Sunday, May 16, 2010

If the Strike don't get you, the Ash Cloud will

I could say "all set" to return home tomorrow. Flights, booked many moons ago to keep the cost down resulted in a 2-leg trip via London Heathrow. We have the the flight San Francisco to London confirmed (but the cabin crew strike will probably commence while we're half-way across the Atlantic - an interesting thought - and the ash cloud is, at this very moment, creeping towards SE UK). The leg Heathrow to Paris also confirmed after the original was cancelled due to the strike but now we'll miss our train to Brive so that had to be rebooked.

So it's not so much "all set" as "emergency rations being packed in our hand-luggage, check-in bags contain items capable of being lost forever without too much pain".

Looking forward to "doing art" again soon(er or later). Also, looking forward to the Correzien pace of life again and Real Food. There are many things I like about America but its culture is truly one of Conspicuous Consumption.

Now we need a bit of luck, then we'll be back on Wednesday....

 

Mike

Posted via web from The CA3 Newsblog

Friday, May 7, 2010

Wine and Music in California, Islands and Spitoons in Washington State

The wine tasting with music affair took place last week in downtown Morgan Hill. You had to purchase a ticket which entitled you to around 20 small 'tastings' of the local wineries' products. On registering you purchase at a table on the pavement in front of the local theatre, you were issued with a list and a commemorative wineglass with which you ambled around the small downtown area, sampling the wines which were dispensed in a variety of shops, cafes, restaurants etc. Each sample was noted by crossing it off your list. Meanwhile, several musical groups and individuals were doing their stuff on the pavements or in the shops. An entertaining afternoon in the sunshine.

 

We flew up to Seattle last Monday to stay with my neice.  After poking around downtown on Tuesday where we found a few galleries in the cold and rain, we took a much more adventurous drive yesterday 80 miles to the north to visit the San Juan islands which are just south of the Canadian border. A ferry from Anacortes took about an hour through a maze of mostly deserted rocky, pineclad islands to Orcas, the largest of the group. What a beautiful place, Click on the link to save me wittering on about it, but suffice to say that is well worth the visit.  Noted an interesting sign in Anacortes as we returned from the ferry port: "Need Medical Services? Call Anna Bohnker".

 

This morning we drove up into the Mount Baker mountain park area to the east- part of the Cascade mountain range. About an hour later we left the freeway and soon arrived at a tiny village called Roslyn.

The link gives you a taste of this extraordinary place.  Originally a coal-minig village it now still boasts "The Brick" tavern - oldest in Washington State, opened 1889.  And it looks it. Bar furniture imported from England around 1900 and still in use, including a spitoon gutter with running water at the feet of the patrons - you can see it on my picture here.

Needless to say, Fleur dumped her handbag in it without looking as we heaved ourselves onto our barstools... the barman politely told us it wasn't actually in use at that moment.

On the art front, managed a tiny watercolour and a pen drawing of my neice's 2 teenage daughters so far.  Could do better......

 

Mike

Posted via web from The CA3 Newsblog

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Your CA3 roving reporter in downtown Morgan Hill, California

je fais mes excuses a mes Amis francaises. Tout est en anglais... The art scene here not too evident yet- if you don't count music. I've seen some gallery stuff in nearby Los Gatos, a wealthy town on the highway south of San Francisco, on the way to Santa Cruz. The standard of work is not as good as you'd expect, despite eye-watering prices. I managed to lock the hire-car key in it's boot after parking there yesterday morning. An interesting hour followed on the phone to the carhire insurance peolpe who were about to organise a tow-away (oh gawd!) as no-one could tell me how to open the boot without the key or dynamite. Luckily I found a hidden button tucked away behind the steering wheel and so saved a disaster. The music scene is lively. Spent yesterday evening in a wine bar, entertained by a jazz quartet. This afternoon there is street jazz and wine- tasting nearby. Sounds interesting. Hope to sketch there, or at least take lots of pictures. Mike

Posted via web from The CA3 Newsblog

Friday, April 16, 2010

Been Busy! - J'ai été très occupé

This acrylic panel took much longer than usual because it presented several problems - how to show a mass of trees receding into the distance without making the greens too boring.  In fact, my ususal technique of short brush-strokes, merging colours where necessary, turned out to be the best way here. It took a long time because there was so much of it.
The perspective and impression of distance problem solved itself because the subject of a river flowing towards the viewer meant that I didn't have to convey very much aerial perspective.

