Cheerful pumpkins!

Well, being 11.55 pm and still just about Halloween, I thought I might as well post a few pics of my kids' pumpkins... the ones they made for the school disco last week had rotted and turned to mush so we decided to make some more!

Not that they'll scare many goblins off - they're the happiest, friendliest pumpkins I've seen for a while!
On the art front, my baby portrait commision has now been joined by another two, potentially three! So I better get on with it!! I think I need someone to invent a device that either slows time or creates more hours in the day!
Hopefully I'll get the chance to post some artwork soon...

An early Halloween, Acorns, Oaks and the writings of a great wordsmith....

Being the last day of school before half term, the children had their Halloween school 'disco' tonight, a week early... I've only just recovered enough to restore brain functions! Very manic and very noisy! I can handle heavy metal concerts far better than a barn full of two to ten year olds running riot!
My eldest Elora has gone every year as a cat, so this year she broke tradition and went as a skeleton... then at the last minute buckled and added the cat ears!
Here they are very excited and proud of their pumpkins...

Then, looking on my camera I discoverd pictures from an autumn walk a couple of weeks back that I'd totally forgotten about, so I thought, it's still autumn so not too late to show some of them...

(This spidery ones suitably Halloween-ish!)

Here's some of the treasure me and Elswyth found on our way...


There's a very grand old Oak tree where we like to stop and rest, very Squirral Nutkin-like with lots of little hollow doorways in the roots. I love the expressiveness of the limbs, all gesturing crazed and contorted, and the fragile little girl gathering acorns, dwarfed by its presence...


And these limbs bring to mind one or two of Ted Hughes' poems...
I love the raw, sometimes brutal power of his wordcraft, he was so good at drawing out the elemental roots of the world, savage and wild as it has always been... both of nature and human nature...
Here is a short excerpt of a very long poem from 'Gaudete'...

Your tree - your oak
A glare

Of black upward lightning, a wriggling grab
Momentary
Under the crumbling of stars.

A guard, a dancer
At the pure well of leaf.

Agony in the garden. Annunciation
Of clay, water and the sunlight.
They thunder under its roof.
Its agony is its temple.

Waist-deep, the black oak is dancing
And my eyes pause
On the centuries of its instant
As gnats
Try to winter in its wrinkles.

The seas are thirsting
Towards the oak.

The oak is flying
Astride the earth.

How I love Ted Hughes. He has had a huge influence on my own writing and its time I started reading again I think... I have a shelf-ful of his books waiting, brooding bound within their pages, wanting to get out!
( I think there is a bit of Pratchett creeping in there, with images of restless muttering books flexing their covers ready to take flight from the shelves!)

And Elswyth's acorns have just reminded me of a bronze romano-british acorn in a little antiquities shop I saw years ago. Probebly the best part of two thousand years old found by some metal detectorist no doubt...
It was verdigreed and fashioned as a pendant and from the moment I walked empty handed out of that shop I have always regretted not buying it...
I always wondered who would once have worn it and what it meant to them... I really should have bought it!
Anyway, time to stop rambling on me thinks...!

The great Glenn Hughes, and a commision in the wings...

For any heavy rock people out there I thought I'd just show you this clip (someone elses who was there not mine) of a fantastic gig I went to last night at the Fleece N' Firkin in Bristol...
The excellent Glenn Hughes, former Deep Purple and Black Sabbath front man, twas a great show...



Of course his latest venture is the power trio 'Black Country Communion' with Jason Bonham and Joe Bonamassa on tour next year, though by strange coincidence it just happens we're going to see Joe Bonamassa in Bristol tomorrow night as well!
Don't get to go out for ages then two come along at once!
Although my 3 year old Elswyth last night had thrown her arms around my neck saying:
' I want to keep you mummy cos I love you and I don't want you to go out' - talk about guilt trip for poor usually stuck at home mummy! But luckily I did get permission to go in the end from youngest little elfin one!

Also I have a really lovely baby portrait commision to get stuck into which will be a really enjoyable way back to my art that has been seriously sidelined of late. If I get permission to show it after christmas I will let you in on how it turns out, but it will involve at least one unicorn!
I've been itching to get back to some artwork lately so this is just the prod I need!

Hope you don't mind a bit of heavy rock! ;)