Antonia Rolls Artist Extraordinaire News

"How Are You?" "Fine Thank You." "Liar."

2012-01-17T15:13:00.000-08:00

I didn't really say this, nor did anyone else. I do wonder though, when asked how I am, whether I should tell the truth. Often the truth is that I don't know. How am I? I don't really know. I need to think about it.

How are you then? Really, how are you? Can you reply easily and say the usual Fine; do you hint that you aren't feeling so good by saying Well.... Could be better; do you laugh and say How long have you got, or do you say That question can be answered on so many levels, and I need time to think. Give me your number and I will get back to you. Depending on the person who asked you how you were, any one of the above may be appropriate. Do you ask the person who asked you back? And how, you say, are you? Or do you think, That was a greeting, not intended to be answered, and so having been greeted, I will now tootle along. What a relief that I didn't have to tell them how I really am, and what a relief for them that they didn't have to listen. And thank goodness that I didn't have to ask them how they were. Phew! Or perhaps you do ask them back - How are you - you say but fidget and shuffle a bit while asking to send the message Don't tell me, say Fine! Just say Fine...

Well. This business of asking each other how we are, at least here in the UK, is about protocol, not expecting nor encouraging an answer beyond Fine! And how are You? It is quite a shock when you meet someone who wants more, who wants to know, really, are you fine? How fine? Define fine. Tell me. If you don't know the person well, or at all, then it feels like taking your clothes off to say Oh to hell with it all. I hate my dog and my husband snores. I feel fat and wrinkly and I want to eat frosties and custard all day. So you fight the urge to tell your kind enquirer the truth, and take a bit more time to check them out. It is only after much subtle assessment over a period of time, that we trust our enquirer enough to tell them, at their insistence, how we really are.

There are those who will never divulge how they feel. They come towards you with a cloud hanging over their head, their feet dragging and you can hear them sigh from half a street away. How are you? you say with sympathy. Oh, fine! never better! comes the reply, wiping away a tear with the edge of a frayed sleeve. This is a person who can react in two ways when you tilt your head a little to the side and say with raised eyebrows and a concerned look in your eye, Oh?? Reaction one is a gathering of stature, a throwing back of the shoulders and a furious stare. I am, says the stare, in control and happy as Larry. I dare you to think otherwise. Ha! they say loudly, Bit nippy for the time of year for the daffodils, and amble off leaving you to wonder if that was a cryptic message that would make everything clear for you if only you could work it out. Reaction two is a heaving sob and an Oh! The sky is falling in and I lost my job and now my cat has ingrowing toenails Ooooh! and you are in doubt as to how they really are. Sometimes you know that someone has had a spot of bad luck and when you ask them how they are and they say Fine! Ha ha ha, that is when I want to say Liar.

Of course, if you are truly interested in how people are, you have to have time to spare. If they tell you, because you asked and expect a proper reply, then you have to stand there and listen. It could take hours, but since you made it clear that you need to know the truth, you have to see it through. And if, exhausted, at the end of it all, they ask And how are you? it may be your turn to tell them exactly how you are and keep them listening for a further few hours. It would be insensitive to leave them panting and empty after having told you absolutely exactly how they are, warts and all, to say to their enquiry Mustn't grumble, lovely time of year for ducks, and go home. Unless of course, they habitually tell everyone that asks and have a reputation as a bit of a drone, in which case it is probably the safest thing to do.

I am someone who generally likes to know the truth. How are you? when I am in good form means No nonsense from you, I expect a proper answer. Stand up straight, look me in the eye, and leave nothing out. And when I am not in good form, and am tired and weighed down by the world and all its doings, How are you? asked in a weak little voice means Keep it short and ask me how I am quick. And then tell me I am wonderful. When asked, I will always tell you how I am. I may tailor it a bit if I think you are unable to take it (How are you? Generally fine but got a bit of a funny tummy) but if you are able to take it (How are you? Got dysentry and need the loooooo). But I do understand that most of us do not need this level of analysis when we are generally greeting each other in the street. Most of us don't really have the time and energy (or interest) in what is really going on with those who we meet and chat to during the day. Except me. I want to know. I am not to be fobbed off with Fine, when I ask you, I will want to say And? if we meet and I ask you how you are and you say Fine. I will probably take you warmly by the lapels if you do that, and say with passion You Lie! There has to be more!

