Lemon a day

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The decorating is nearly done; I needed to get the dust off the stairs and in the process nearly pulled the vacuum cleaner on my head. This was dramatic enough to raise a comment from No1 and No2 who being off school with the snow are clamped to the beanbag behind the infernal games machine. A comment only, they didn’t find it dramatic enough to come and see if I was alright. I obviously need drama lessons. No1 did go out tobogganing and No2 is practicing his Christmas song on the guitar,” I believe in Father Christmas” by Greg Lake. It’s quite hard to sing but surprisingly he wants me to struggle with him on this one. I am better with OTT sweeping dramatic tunes but I am doing my best to manage fairly subtle but heartfelt…..

The snow has been the deepest we have ever seen here, actually the deepest we have ever seen in Sussex, just over a foot or thirty centimetres plus. My neighbour who moved here in 1959 said that there were times when the snow was thigh deep on the short slope down to the main road. Tonight has been a strange sequence. First it went very cold and a fog started to form then the fog vanished and the air got warmer now the rain is starting and the sound of a thaw the dripping and the soft thuds of falling snow have taken over from the self-conscious silence of the snowy nights. They say that later the cloud will clear and the temperature will drop again.

The warm roof (insulation between and over the rafters) is brilliant the central heating goes off at 9.30am and with the help of the wood burner I can manage to keep the temperature at around 19C in most of the house. Running the stove everyday and letting it burn slowly overnight is working, there is a residual warmth in the brick chimney which makes a big difference. Some days I have turned the central heating on for an hour after lunch but generally not even when it is 4 below zero outside.

Speaking of the snow and cold, I went to bash the snow off a thick evergreen tree which can break under the weight of the snow one night, I used the broom and cascades of powdery snow crashed to the ground as twenty sparrows burst from the branches fully indignant and no doubt very resentful.

I managed a painting today, it’s one of my favourite mugs with some of the hydrangea which I dried before it went brown and manky outside.

In the interests of fairness No2 son was dispatched on foot to the supermarket to get his chicken.

#159 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog

NFS size 6 in x 6 in, 15cm x 15cm

The decorating is beginning to make the centre of the house look more finished. DIY Dad has got to some tricky conceptual stuff which involves making neat joints in the skirting board where the corner of the room is an oblique angle with a diagonal descending valley board joining (exposed wooden beam). I have the better grasp of 3D problems and in any case the problem is of my own invention as I designed the extension, so I feel obliged to sweat the angles and help make it work. The extension works as a space and it is, I am sure, structurally sound -  but my not being an architect can leave some awkward detailing in the final finish. The valley boards are two immense planks of oak which lace through the room and the room opening off it; from the window the triangle they make can be seen clearly. I love that as it was not part of the aesthetic  plan but a structural necessity and the way the oak framer worked, yet it has turned out very pleasing to the eye, well at least my eye.

The meal this evening was some home made burgers that NO2 son made in school, but he then made some lamb and mint burgers when he got home as well, the first ones were veal and sage. They were really very good, he dosn’t cook often but when he does he is very thorough and I’m not just referring to his ability to get every last jar of herbs out of the cupboard. Waitrose sell veal that is not the cruel white stuff but more like the oldfashioned suckler herd veal.

Today’s picture is simply a coffee cup in pencil. I also tried to sketch No2 son at the computer but I did not catch him in a still mood.

#155 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog

 Click here to purchase   size 6 in x 9 in, 15cm x 24cm

I found the most extraordinary picture on the web it is by an artist from Myanmar or Burma, Win Pe Myint,  he is both a painter and a Botanist as I am. It has, I am sure, a wealth of story in the objects chosen. The postcard in the foreground is Picasso’s ‘ Acrobat with Ball’, it has the most concentrated air of still contemplation I have seen in a picture, and it has a very quiet lemon in there too.

Here is the link:

http://www.asia-fineart.com//painting_details.php?painting_id=1163&order_by=`painting`.`title`&page_from=artists&item=0&num_paintings=10&artist_id=87&status=1

Yesterdays picture is another in the series of things picked up in this autumn, here are some berries, the feather of a green woodpecker and a distorted maple leaf. I am putting all of these for sale on my Lemonaday-shop as it forms a permanent Gallery. Or rather it should do, having checked the links they all seem to have broken.

