The Art of Life

Well, what a couple of years that has been! The pandemic forced a retreat from the studio and from exhibitions for a while and so, apart from one online workshop each week, my creative focus and energies shifted to visualising and creating the home life that we wanted.  We (Jo and I) began by getting married in Scottish woodland (near our regular haunt -Watercolour Cottage, near Ardgour) - a beautiful, small and sacred ceremony in perfect surroundings. 

Shortly after, we began the process of moving house and building the dream - creating a wonderful new environment which would inspire all that we do in the future. This has involved (aside from a lot of prayer and soul searching) moving to a cottage on the edge of Roughlee, creating 'chicken world' in the garden,  knocking down and replacing a workshop (which now has views over the countryside) and replacing the existing summerhouse with a hardier log cabin style - one which has an open view of Pendle Hill and is a very peaceful and inspiring space. 

So now we have a place that we love - a 'house of belonging' (to borrow a title from a David Whyte poem), from which we can dream, envision and then plan and work towards bringing things into being. We are feeling very blessed and grateful and are still pinching ourselves to make sure that it's not just a dream! Here are some photo's of our 'new' place at Ousel Rock, Roughlee.

The 'house of belonging'

The workshop (pre-furniture!)

Alice guarding the summerhouse

Inside the summerhouse (1)

Inside the summerhouse (2)

A room with a view

Mist over pendle from the summerhouse

Contemplative corner

Lola May's memorial garden (our king charles spaniel) and Maude

Tuppence and Alice at Sunset

Chicken World

Jo with Anne and Phil - great friends, great evening

Here's to dreaming, cheers!

So having concentrated on the Art of life for this 'season', it is time to bring the inspiration back into the practise of art and teaching! Watch this space for exciting updates over the next few days and weeks.