Less Of The Inner, More Of The Outer Life Please

2011-12-29T13:46:00.000-08:00

I feel you have been patiently dealing with my inner life in recent blogs. It is time now to tell you of all the amazing things that happen in my outer life, rendering you speechless with wonder at the richness of my world. I shall try not to tell you much about how I feel about any given subject, and I will try not to become philosophical or go inwards, as they say. Let me develop for you a small time line.

November was exhibition in Birmingham -Birmingham and back - Soul Midwife training in Dorset and back - Birmingham again and back - and Birmingham and back - home

December was unpack - clean studio - assess exhibition - rest - eat - go to bed - plan Christmas - go back to bed - think a little - make decision to do nothing more until January 2012 - have Christmas - award myself OBE for getting through Christmas - do this blog.

It was a hard month, November. From Alan's birthday concert in Crawley we travelled deep into the night with my car packed to the gunnels with A Graceful Death paintings and Stuff, to a Premier Inn just outside Birmingham, from where we took off early the next morning to park inside the Bull Ring. We had a window of about 3 minutes to unpack the whole exhibition outside the church, St Martin in the Bull Ring, in which we were to show the A Graceful Death for the whole month of November. Alan suggested, with typical problem solving focus, that I drive along the pavement through the market stalls to the side door of the church where we were to unload and so I did. I left Alan to carry everything into the church while I drove back through the market stalls and pavement, back into the one way traffic going far, far away from the Bull Ring towards Manchester and Edinburgh, and back, and round and round until eventually, hours later, I found a place to park.

Cut now to mid November and I am off to Dorset to train with the very inspiring Felicity Warner, on a Soul Midwife course. I have longed to do this work, and so going to train with Felicity and meet all the people on the course, was just the bees knees. A Soul Midwife is an emotional and spiritual companion and support for the dying. It is work that needs to be done, and there are many of us who are deeply moved to work with the dying. I met Nurses, Old Peoples Home Managers, Witches, Shamans, a Funeral Director, Counsellors and Healers on this course in Dorset, all of us fascinated with each other and what had brought us to Felicity and this work. Just before I left to drive to Dorset, I was told that my dear Aunt Kit, my beautiful, funny, clever, wicked Aunt Kit, had lain down that afternoon on her sofa, and died. I had visited her just a few days before, and now she was gone. Just for the logistics of this month of November - Kit lived in Birmingham. I went to the exhibition in Birmingham and back three times, and to Kit's, also in Birmingham and quite separate from the exhibition, to visit twice, and then, by mid November, back to Birmingham for a return trip again for Kit's funeral. And in the middle I did a three day training course in Dorset. There and back. This is how the Queen feels, going round and round the world. I was only really doing Bognor to Birmingham on a kind of ridiculous loop, with Dorset and back thrown in for pudding, but we all have to start somewhere.

Enough! November ended and December began. December was a winding down of all the travel, organising, meeting and greeting that happens in exhibitions. I finished Rev Rachel Mann's portrait

which you can see is perfect for her. She is a Heavy Metal fan, has her own Heavy Metal band and will do, if asked, fabulous zombie imitations. Rachel has tattoos, attitude, intelligence and energy. She also has a condition that renders her very ill very often, and so to do as much as she does do, she must have an iron will. Rev Rachel Mann is a force to be reckoned with. This portrait is 4' tall and about 2.5' wide. Anyhow, I finished this, and another couple of paintings, and an Angel, by which time I was thinking about how I did not care to do Christmas, and I may have to play at being a bit potty so that I didn't have to take any responsibility. I also thought that I would take the rest of the month of December off, in order to sooth my jangled nerves and deal with Things in the home.

