of Winter having been cheated. It felt as though Spring was here.

Buds were popping everywhere; shoots seemed to be emerging from the lukewarm soil virtually in front of our eyes. There was optimism in the air as we all felt the worst was over. People were out gardening, tying up heavy bud laden branches, sweeping up the last of the winter debris and eyeing up their planting options. It felt good.

Yesterday we all woke up to a very different world, freezing temperatures and a world of snow and ice. In a matter of a few hours we seemed to have plummeted into a new ice age and without any real warning. One minute bright blue skies, ice cream and picnics, the next leaden grey snow filled skies, slush and a frosty moustache. We hadn't escaped; we'd just allowed ourselves a brief glimpse into another world. Anyway it wasn't all bad, the sun shook off its shackles and made a few brief appearances and best of all the landscape looked different and special as though it had somehow been drawn with a thick black stick of charcoal.

Here are some photographs I took yesterday, the only thing that is not clearly evident whilst looking at them, is just how absolutely and utterly freezing cold the conditions were. It was tempting to adopt a 'drive-by strategy' whereby your camera is poked out through the briefly opened window of your car and you snap away in warm comfort. But fearing such a namby-pamby approach might blunt the acuity of my vision, like a true artist, I suffered for my art and actually got out of the car and in a moment of creative madness actually walked and stood in the biting wind, feeling my fingers go numb whilst waiting for exactly the right moment to click the shutter and capture that all too elusive light. Ladies and gentleman, I present before you the proof of my reckless quest.
I'm writing this whilst entombed in my tent, the snow relentlessly swirling outside in a blinding fog of icy crystals as the wind howls eerily across the frozen plains. My poor frost bitten fingers can barely clasp the mug containing the last dregs of my lukewarm chocolate drink and my poor battered camera lies beside me, the merciless elements having taken their toll and yet today we feasted with the Gods as we strode the highlands of the mighty Pennines. Enjoy.

Ps. for the record the photographs were taken in Marsden, Slaithwaite, Golcar and Crosland Moor in West Yorkshire and the two opening photographs were taken two days apart - honestl

The Lure of the Megaphone

It’s not often you get to ask this question but recently I found myself asking it for the second time.
Why is it you never have a megaphone when you need one?
And why is it that the person with the megaphone never has anything interesting to say, no jokes, no anecdotes, and no confessions just bland instructions? Boring. If you’re going to say it loud, be proud and have a good rant, tell a joke, sing a song, anything but the drone of boring instructions. “Please return to the station in an orderly manner or worse still, Please do not run, it is dangerous”. For heaven’s sake how dreary can you get? At times like these I wish I had my own megaphone to engage in some witty amplified banter. “Don’t run, it could be dangerous” “This is a Fun Run you Moron” quickly followed by the classic, “What’s a balanced diet in Wigan? A pie in each hand”! Boom boom. You get the gist, I’m sure.

A few days ago I was in London with friends visiting the Art Fair and after a grand day out predictably the train was delayed. I won’t go into detail as this will only encourage an avalanche of further delayed train stories quickly followed by tortuous hold-ups on the motorway and finally capped by mammoth waits in the airport where time exists in another dimension. Suffice to say the train or trains were not about to appear in the foreseeable future.
It seemed at one point that the trains might never appear and a daunting but thrilling adventure awaited us. We would be forced to abandon the security of the bright station as the shops closed and wander into the cold dark night in search of sandwiches. There we would join a lumbering herd of fellow weary travellers also in search of the elusive sandwich. Red eyed and drawn and increasingly desperate we would cluster in gloomy doorways, our backs turned to the cold black night, the only sound a gentle murmuring mixed with the occasional whimper and broken only by the loud crack of a stale baguette. In this way huddled and pathetic we would pass the long hours of our fateful night.