No1 son should return today, I dread to think what state he will be in the weather has been foul for the last two days. Still no news could be good news…

153 a painting a day or three a month if you are lucky

 Click here to purchase   size 6 in x 9 in, 15cm x 24cm

There are good times of year and bad times of year. This is not my favourite in many ways; the hour has changed and we all feel it. Meals feel necessary earlier as the stomach clocks are struggling to adjust. The weather is mild which is a bonus, the house is warm all day following a short blast from the radiators in the morning, which is a vindication of the warm roof insulation. I love the air and the light at this time of year. There are times when the colours are brighter than anything spring or summer can offer. Hence the leaves in todays painting. There are rows of trees on the drive to school every day that are just glowing at the moment.

I did do a painting yesterday but when I showed it to DIY Dad he asked which way up it was supposed to go…all very well if you are an abstract artist but I’m not.

The nasty neutral magnolia paintwork on the walls in this room did not scrub up well, we therefore repainted it. The walls are still neutral but the carpet will be bright or dark. I know carpet is not fashionable but we have solid floors and carpet is warmer. In fact the floors are the least ecological part of this house as they are only insulated in the kitchen diner. A good carpet will have to stand in for insulation in this room. The walls are now a very pale grey with a warm tone to it. The name is a marketers dream…for a certain section of society…’Egyptian Cotton’. It is not the colour of calico or unbleached cotton or indeed bleached cotton, mind you I have yet to see a Magnolia flower that is the colour of magnolia paint. ‘Its not magnolia’, I think they could call a paint that and do just as well.

 Mainly its done(the room that is,apart from the carpet). I ,being mindful of the age of the children ,asked for everyones views on the carpet,No2 son wants a sample very like the old carpet (stupidly pale and neutral),no1 son cannot see the point and thinks the old carpet should be patched (possibly using the samples from the carpet shop?), husband thinks red would be nice but not so red it looks like we are expecting the Queen. I want aubergine but I know that it too will show the dirt. Like all consultation processes on the modern era it will be a scam, I will go back to the carpet shop and choose what I like, come home and point out a) all their ideas had flaws,yes they were rubbish, b) in two weeks they will have forgotten what colour it is and will have covered it in sweet wrappers anyway.

#150 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog

Blueberry has the most extraordinary red and yellow leaves before they drop.

apple leaves in the garden

Click here to bid   size 6 in x 9 in, 15cm x 24cm

There was a classic shepherds warning this morning lighting up the bathroom with a coral glow. By ten it had begun to rain and has continued on and off all day.

I was very lazy today the children got just what they wanted, pizza at lunch and fish and chips in the evening. The only homemade thing they had all day was an apple crumble which was cooked with the pizza.

Maths continued on the kitchen table, in fact a sheet of it appears in todays painting.

#148 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog

Sunrise over next doors building project, they are getting ready to roof this bit I think, but the scaffolders

had to be told to take the scaffolding poles off the new fence. The sky was actually several shades brighter

 than this, honest.

 Click here to bid   size 7 in x 9 in 17cm x 22cm, charcoal and wash on Fabriano paper

On Friday I started to investigate the problem of what happens to the GCSE curriculum as it seems possible to me that local schools are only teaching a part of the syllabus; they may not be alone in this.

I started with OFSTED as they have given the school, where only part of the GCSE syllabus was taught to my son, a good report. They have not heard of the problem and tell me that it is not really within their remit. They suggested the Department of Education. The D. of E. said that they were not aware of a problem and it was not the sort of thing they dealt with. They suggested two more organisations, OFQUAL and QCDA, the people I spoke to here had casually heard of teaching to the exam but they saw it as something the media went on about. They finally said that it could only be dealt with in writing, so now I must wait up to two weeks for a reply.

Meanwhile I am contacting an academic who has said something about this in the press and I will try and find a journalist who can shed some light on the matter. No1 son thinks I am nuts; if a GCSE can be got by doing half the work he believes that can only be a good thing…..in the short term son, in the short term.