Christmas was lovely. I didn't have to do any cooking, my Beautiful Daughter did all of that, and made herself extremely angry in the process. She escaped to my mother, aged 81, to let off steam, which is awfully good of my old Mum. My old Mum is only 5'3" and Daughter, passionate and Shakespearean when having a meltdown, is just under 6'. Fiercely Independent Son is deeply unhappy at the moment. He has always found life difficult, and is near breaking point. I think he is now just Lost and Furious Son; he and Daughter do not get on at the moment. Each wishes the other a spell in Afghanistan without body armour, so it is good that my elderly mother took the Daughter on Boxing Day. Youngest Son though, aged 15, got a fab report from school, and seems to be less interested in Boxing and Thumping, has not been arrested for at least 2 months, and so I do not know what to call him now. Instead of thinking that a blood stained shirt is a badge of honour, he seems to think a nice night in revising physics really cuts the mustard. What happened? Well, he was the twice on the receiving end of some tom foolery by a rather unprincipled fellow, who is known for his fisticuffs, and managed to escape with cuts and bruises the first time, but had to be hospitalised with a broken nose and possible concussion the second time. So Youngest Son is a bit more thoughtful now about things. Let us talk this through, he will say in future. Let us come to a compromise and shake hands together as friends.

Christmas was lovely because Cousin Maddy and her daughter came, plus Eileen, my dear photographer friend, plus my old Dad, and of course, Alan. It was lovely because I took a back seat and said Yes to everything, making everyone very happy indeed except for Daughter who howled with rage and went to her Grandmother and Lost and Furious Son who also howled with rage and told us all that his friend was going to give him sleeping pills to help him sleep. Maddy, trained health care professional, took over here and as far as I know, Lost and Furious Son has not been sleeping unduly long and we think, we hope, that she averted that one. But Christmas was lovely. Next year, as I live in Bognor, we are thinking of hiring some chalets in Butlins so that we don't have to do a thing, and there are bouncers already employed on the premises.

So to end now, you have some idea of the Outer Life Events over the last few months. Soon, on 1st January, I will have to be serious about what to do next year. Or maybe, I will consider that on the 3rd. Because on the 2nd, how about this, I am taking 81 year old Mum to Birmingham and back for the day! Why? We are going to collect Kit's ashes and go through her flat. And, I am not telling you anything about how I feel about it, nor do I have any philosophical bon mots to say. In keeping with only the Outer Life this blog, I am going to bed and taking a tray of tea and mince pies with me. If I feel sick, I won't tell you about it.

How Exactly Do You Climb Every Mountain?

2011-12-19T14:30:00.000-08:00

How exactly is it done? You believe you can. That is how it is done. You read in a book or hear someone say You too can climb as far as you wish. Say it daily, and believe! You say with feeling and passion, I can climb mountains! You look for signs in your life for clues about climbing mountains, you see them everywhere, and you stay where you are. Feeling anxious, you think, if I know how to climb my mountain, why am I still here? Here, then, is my thought for today. If all it took to change things were words, then we would all be changing all the time. We would find ourselves half way up our mountains in no time, relieved that all it took were instructions and a good pair of shoes; we would keep our eye on the summit as it approached thinking, with a wry smile, that all it took was someone to tell us.

I have read and re read so many books that inspired me to reach for the stars. Do it! They cry. You can do it! All you have to do is believe and the whole world is yours. I love these books, I love how simple they make it sound - you too have the right to success, to happiness and to wealth. All you have to do is this - and the This is to tell yourself that you can. Books with chapters on how your mind can change, how you can re train yourself, and how you deserve this thing that you crave so deeply (whatever it is). And all through the books are little testimonies of how things are so easy if you go with the flow, ask for them, how the spirit guides you to wherever you want to go and how the still small voice within is always talking sense. Oh oh oh, I say as I read them, I too can be just like this, my still small voice will tell me how to get the Arts Council to fund A Graceful Death, the spirit will lead me to thousands of pounds and the mountain I shall climb, is called Grants and Funds! Now I shall train my mind to will it into being since it is mine for the taking!