J'avait passé beaucoup plus temps que d'habitude parce qu'il présentait plusieurs problèmes - comment afficher une masse d'arbres fuyant à la distance sans les verts trop ennuyeux. En outre, il n'etait pas necessaire de lutter avec "aerial perspective." parce que le sujet a resolu ce probleme soi même, mais il y avait un tas des arbres!...

Detail..

Detail...

Detail

 

Mike

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Sunday, April 11, 2010

The first April panel is finished. This a typical bucolic subject, beloved of the resaurants we are supplying.

The panel is MDF as usual and around 1.6 metres wide.
It took just over 10 hours to do, although it has yet to be varnished.

It was entirely executed with the studio door wide open this time, spring is really giving me a push now and this morning I've already started the next panel.
We've started our musical endeavours again - just three of us. We've clubbed together and bought some PA kit so we can make a reasonable amount of noise if anyone asks us to play for them (Amplifier/mixer, speaker, microphones) - all we need now is some practic! We're down to 2 guitars, the occasional keyboard use and a singer but i'm attempting to make some 'backing tracks (via 'Garageband on the Apple Mac) to give us a bit more 'body'. Tomorrow evening I'll be attending a meeting to help organise a music festival in June at a nearby village so we may have a gig....
We'll see.
Busy, busy............

Mike

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Thursday, April 1, 2010

Another UK trip(up). The politics of despair and the despair of politics.

Just got back from a week in the Old Country. Frankly, very depressing. Used Flybe (Limoges - Southampton) for a change as we thought it would be a bit cheaper overall but the whole thing was a trial (security, extra baggage payments, inconvenience of not being able to carry extra stuff), so won't fly again in a hurry. Car much more convenient and doesn't cost much more overall.
Weather was awful and politics worse. The anodyne "debate" between the three putative Chancellors-to-be was pretty pathetic. I found myself aligned with Simon Jenkins - have a look at this:

And then there was the nonsense in the UK media over the possibility of a 'huing parliament'. The Guardian tried to sum this up:

What a farce! What a muddle. Look at this quote:

"The head of the civil service, Sir Gus O'Donnell, updated a manual today which sets out how the key players are expected to act if no party can instantly form a government.

In one of a number of precautionary steps, it has been agreed that parliament should not meet to decide if a government can be formed for as long as 18 days after polling day.

The extension to the period is to give the political parties extra leeway to create a government commanding the support of the Commons.

After the 18 days the Tories could then table an immediate motion of no confidence.

The manual is designed to protect the Queen from being asked prematurely to invite someone to form a government, or to prevent a constitutional impasse causing a panic in the financial markets at a time when the UK's triple-A credit rating is under threat .

O'Donnell is due to meet with other senior civil servants in New Zealand shortly to discuss how they have handled hung parliaments."

Is this the way to run a country?
"..it makes yer want ter eat yer young..." (Someone said this, I think)


