What medium have I been using recently? Twig and ink. I was out picking up wind blown twigs off the ground in our garden after a post Christmas gale had blown them off, neatly placing them on the  bonfire ready for a Spring clean blaze,when Idecided they would make ideal drawing implements. I am not sure what sort of tree it is but it’s huge, possibly a weeping rowan, and the twigs are smooth and springy. I tweaked them with my trusty secateurs into a nice angled point and quickly made a couple of  dozen to share with students. They are particularly good to draw with because of their springiness, allowing a few unexpected marks to appear, and I do like the unexpected in my drawing.

Incidentally I am about to take new images of life drawing sketch books so watch this space as these will be uploaded shortly to bring colour and illustration to my blog.

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It is a children’s picture book I have written and illustrated and was inspired by Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake. I already have ideas for the next three picture books which are  Shed, Sugar and Saved, so watch this space. It is very exciting.  I feel as though I am about to send my baby out into the big wide world. So fingers crossed!

In Cardiff the visit was followed by a well spent half hour in the Martin Tinney Gallery in St Andrew’ s Crescent. This was followed by a boat trip on the aquabus down the Taff to Cardiff Bay via Penarth, followed by a quick dash into John Lewis where we watched a programme about my favourite US artist Frank Stella, then finished with an evening in St David’s Hall listening to the BBC National Orchestra & Chorus of Wales (with choristers from Hereford, Gloucester and Worcester Cathedrals).

The rendition of John Adams’ deeply felt tribute to the victims of the 9/11 tragedy was as expected very moving and there  followed an interval. It was just coming to a close with requests for us to return to our seats when the announcements were swiftly replaced by orders for us to evacuate the auditorium immediately. Traipsing at a snail’s pace down the stairs from level 3 behind the elderly and infirm we naturally thought of those caught up in the twin towers a decade ago. Fortunately for us the firemen soon declared our emergency all clear and we were allowed back in to the auditorium to hear Thierry Fischer conduct Beethoven’s Symphony no. 9 with Rebecca Evans, Hanne Fischer, Andrew Kennedy and Matthew Rose. It had been a false alarm.

If only that had been the case ten years ago.

I woke up in a cold sweat this morning thinking teaching isn’t so bad, grateful that I only work part time, but then I remembered the keys. Panic set in and I calmed myself down with the thought that if necessary I’ll get the technician to use bolt cutters to slice through the padlocks. But it seems such a waste of perfectly good padlocks. So I keep trying to think back to when I last had them, what I was wearing, where I might have put them. I’m a bit touchy about keys; in my youth I lost, sorry mislaid, a fair few sets including car keys. But now at home for the last twelve years we have had a key drawer and I religiously fling car keys in there the minute I come through the door. It is a key depository and everybody uses it. Most of the time.

I now vaguely remember removing my heavy set of college keys from the lanyard and name badge so that end of term photocopying would be easier. I should have known about the potential September cold sweats and put them somewhere safe. Logically this should have been in the key drawer.

But very occasionally I have a bright idea and think of a new safe place. Like a few years ago when we were going away on holiday. I decided to put all my favourite bijoux pieces into a new  very safe place. The only trouble was when I got home I couldn’t for the life of me remember where that might be. I’d gone blank. A year later, I got out my Green flash pumps from the back of my wardrobe to play a very rare game of tennis and two gold bangles and a pair of gold earrings were lurking in the toe. I was both elated and furious at the same time. Oh yes, I know all about safe places.

Those keys could be anywhere.

An exhibition of thirty paintings by husband and wife artist duo, Sara Hayward and Paul Powis, has just opened at Malvern Theatres.  Sara’s distinctive paintings draw inspiration from her travels to places she has visited, for example, Venice and St Ives, whilst Paul’s landscapes are inspired by landscapes around the Malvern Hills as well as further afield in Italy and Spain. Sara Hayward studied at the Ruskin School of Drawing & Fine Art at Oxford University before going on to study printmaking at the Royal College of Art, London. Paul Powis trained as an abstract painter and became interested in landscape when he moved to Worcestershire from London in 1988. The exhibition runs until August 21st.

“As you enter the theatre, the paintings inspired by Venice which are hung on the main stairs, have an immediate impact due only partly to the richness of their colours. The apparent simplicity of these works belies the care with which the elements are arranged. Because these works by Sara Hayward are displayed together they successfully display the axiom “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” Each work enhances the next by its proximity and together they create a beautiful aide-memoire for those lucky enough to have visited this magical city.