Oh but I still have to make a proposal. How long is the proposal? Many thousands of words. And many thousands of pertinent and detailed questions. This is not an easy mountain, I say, but my still small voice says I can have it so on I go. Eventually I send off a deeply complicated form, millions of pages long, and sit back with my eyes going round and round like a cartoon hypnotist, and feel that this is, if I have done the thinking right, all mine. It isn't. I don't get the funding and the Arts Council are very detailed in their assessment of why I don't qualify. So I have done it wrong, I didn't believe enough. Those words I read were right, and I didn't apply them properly. Woe, time to throw the books away. If only I had understood what it was that I was being encouraged to believe, then what I had to say in my proposal would have thrilled the Arts Council, which would as a single body, have thumped the table with their fists and bellowed By Gum, that woman is a genius! Write her a cheque and don't stint on the noughts.

Perhaps I need to read some more words. My mountain is unassailable. Time to find another book to tell me what to do.

To climb any mountain, you have to start at the bottom. How dull. You have to stand at the bottom with your strong boots, in all the mud and the sun beating down on your unprotected head, and work it all out. If you think you can will yourself up towards the top, you can't. What I am finding is that no amount of believing and thinking can make those cold calls for me. I still have to do it. No amount of reading and telling myself in the mirror Every day and every way it's mine all mine, will excuse me from the hard work of taking the time to learn my way through whatever it is I want to do. I had to stand back from A Graceful Death and ask myself, what exactly am I doing and what, precisely, planet am I on? The Arts Council were right as it happens. My proposal was not realistic, and putting the exhibition on in Westminster Abbey with Carmina Burana sung live on a loop and real cannons as in the 1812 Overture was never going to be easy.

When I first went to University, I was astonished to find that all people didn't think as I did. I shall just tell them, I thought. Once they know, they will think like me, and all will be well. All I had to do, I reasoned, was to explain myself and then we will all be able to agree. With me. Oh but they didn't agree, not at all. Even though I had explained everything to whoever was listening, most people argued back and didn't change their minds at all, in fact they tried to tell me what was right! The nerve! When I had made it all so clear, what on earth was there to disagree with? I remember having a strong debate with a fellow student and finding a good dozen or so others listening in with deep concentration. At one point, they all cheered and said She's right, you know, you lost the argument, and they were talking to me! Hold on, I thought, I have explained it all to you, she isn't right, and I where did all you lot come from? I was very sorry for the lot of them.

My first self help books said Hey, change your mind and everything will follow. Well, yes. But I still had to find my clients and still had to paint their portraits. I tried changing my mind about people who didn't want a painting, and think them into wanting one, but they had no idea that I was doing it and carried on doing whatever people do when they say No thanks, toodle-oo.

Back to these mountains that we intend to climb then. How do we climb them? How does anyone climb them? Asking those who are at the top how they did it will be no help. Well, they will say, we just did. And what self help books did you use, we will call up to them. Leaning over to hear us and cupping their ear, they will look surprised and say, Self help book? I don't know what you mean. I haven't the time.

Philosophy, Mine, According To Me.

2011-12-11T08:04:00.000-08:00

I met a lovely lady this morning, at a party in the Day Centre within our local Hospice. It was a party for all of us who volunteer there. She told me, long before we asked each other our names, that she did Philosophy. She told me why, and told me where I could do it too, and I was very taken with her. She told me she has had to struggle with being judgemental, and that it has taught her to live in the now and to not be judgemental any more. Gosh I thought, loads of people spend loads of time and money trying to live in the now. Clever lady. With that, she said she must mingle and off she went, leaving my Now and entering into a whole group of other Nows.

So I stayed where I was and thought of Philosophy. I thought idly that if an Artist sat down in Bognor Regis, along the lines of a butterfly flapping its wings somewhere, would that cause the Nikkei index to crash somewhere else, along the lines of the butterfly wings causing an avalanche on the other side of the globe? I liked this. Cause and effect. I remembered that when I was a small child, my father used to drive me mad, pointing to a bottle on the table and saying How do I know that this bottle is still in the room if I go out of the room and can't see it? What if, I thought, my paintings only exist if you are able to see them, and they are not really there at all when you turn your back? Oh goodness. How funny. I sell my clients paintings that disappear when they turn their backs, and only reappear when they turn round again. Or do they?