Posted via email from Michael's posterous

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Blog Standard

Ironically, the reason I haven't blogged in "The Xaintrie Blog" since January is because I've gone Facebook, Twitter then 'Posterous' new blog (for our Art group here) since then. It's time I consolidated all this verbal thrashing about...
Facebook I dislike - messy interface, only good for checking up on activities of other family members and friends who use it but I don't join in very often.
I'm a fan of Twitter though. I like its simplicity and the fact that one can find a group of tweeters who have similar interests to your own, then 'follow' them. More often than not, they will start to follow you and as long as you don't let the list become too long (I follow around 35 artists - nearly all of them follow me) then you can keep up with their tweets. Web links can be inserted in the short texts (tweets are only 140 characters long) and a twin site called 'Twitpic' can allow you to publish a picture. No more complexity necessary. I have added one or two others to follow out of curiosity, and mostly 'unfollowed' them pretty quickly therafter as there is a lot rubbish out there. One enduring outsider for me however is Stephen Fry - always entertaining and full of fascinating outside web-references.
Posterous is now my favourite for actually creating the blogs, simply because all you have to do is write an email. As soon as you send it to them via your Posterous postbox, they manage the whole thing and it appears as a blog within minutes. I'm doing this right now, writing this email which will be published immediately I finish - to the Xaintrie Blog and to "Michaels Posterous" (http://mapmaker.posterous.com/). I've set it to automatically write a Twitter entry also.  I write separate emails to our artgroup blog which is called 'The CA3 Newsblog' (http://ca3.posterous.com/). 

Xaintrie news: Winter seems to have ended at last. I'm no longer lighting the fire after breakfast - last year this event took place a couple of weeks earlier. This year the cold was not too intense but lasted much longer than previous years. No rain to speak of though.
The fishing season started last week but I've resisted a cold wade into our lovely Maronne thus far. The fishing experts tell us the trout are still dozing on the river bed as the water is still too cold. I dipped a thermometer into it last week and registered 6 degrees C. Since then the weather has become very warm and spring is twittering everywhere (pun might have been intended - not sure).
We've decided to grow some veg this year so I've cut a chink out of the lawn (only around 4 square metres at the moment) which will become a raised 'potager'. A friend nearby says he has a pile of good soil we can have so that's the next task.
Sun is shining, temperature's rising. I'm off - outside to get some...

Posted via email from Michael's posterous

Sunday, January 17, 2010

A blogsite for CA3 that we can all use - Un "blogsite" pour CA3 que nous pouvons tout utiliser

I thought this might be a good idea.  Write whatever you think might be of inetrest to members of CA3, whenever you like.  All you have to do is compose an email to :

J'ai pensé que ce pourrait être une bonne idée. Ecrivez ce que vous coyez peut-être de inetrest aux membres 
de CA3, quand vous voulez. Tout ce que vous avez à faire est de rédiger un email à: 
post@ca3.posterous.com

Mike

http://ca3.posterous.com

Posted via email from The CA3 Newsblog

Sunday, January 10, 2010

It's been a while, but I feel like a blog; Resolutions versus Aspirations

A pleasant Christmas came and went while I wasn't looking. The New Year celebration was enjoyed with friends yet now, after only a week or so, it too has shrunk into a slightly blurred experience like a recent dream, more a fading feeling than memory. Is this a sympton of old(ish) age?
The months ahead are already filling with projects and promises however. I feel enlivened by the prospects, despite the cold, grey-and-white weather. As for 'Resolutions', I want to 'do' more art -painting and drawing. Fleur and I are booked for a two-person exhibition in the early summer in Tulle so this means more thought and planning than usual and definitely more work. It's some time ahead but I know how time will out-run me as usual.
Xaintrie is under snow at present but we're not overly inconvenienced. I'm still not sure how the main roads can be simply wet rather than icy when the temperature is well below freezing. I know the local councils spread salt but there never seems to be ony 'grit' as in the UK. Do the French use only salt - I don't know.
I do know though that it's too miserable to go out at the moment and as it's Sunday and the log fire is blazing away (I blogged on the subject of wood as a heating fuel in the 'Xaintrie Blog' in November 2008), I'll do some more painting. Trouble is, my bedroom-studio is in the roof-space and poorly insulated. There's a limit to how long one can work in temperatures of around 14 centigrade (as it is at present). Ironically, it's over 20 in the lounge, below this room. I can get the studio up to 15 or 16 on a day like this (it's -3, that's minus three outside at present).
So - that's another project for this year; insulate this room. Tricky though, 'cos I want to keep the splendid beams and roof trusses visible. Here I am, thinking about doing some work on this rather oversize portrait. Why so big? Don't ask, as I don't know.

Happy New Year

Posted via email from Michael's posterous

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