Lost

Oh when will it all be well again? When will the storm break, the thunder and lightening turn to a cleansing shower of rain? Instead I lie in her hammock in the garden she created from chaos. Oh yes it rains on me there and on her not half a mile away. I can move to our bed of thirty years, warm and dry but alone.

What is it in our evolution, genes and nurture that makes us hurt so? They say elephants grieve too, why? What is the point? What advantage is there in this catastrophic emotion we feel? Will I ever accept the terrible waste of this precious precious being I love so much?

They complained that they needed a second van to bring the flowers to the church. A tent at the west door doubled the congregation to three hundred. The postman thought my daughters were both getting married. The Mrs Bennet in her would have giggled at that! How can I reply to all those people? What can they do to bring her back?

I was lucky. Thirty years of marriage to a wondergirl, full of fun, full of life, she prodding me on and kept us all going. What ever life threw at us we were together keeping each other from faltering. Now it’s different, I am a little boy again who’s lost his mother in the crowd, who can’t remember what he is doing or where he is going. Decisions over the tiniest things are impossible to make and friends can’t find the words, just don’t know what to say; so we joke and avoid the subject and the songs of ABBA ring in my head and moths fly dangerously fast around our bedroom and tears come and go and the wound gets bigger and bigger and it hurts more and more and I worry about the children, are they safe, how will they ever come to terms with this?

I want a grandfather clock like she did, one that ticks like she did, and chimes like she did, to keep me on my toes like she did, which needs winding up like she did and needs to be cherished like she was.

Alfred Boucher Sculpture

Musee des Beaux Arts in Pau,

http://www.pau.fr/le_reve/culture/20051008_142051

seems to be a place that needs visiting soon especially as it has, according to Sotheby’s, the original marble of this beautiful work by Alfred Boucher French (1850-1934). I have mentioned him before and added this to my Top 1000 Sculptures of all time. (and also found here )

Patina Day

Getting there! see here too http://saved-from-the-bin.blogspot.com/

Garden Open Days Dorset and Art and Sculpture Trail

Have a look at that little poster, the colourful one and you will know what this is about!
Martin Debenham, under the Mulberry tree (we are in Debenham country)!
A Robert Mileham, installed here for just one day!
Other side!
Bored resident of the River Piddle"
Family feeding; note the different head colour of the teenage spotted woodpecker on the right.

Top new novel of the year, the best in a good bunch, Ali Shaw’s The Girl with glass feet.

I have just read a great new book as a reward for six months of particularly hard graft at my sculpture.

If one is to review a good novel, I suggest the following;

1. You can’t put the book down.

2. It changed you for the better.

3. It hit an emotional nerve or two as all art should do.

4. You are very glad you read it.

Ali Shaw’s first novel would get 100% from me if it were not for the No.3 above which was seriously over the top, but then I have a soft heart and it floored me completely- so he gets an A+ as well.

In essence it is a complex, tempestuous love story, encompassing a wide variety of human family issues without needing to resort to sensational taboos.

Ali Shaw’s style of writing is quietly contemporary and you barely notice it. His fine descriptive passages do not bore the pants off a hard pressed dyslexic like me; I did not need to skip a word.

I might advise my own to avoid St Hauda’s Land but not this book. Read it first, then see the film; oh yes it will make a great film, set in beautiful surroundings by the sea and creepy bogs in the snow, one or two slightly weird characters; it is also a “special effects godsend”. The atmosphere fluctuates dramatically and will give the greatest screenwriter fantastic scope. At times exciting, there really is no time to waste with-in this cracking good story.

Roll on "book two" Ali, can’t wait. I can see a serious cult following here.

www.atlantic-books.co.uk

ISBN 9781843549185

Export & airside trade paperback ISBN 9781843549192

Sculpture Exhibition London Inspired by the Garden

Setting up my June exhibition, we have a well deserved lunch break.

Inspired By The Garden

28 Cork Street, London. W1S 3NG

Monday 1st June 2009 to Saturday 6th June 2009

Weekdays 10.00am - 6.00pm Saturday 10.00am - 5.00pm

A percentage of proceeds will go to

Young Art Scotland for Cancer Research UK and Roy Kinnear House, a charity for profoundly disabled young adults.

Tel No. 020 7437 2812 (during exhibition only)

More of the Fine Arts Bronze Sculpture Foundry

Very busy with this and my Parian Ware and Terra Cotta works for exhibition in London in the first week in June. All will be revealed soon!