My own philosophy then. What is my own philosophy? I have thought about this and I don't think I have one. Do you have one? Do you have a philosophy to cover your life, your actions, your beliefs? I do have beliefs that could be called philosophical, like Love is better than Hate, and We are all but Shadows in the Cave of Life and so on. Keep it Simple is a good one to begin with, and would make sense. Though if that was my only philosophy, and I stuck to it all the time, I would be dreadfully boring. The Keep it Simple philosophy would be become a motto and I would be rather constrained by it. Perhaps one needs more than one philosophy. A simple central fundamental one, with others like ever increasing circles around it to mop up all the mood changes, the variations, the different angles, and to make it OK to not quite stick to it if the situation changes. So Keep it Simple would be the basic philosophy, and the concentric circles may be It's not so Simple, then Complicated is OK, then Complicated and Simple Paradox, leading outwards to Chaos is Fun and ending up with Pass the Axe I'm Coming In.

I don't have a philosophy. I hadn't really thought about it until I met the Day Hospice philosopher. I have mottoes, I have ever changing beliefs and ideas, and I often haven't a clue what I am talking about. Like now. But, I can make that my philosophy; Not knowing what you are Talking about is the Font of all Wisdom. I expect someone else has already done that though, it sounds rather sensible and both vague and controversial enough to provoke at least some discussion.

Maybe I shall think of a personal philosophy. All is flux, I am told. This is flux in action. I like to keep things simple, I like the idea that all is random and I also like the idea that all is not random. I love the flux idea. I looked up a list of philosophies and was thrilled that these were listed amongst the hundred or so other philosophies- Chaos Theory, Defeatism, Digital Philosophy, Fanaticism, Leaderless Resistance and Voluntaryism. This is the tip of the iceburg, I could have stopped at Universal Reconciliation and been relieved to find that they believe that all beings, despite their sins, are reconciled at some point with God. I did stop at Quietism, because I like quiet, and read that - "By re-formulating supposed problems in a way that makes the misguided reasoning from which they arise apparent, the quietist hopes to put an end to man's confusion, and help return to a state of intellectual quietude." It was the intellectual quietitude after having my problems reformulated and my misguided reasoning blown to bits, that appealed to me. So, then, I shall be a Quietist. I picture myself sitting quietly on a chair by the window looking blissfully vacant, having returned at last to some intellectual quietitude, as the children riot around me. There is our mother, they will say. It is a good thing that her supposed problems were only a product of her misguided reasoning. Isn't it a relief that she has now become intellectually quiet. And even though she looks goofy now, she will, at some point, be reconciled with God.

My philosophy then, according to me, is that we should all be Quiet. That, and that although other people are often right, I am always right. (With reference there to Lucy Martin, author, linguist, entrepreneur and party animal, who said it to me when I was not very articulate and immediately I found my voice. Thank you Lucy Martin. You are right.)

Don't Mess With Me, I'm Successful

2011-12-02T10:08:00.000-08:00

Yes. Don't. I am successful and I may bite.

I was reading some self improvement books recently and in all of them we are encouraged to think positive and to practice affirmations. This is the one I came up with, and it feels good. A little uncharacteristically violent, but good. I need another affirmation, though, to help me get over anyone who does mess with me, and I am forced to bite them. That feels scary, so perhaps I am not quite there yet.

However, I think that I am successful. My life is very busy, and I run my life on many different levels, mostly, but certainly not only, that of an Artist and that of a Mother. I have just come back from Birmingham where I took down my A Graceful Death exhibition from where it was showing for the month of November, and I have tied that all in with training to be a Soul Midwife. My children, all of them, are in the throes of growing up and being both wonderful and ghastly all at the same time. They are powerful, emotional creatures, tall and blonde and terrifying, and two of them are legally adult now. Crikey. You wouldn't know it. The one who is not quite an adult yet, is being encouraged to do rugby to keep his anger in check, and is going to be nice one day, I am told. The other two, oh the other two - I love them all so passionately, but they are off in an orbit that only young adults of that age can inhabit. Whatever happens, it is all my fault; I was born aged 51 and though well meaning, am very blameworthy at all times. But, I am successful here too, because all of them do like me and are still alive. They are ridiculously healthy and full of adventure and opinions. (Frighteningly so.) I am successful because I raised them alone and without a leader, as the great Horace Rumpole would have said, and I done, as kids these days say, good.