Sara’s other works, inspired by coastal environments benefit by a similar unity. They reminded me of the seaside holidays of my youth. The viewer is invited to look through the open window, as if on the first morning of a fortnight away. It’s sunny, the wind blows the curtain aside and all’s well with the world.

In the restaurant area are works by Paul Powis. These draw their inspiration from further afield. Adopting a subjective approach to the colours in his palette and introducing semi-abstract elements, lift these works above the mere representational. The colours “sing”. The spacial elements achieve a satisfying harmony. It is clear to see why so many corporate clients have bought Paul’s work. It’s a pleasure to see so many of Paul’s paintings together,” says Humph Hack in his review for the What’s On online review site Remote Goat.

 Also on display in the theatre are paintings by artists Nicola Clark and Tracy Jolly.

Twice this week I’ve been wrong footed. I was up at the Barber Institute on Tuesday delivering paintings for submission to the Sunday Times Watercolour Competition 2011 and ambled upstairs to see the exhibition Court on Canvas.  At the top of the stairs I turned left into the exhibition and had a quick look but wasn’t overly impressed. There were black and white photographs of Billie-Jean King, a cheeky tennis poster (you know the one), a range of tennis rackets from throughout the ages, a case full of art deco jewellery featuring tennis motifs etc etc. All well and good but nothing exactly scintillating. So I continued on into the permanent collection, mildly disappointed, enjoying the Howard Hodgkin as always, revisiting the Vuillard, the Bonnard, Sickert, and onto my Frans Hals and Bellini favourites. I paused for a moment to listen to various excellent explanations of paintings to a school party by a young museum officer before turning right into the final room and catching the train home. Imagine my surprise therefore when I found THIS was the main room of superb, fantactic tennis paintings and prints featuring works by Eric Gill, Edward Ravilious, Percy Shakespeare, Paul Nash, Sir John Lavery, Stanley Spencer and E.H.Shephard. I was gobsmacked and spellbound, in equal measures; it’s an ace exhibition and well worth seeing. But nearly missed it.

Blow me if a similar thing didn’t happen yesterday! I met a dear friend at Compton Verney near Stratford to take in the current Stanley Spencer and the English Garden exhibition. We did a couple of rooms of garden paintings before finishing off in the final room to watch the film about his life and career. This film had originally come out in the late 70s when we had both seen the Stanley Spencer exhibition at the Royal Academy as part of our O-level studies. It was quite a long film and what with the wooden floors, visiting school parties, and open plan nature of the gallery adversely affecting the accoustics, barely audible at times. We both stuck it out however and by the end were ready to go for lunch rating the experience overall as very good but not fantastic. As we walked back through the galleries we suddenly spotted a small sign on a door saying ‘exhibition continues’. This only turned out to be the entrance to the main exhibition which we had very nearly missed: two massive rooms of far more major works than those in the previous rooms.

Later I popped into the RSC theatre to see the current Folio exhibition- a response to Shakespeare by staff and student printmakers at the RCA; prints by Norman Ackroyd, Alistair Grant (my old tutor), Joe Tilson, Elizabeth Frink and many others. It was a lovely exhibition and well worth seeing. On the two and a half hour train journey from Worcester to Stratford first thing I had got talking to two ladies about their day trip to Stratford. What are you going to do there, I asked casually. Go on the river, they replied. Well, you could always go into the theatre, I suggested. There followed a pregnant pause. Why would we want to do that? they asked in unison. Well, because it’s the home of Shakespeare theatre, they’ve just spent a trillion pounds rebuilding it, you can get a cup of tea, visit the gift shop, see an exhibition, it’s the RSC’s 50th birthday, lots of reasons, blah, blah, blah, but I suspect my well meaning suggestions were falling on deaf ears.

Well, what a week. I am well and truly cream crackered but happily so. I have participated as much as possible in the inaugural Literary Festival, reading out my own satirical piece as well as someone else’s where I played the Queen (as One does) as part of the Worcester Writers’ Circle Lampoon evening at Drummonds last Wednesday, read my short story “Whistler’s Mother” as part of the Sinister Shorts evening at the University on Friday, as well as run a Picture Book workshop with children’s book author Karen King in the very beautiful St Swithun’s Church ( I have lived in Worcester for twenty three years and am ashamed to say this was the first time I had stepped inside this beautiful interior).