I was waiting for the paint to dry on my painting of the day and shaking out some clean washing when something started buzzing in it…it was the biggest hornet I have seen this year it must be a queen. I got it into a wine glass in the end and took it out to take it’s chance in the cold wintery night out there.See picture below:-

Recently painting of the ceiling has been more to the forefront of our minds than watercolour but we ran out of brilliant white and what with the twittering and the lumpen teenagers on half term I didn’t remember to get another pot. Anyway DIY Dad has retired to bed early with a cold after a miserable day negotiating time sheets with colleagues who want to bill 31+ days a month……

I have finished putting apples away now and just have the remainder left to get juiced on Thursday. The picture is charcoal and wash of fruit nearly ready to store, I just wrap each good fruit in newspaper and put it in the shed which is cool( but not very cool yet on sunny days like today). The garden is full of jobs that need doing lots of things need rescuing from the cold before it does for them.

#147 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog

The body as thick, no thicker than my drawing pencil…shudder.

  size 6 in x 10 in 15cm x 20cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper

Life or the ongoing maths test that masquerades as life is changing. There was frost on the windscreen back and front this morning. The plants do not seem to be affected so far. Just to be on the safe side I brought in the most tender fuchsia “Thalia” and some Echeverias and the Baster Kobus which comes from Namibia and will probably cope with quite bit of cold but not damp cold. The Kalahari is surprisingly cold at night in the winter, seven or eight blankets and a husband were not enough. We used to wedge the baby between us on the coldest nights, for his sake- not ours obviously.

For todays painting I have changed the background by using a yellow pillowcase; I wanted the daffodil sky look. It’s not there yet but the colours Gauguin used are clearly findable in my world. It is very easy as a Northern European to get bogged down in drabness. I remember a painter in Cyprus, Neocles whose painting were the essence of a sun drenched day on the beach and looking at my painting realising that I was still on a non- Mediterranean dull palette. It took a conscious effort to do a painting in a better colour set for the climate. I was working in oils there as I had the space in a barn of a rented house on the Green line. Being on the line reduced the rent a bit (not enough to compensate for the Turkish Commandos crawling through the back garden one night after the Cypriots had nicked the Turkish flag on a stormy night for a laugh….well they were only kids, teenagers with large guns ….probably only a year older than No1 son, which is a very scary thought.) A full international incident was avoided because Panikos who was very short and very goofy was on guard that night, I asked him what he had done when the commandos climbed out of the dry riverbed into my garden, “ Shit I was scared” he said” I put down my gun quietly and I hid, they crawled off that way” he pointed downstream. Thinking about the spending cuts he could probably teach the British Army a thing or two about how to get by without using any of that over expensive ammo stuff.

I think the Government should simplify and declutter…stuff all the complicated spending cuts that pick on the employed middle class parents and the sick and unemployed, the coalition has already shown they can break promises with aplomb, just put up Income Tax and keep it dead simple, but put the resources into checking up on the people who hide income and dodge tax (like the occaisional MP ). No, we haven’t forgotten.

 #145 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog

 size 6 in x 5.5 in 15cm x 13cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper

The sky looks like a Gauguin painting this afternoon, orange and brooding purple with patches of pale yellow over suburbia , it is not quite le Poldu but then they probably don’t have a station there.

As the colours Gauguin used are ones I hesitate to put in a picture I have to ask why and why not. This is a study of a rose where I have chosen to show all the possible colours of the background and there are the puces and oranges and the glowing pale green in the bags and folders of everyday life. Its not entirely comfortable but it has a nice exotic feel, fifties Cuba or Florida.

Well that was last night, today I don’t like it at all but it is my painting a day so…blog it anyway; it’s not for sale as I think it’s a bit unhinged. Like the economy it’s gone over the edge and that is just about to speed up it seems.

Oh..did I mention I went to the Gauguin exhibition at the Tate Modern?…and I got to hold a ceramic sunflower seed for …at least 30 seconds, it was like being seven again and bead swopping. Actually I think they should do that- you go to the exhibition with some thing you feel is equivalent in value (first define your value) and see if the curator will swop it for a seed.

#144 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog

 size 6 in x 4.5 in 15cm x 12cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper

A Good Crop of Cookers

This is a very rushed post. There has been too much to do today. I decided to tackle the honey fungus , buy a sack of potatoes , locate a plasterer, and find somewhere to juice apples closer to here than the place I’ve used before.