I am successful as a painter. I paint well, and I work hard at it. My success is that I can do it, I know how to paint and I have tons of experience. People can recognise themselves in the portraits that I do, thank goodness. And the Angels that I paint are full of love and kindness, which helps people to like them. What else am I successful at? Thinking. Yes I am extraordinarily successful at thinking. I can sit and think for ages, and sometimes, I can tell you about it when I am finished. My success here, is simply in the act of thinking. Like Pooh Bear, I can think think think for hours. The next stage, what to do with it, is not quite so successful.

I am successful at making tea. I know how to make a mean pot of tea and keep it warm. I have tons of teacosys, the best of which was made by Mrs Smith of www.mrssmithin2011.blogspot.com fame, and is in the shape of a fancy iced cup cake. A total genius, is Mrs Smith. I am successful at drinking tea. I know how to do that even in my sleep, and no one can fault me on my methods. A resounding success - similar to the eating cake successes. Very clever at that, very practiced.

I am brilliant at being nice. I am so nice I can make you cry. I like people, I am sure they are all glorious creatures and like me as much as I like them. Even when I find out that they are not so nice, I am stuck in the being nice groove, and have to continue. And do you know, they respond, often, in kind? Not nice people are nice to me. I am successful therefore, at being nice.

What I would like to be successful with, is making money. I do not make much money. It escapes me, I forget about it, I don't understand it and I don't think about it. I have enough to live on, but I don't have nor think about having, an excess. Many of my friends are clever about business and making money, they do it with ease and aplomb, but me - I am too busy being nice, and thinking, and drinking tea, and painting paintings, and being a Soul Midwife in training. I am not that bad, but I do lack the killer instinct. Which makes the affirmation I chose at the beginning of this blog, quite interesting. It is about getting in touch with the assertive me, the tough, ruthless and menacing me. The biting bit is about harnessing the missing killer instinct. The books say that if I repeat this affirmation as if it were a mantra, I will surprise myself and all will go my way. Even more than it does at the moment.

The Bognor papers will report that a suspected Artist has been making money from startled passers by in Bognor High Street, after barking Don't mess with me, I'm successful and pocketing the subsequent donations made in order to escape. Some have reported bite marks on their trousers...

Resting In Motion At The Speed Of Light

2011-11-26T06:52:00.000-08:00

I have taken the unprecedented step of replicating my A Graceful Death blog here. The A Graceful Death blog is about my life as it is unfolding now, and seems to be relevant to this blog too. So here it is, and if you want to see the blog in situ, and read it all again with different pictures, please go to www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com. Here goes -

I am so proud of the A Graceful Death exhibition. So many people, too many to name here, are responsible for making it strong and simple, gracious and loving. It exists because there are those who have a huge heart and a strong mind. I include in this all those who help to transport, hang, catalogue, publicise and do workshops for the exhibition, and those who are painted and who tell their stories, and who write the poetry that is used. Having the expert and excellent Eileen Rafferty http://www.eileen-rafferty.com/2011/11/different-kind-of-truth.html on board as co-producer is another feather in the exhibition's cap. This link to Eileen's blog shows some small films that Eileen has made, where we discuss the latest paintings for A Graceful Death, which is on the subject of the suicide of Stuart Pryde's wife Sue.

But I am now moving in a different though parallel direction. I have taken on the job title of Soul Midwife, and have begun a journey that both thrills and terrifies me. I simply do not know how to do this job. And yet, it is quite simply the most important thing I have ever done. I have been on a course in Dorset with the wonderful Felicity Warner www.soulmidwives.co.uk, I have been inspired by the concept of graceful, gentle dying and the place of the Soul Midwife in working with those who are going to die, to create the best death that they can together. The idea behind the Soul Midwife movement seems to be very like the ideas behind the hospice movement, and the work of all the most influential palliative care pioneers. The beauty of the Soul Midwife is that we do not have to be trained medically or as a counsellor, we work alongside other professions and provide spiritual and emotional support. We listen, we support, we are not afraid. Many have other services such as reiki, healing, bach flower remedies, meditation to offer. Some are experienced in helping the dying person to reconcile differences within the family, some are wonderful with music and art, and can help to unlock thoughts and memories that need to be celebrated or acknowledged. The most important offering, I think, is a listening love. If only we start with this, the rest is just icing on the cake.