As well as “performing” I have also enjoyed hearing Tony Judge talk about the writing of his first novel Sirocco Express in an interview with Peter Spalton, attended a mesmerising book binding workshop where I hand stitched two small booklets under the expert eye of Angela Sutton, heard about the writing of the play “Elgar and Alice” about Elgar’s life by Peter Sutton at the Swan Theatre, and nearly, I repeat nearly, heard William Cash talk about his book about Graham Greene’s affair which inspired “The End of the Affair” (unfortunately we turned up not realising he had cancelled. Gggrrr, William Cash, gggrrrr!)

This afternoon I am off for cake and bubbly to celebrate the 70th Anniversary of Worcester Writers’ Circle and shall no doubt read a few of my haiku, and tonight I am off to read more haiku at Malvern Theatre as a member of Malvern Writers’ Circle. Today and tomorrow are the last two days to catch our Literary Portraits exhibition here at our Battenhall studios. Oh! and I’ve got toothache. It’s all go!

So what now? Well, I have started writing a non fiction book about life drawing so watch this space and I’ll keep you informed. If and when it’s published you’ll be the first to know and I’ll encourage you to buy a half a dozen copies to keep the bare wolf from this door.

Our literary portrait exhibition opens on Monday for one week as part of the Worcestershire Literary Festival and there are twenty four portraits of key authors on show. Paul is showing watercolours of Salman Rushdie, Seamus Heaney, Martin Amis, Colm Toibin and  Will Self , and I am showing portraits in oil or acrylic of Virginia Woolf, Carol Ann Duffy, Germaine Greer, Enid Blyton, Anita Brookner, Agatha Christie, Simone de Beauvoir, Laurie Anderson, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Dylan Thomas, Sir John Betjeman, Ezra Pound, Louis MacNeice, Laurie Lee, Ted Hughes, Edith Sitwell, V.S Pritchett, and Alan Bennett. Each portrait is accompanied by a quote either from the writer themself or from one of their works. I am delighted with the exhibition and would dearly love to show it at other literary festival in this country or abroad.

We were delighted at the opening of the exhibition to welcome from the Williamstown Literary Festival, Australia, Councillor Angela Altair who happened to be over in the UK for a visit. She was incredibly enthusiastic and complimentary about the exhibition depite being fresh off the plane.

The following evening she attended the official opening of the Literary Festival in front of the Mayor of Worcester and the Dean of Worcester Cathedral in the search for Worcestershire’s first Poet Laureate. All the contestants were great but the award finally  went to Theo Theobald who I thought was brilliant, very funny and incredibly engaging. He reminded me of Harry Worth in both looks and delivery which just shows my age.  One poem was inspired by a bottle of Worcestershire Sauce, and covered everything from culinary expertise to marital relationships; another was called, “I’ve fallen in love with the girl from H & M,” which had a hilarious punchline and had the Cathedral filled with laughter and applause, a rare feat.  We were enthralled, he was a great choice, and the judges came up trumps.  With real presence on stage he showed great originality in both poems and I for one will definitely go and hear him again as a newy converted fan. Well done, Theo!

Watch Sara talking about the festival on Youtube:

The inaugural Worcestershire Arts Trail went really well; Paul and I met some lovely people and the four days went very quickly. I am sure that by next year there will be even more participants and even more people coming round. By next year we intend to have more drawings, prints and cards available. It felt good to be able to recommend other artist studios in the vicinity for interested parties to discover.

We then spent a magical few days on the coast in mid Wales catching up with the Museum of Modern Art in Macchynleth and sunbathing amongst the dunes in Aberdovey. The weather was kind and the wild natural beauty of the area delightful after being studio bound for the previous few days. Although we were camping we managed to find the nearest 4* hotel at lunch time and treat ourselves to the most delicious three course lunches you can imagine. This turned it into more of a glamping experience but goodness me, having left the kids behind who can blame us! Sadly however this week I now have to diet trying to lose all the extra pounds I put on. Ah well. It seemed a good idea at the time but boy! does sea air make you ravenous.

Now the inaugural Worcestershire Literary Festival is nearly upon us and we are busy framing paintings for the literary portrait exhibition we are holding here in our studios at 74 Battenhall Avenue. I am also going to be involved reading at Worcester Writers’ Circle events during the festival and being on the door selling tickets for some of the events, as well as running a picture book workshop with Karen King. But well done, Lisa Ventura, for organising it and getting it off the ground. Its good to have a cultural event going on in the city and I hope everyone tries to support it. There are so many interviews, workshops, book signings, readings taking place there is surely something for everybody. Small is beautiful this year but I am sure that by next year, just like the Arts Trail, it will have grown. Check out: www.worcslitfest.com for all the up to date details.