But it was not to be, the thrill of our impending railway martyrdom was cut short by the muffled announcement that seemed to suggest that a train might arrive and even more startling it would also leave and take us home. This was barely short of a miracle.
Gradually this news filtered through and a frisson of excitement rippled across the huge crowd now assembled in the station. Slowly the mass began to move, not as one but as though a series of tremors had stirred different sections and gradually these movements then became seismic shifts and great blocks of people shambled towards the platform.
But there was a problem. In a foolish act of desperate heroism one small man had decided to hold his post and with megaphone in hand he implored us to, “Please return to the station in an orderly manner” and also “Please ensure all tickets and travel documents are ready and displayed prior to boarding” and finally the immortal,” Please do not run as this can be dangerous”. He continued to repeat his forlorn mantra as the baying hoard descended upon him and whilst he felt he had to persuade us of his view through the power of his increasingly useless megaphone the crowd had chosen not to listen and had decided to take decisive action.

First the surge became a push and then the push a trot, the trot then became a gallop and finally the gallop rapidly developed into an elbows thrusting, lung bursting, no holds barred, all out sprint. The lumbering hoard had turned into a full on eye bulging, stampede with everyone racing with their heads back, chins out, knees pumping and eyes firmly glued on the prize of a vacant seat.
If I’m honest it was carnage. The man with the megaphone was swept aside as the first wave of old ladies burst forward only to be callously thrust out of the way by the second wave of grey haired commuters, their bags scattering, wheelchairs unceremoniously tipped over whilst old men and young children were trampled mercilessly. I swear I saw a man of the cloth ruthlessly tackle an expectant mother just as she was barged by a large woman who then used her bulk to block the carriage doorway. Her triumph was short-lived as an athletic Chinaman bounded over the scrum and with one well placed kick felled her and leapt into the carriage to claim the last remaining seat.
The savagery and ferocious determination with which seats were grabbed was extraordinary, there were no limits and no-one was spared. People scrambled and climbed, slithered and shoved into seats as though their life depended on it and in this grand melee there was a certain medieval magnificence as though this unleashed savagery was in the service of some majestic quest. Despite the apparent fury and panic I thought seen through the filter of a slow motion camera and with a sepia tint, it would have a noble patina, a sort of Sam Peckinpah-esque feel to it. In the aftermath, back at normal speed, there was a collective sigh of relief by those seated and a collective groan by those still standing. It was musical chairs without the laughs and looking at the pained expressions of the losers you couldn’t help but feel it was no longer about seats but about wounded pride and betrayal. The hurt ran deep.
By the time we detrained (who the hell invented that aberration!) a few hours late, a collective amnesia had descended and the disgraceful episode of the King’s Cross Stampede was now forgotten in all but a few. Normality had resumed, we smiled at one another, and politely held doors open, sparing no effort in assisting our fellow passengers with large and bulky parcels. Together we had decided that the savage seat skirmish was now an anomaly, an unfortunate and yet all too understandable consequence of modern travel, a confusion, a wholly regrettable misunderstanding and probably when all is said and done best forgotten.
That is until next time when a man appears with a megaphone and the screens all say cancelled and there is one seat for ten people, than once again the beast will be unleashed and only the strongest will survive. Sadly that seems to be rail travel these days.

Footnote.

Many years ago the renowned artist and educator, Victor Pasmore was invited to visit a college at which I taught. Pasmore was a very old and frail man who although extremely deaf pretended otherwise. On the evening of his visit he was taken out to dinner by the Head of Department. The following day I asked how the meal had gone and with a pained frown he said the evening hadn’t been a great success. The problem, he recounted had been the small talk. As he said; it was difficult to find things to say to such an illustrious guest that were worth bellowing at full volume in a hushed restaurant.
I don’t know why but I remember saying,’ why is it you never have a megaphone when you need one’? It didn’t really make sense but for some reason we both laughed, and I still do now thinking of my friend bawling at the famous artist as he smiled and feigned understanding, his answers bearing no relation to the question. In its own way it must have been a brilliant and surreal evening.

Weather.

The photographs were taken by my brother, Barry Wood on a recent visit to York and show the flooding that York has become renowned for in recent years. The houses along the banks of the river are now so accustomed to it, they have achieved a kind of celebrity status, proudly showing off the various flood levels they have coped with. It’s a positive response to a potentially disastrous negative situation and the way the weather is increasingly unpredictable, no doubt we will need more positive thinking along with maybe an Ark or two!
Anyway should you like to enjoy some of this wonderful weather first hand and the lovely countryside that comes with it (see next blog for photographs of that), you can stay at Barry and Eve’s lovely holiday home, here is their website.
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