Once I had got hold of the cleaning fluid that has a second use as a fungus protector, I dug up all the three tufts of honey fungus. I then poured solution into the holes and then poured it over the bases of all the apple trees roses and shrubs in the area. It smells just like Jeyes Fluid, which always reminds me of the toilet arrangements at Guide camp. Apparently this can cause it to fruit more because its underground ‘bootlaces’ are knocked back , however the article goes on to say the spores can only infect dead wood. (Whereas the rhizomorphs or bootlaces can infect happy flowering plants and treees that I really want to keep) Then I decided to remove lots of stuff that was getting too big to let me check that there were no more signs of the lurgy hidden beneath. I ended up with a pile of cut stuff the size of a sleeping pair of hippos.

Opened my blog today and found someone from Australia selling cures for nail fungus attempting to post without saying anything about the subjects on the blog, are they a huge fan of watercolour or are they just trying to sell me a cure for my cured nails? I keep my nails sweet with neat tea tree oil and metallic green nail varnish. I must have put toenails in as a tag at some point and that had lured them or some automatic post generator to my site. Either that or they can smell my feet from Australia! Or they think honey fungus is a toe disease and not a pathogen of woody plants.

This apple is a James Grieve well it could be, we keep getting revisions on the community orchard apples.

#139 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog

 size 6 in x 7 in 15cm x 17cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper

Today and yesterday were wet on and off, wind and rain, horrid inside and out. It would have been fine inside as the house is warm without being heated due to the insulation being so very good. However we were engaged in a mammoth circulation of our possessions to clear space for a plasterer to mend the hole where Matt, the builder’s labourer, fell through the ceiling. Having established that he didn’t need an ambulance I considered finishing the job and kicking him through to down stairs but relented. After all there’s nothing about a load of fibreglass, muck, plaster and sawdust on your bed to make one upset, is there? The problem with bad builders is they are bad in so many different ways. By the time Matt went through the ceiling I was ready to believe he had done it deliberately. I was aware by this stage that the owner of the company was not asking us for money in a sensible systematic way and then panicking that he didn’t have money to cover wages and asking for it at short notice and then if it wasn’t obtainable in time blaming us for the short wages that I am sure the men suffered from time to time.

We also need the new cupboards plastering so nothing can be stored there, the hall and landing need painting shortly so nothing can stay there, our new bedroom needs the floor sanding so…sorry where is all this going …in the studio?…and you think I will be able to use a press in there and work round it all?…ah yes I could throw it all away but….I don’t really want to. There is a view upheld by tutors at college that an artist collects and that this somehow vindicates their body of work. They were encouraging collection in other words, I cannot imagine being in a position where I needed encouraging hoarding, sorry collecting things, it is a great failing of mine, but I am not sure that it makes one artistic.

At one point I came to the baskets where my best jumpers were stored and the woolly walking socks for Christmas stockings. These had been fine at Christmas but since then some devastating American form of clothes moth had got in and gone through a shawl that was so fine I had not known it was wool and all the jumpers were full of gaping holes. I thought the socks looked rescueable and microwaved them to kill any living creature…how was I to know they weren’t 100% ? After less than two minutes small patches were turning into melted black ooze and smelling utterly dreadful. I am not popular with anyone. After extensive airing and cleaning the smell is still lingering in draws and cupboards.

The community orchard apples have been to West Dean (with someone else) and back and some of the identifications agree with ones we got by using an online key…Carlyle Codlin and Laxtons Reward. One each to DIY Dad and I. We are in disagreement with the experts on a number of other apples but I think I have one of the pears; Packhams Triumph is an Australian pear but was planted in the UK. It makes a decent crumble and I suspect it would juice rather well and eat well later on.

The grapes came from the market and once the boys had recovered from the shock of” PIPS!?” they disappeared very fast.

I also insisted that we picked the cooking apple tree today as the wind was starting to knock the apples off in bulk. No1 and No2 son refused to put on their shoes for a long time until harsh words and threats got them outside. Before we had finished it began to rain and still we picked. In the end No2 was enjoying the rain and being up a tree until me on the ladder and him in the branches were getting along famously. We have nearly cleared the tree and have a giant stack of apples which now need sorting and wrapping for storage in the shed. I think I will get about five trays of top quality apples and plenty for now and then some for juicing.

The best part of today was visiting a lovely open studio in a village with old friends. There were paintings, sculptures/cabinets and quilts which were really restoring, the artist Heather told me she had planned for a year to make it all work well. Her studio looks over their garden to the Downs.

 Alison

#138 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog