Mint scented is my favourite, though I like lime too, it reminds me of Rowntree’s fruit pastilles and it really makes my mouth water. I have no idea what scent the blue one was only that I liked the colours so I pulled it out of the bathroom to paint it.
A5 painting “Shower Time” Original Source shower gel painted in acrylic
I love this place, this town this beach and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. I grew up here on this beach, it isn’t necessarily the most beautiful place in the world, but it is up there for me.
It’s summer the weather at point of me sitting here typing is hot, and my face itches, my nose, my eyes and at times my skin. It drives me up the wall, I hate it, I’m not a fan of the warm weather. To make it manageable on days when hay fever is bad I take one so then I can get to work and not be bothered by the itchiness.
If like me you can’t cope buy this, frame it put it near your door as a reminder when you are leaving to take a cheeky antihistamine.
The Golden Mile in Blackpool lies between the Pleasure Beach in the South with the South Pier past all the amusements, the Blackpool Tower and finishes at the North Pier. This stretch is Golden because it is where all the foot traffic is and you see crowds in the summer walking along the Golden Mile using businesses as they go.
It was the boom in the town that had my Grandad’s family of blacksmiths move to the coast from Myerscough. The promise of work and trade brought them to this area of the coast in the 19th century near what was the Blackpool Central station. The rest of that family moved to Fleetwood and they worked alongside the boat builders in Fleetwood.
Today is a lazy Sunday, I’m sitting with my family we have Netflix on in the background, and I am thinking about the last eighteen months since I started working on being a painter as well as a potter. It has been a journey of exploration, of finding myself. Though I have been drawing every day for the last six years, it wasn’t until I started this as a business that I really considered what it was I actually liked to draw, I just drew.
somedays I drew what was on my desk, from life fruit, jars, tins, packets just everything and anything. one day I realised I wanted to draw landscapes and buildings, so I started to work from my own collection of photographs.
A view I had never seen before in Fleetwood.
As part of Tram Sunday (Fleetwood festival of transport 2022), I went out with my camera in hand and started taking pictures of the festival but also bits of buildings and found an alleyway that I have never noticed before bear the market, and as plenty of people were walking around the town with cameras I didn’t feel weird as I had done before and I really love the alleyway as an image. There is so much going on from rendered walls some with iron oxide drips, the weeds growing, the cobblestone wall which morphs into a brick wall, and the random little lamppost ties it all together in a nice neat vertical element.
When I wanted to explore further afield I didn’t have the time to really travel, so I started using google street view to travel. I still use it at times but I don’t use it completely in my drawings, I use it as a jumping point, imagining the buildings from a different angle, a different perspective.
I want to keep exploring, keep developing my skills, keep painting and move further afield than I currently can. I also would really like to experiment with woodblock printing, recently as part of my super secret project I did some printing off of some driftwood I have collected over the years and I really want to play about with that some more.
Blackpool is a hive of activity, selling food to holiday makers along the seafront is a lucrative business. every space is taken up between food and B&Bs and even entertainment.
Original A4 watercolour painting with drawing in ink and posca markers.