Where am I in this wonderful new world? Having done my course with Felicity, I am so far down the ladder as to be almost unable to see the starting rung. I have spent a week letting my thoughts settle after the course, and making myself do nothing. I can see how this work can be done, and I can see that it is so very important, but where on earth do I start? I am paralysed by the enormity of the task. How can I, with very little experience, possibly help another to die well? I know nothing. I know nothing. It is the other way round, it is me who will be saying, help me. I will be saying, will you help me to know what is going on as you die, will you teach me how to do this? I need to watch and wait, I need to go directly to the dying and learn from them. I cannot do this work yet, I have much to learn and a long way to go. So I have decided to start at the beginning. I need to learn. This new job as a Soul Midwife starts with some training at the front line. It is fine that I know nothing, it is not fine if I stay like that. So learn something. Ask someone. I am a Soul Midwife in Training. It is fine to take my time, in fact, it is essential. Maybe I will learn quickly and set myself up in no time at all. That would be wonderful; I cannot think of a more perfect job than that of a Soul Midwife. And maybe, I find that I do not learn quickly. Maybe I am someone who needs to sit at the feet of many many different people before I set myself up as a Soul Midwife. Or perhaps a third option, in that I do a bit of both. I don't know right now, I have not quite started.

Here is what I have done. I have contacted the Snowdrop Trust, a charity that cares for children in West Sussex (where I live) with life threatening and terminal illnesses, in their homes. I have asked to train as a volunteer, as their volunteers are highly trained and supported, and are not expected to do anything medical. I will, I am told, be doing fun things with the children alongside the Snowdrop Trusts doctors and nurses. A lady from the Trust is coming here to my home next week to go through it all with me. I volunteer already at my local hospice, where my role is to make teas and coffees and listen. And finally, just as I returned home from the course, I received an email from a lady who I admire tremendously. She is a highly intelligent, articulate and compassionate speaker on all subjects from palliative care to moral issues in the approaches to dying, legal issues at the end of life to matters around mental health. I have found her willingness to help me work out how to best produce the A Graceful Death exhibition over the years so helpful and insightful. Her email, received at 7.30am the morning after I returned from Felicity's course in Dorset, said that quite out of the blue she had been diagnosed with a possible terminal condition, and that everything in her life had been turned on its head. The most extraordinary thing, she said, is that the tests that found this dreadful illness, were routinely given for something else, and that she still felt very well indeed. And yet, she is extremely ill, and possibly has not got much time left. I asked her to come and see me as a friend, not in a professional capacity, and she did. The following morning she came for breakfast.

She is an extraordinary lady. It was a wonderful breakfast. We laughed, we ate, we spoke of life and death. And here, in my kitchen, is the person who can teach me how to be a Soul Midwife. She had agreed to talk me through her experiences and to be my teacher.

And finally, as the dust is settling, and I am making more sense of how to move forwards not only as a Soul Midwife but as an artist who is dedicated to producing the A Graceful Death exhibition as an ongoing Artistic contribution to the subject of death and dying and love, I am aware that the most difficult thing to overcome is my own lack of confidence. One of the bonuses of being a Soul Midwife is the contact with other Soul Midwives. We seem to care greatly about each other, and to offer a huge amount of support in all ways. I met and made contact with some wonderful people on Felicity's course, and am really, once I get over my confusion, in very good hands indeed. And that is what I want the people I work with to say of me, that they are in very good hands indeed.

Tangos And Soul Midwifery.

2011-11-20T05:18:00.000-08:00

I am lying on the sofa with the sun shining in through the twinkly butterfly installation in my window, listening with a fluttering heart to an old 1950s record of Continental Tango Music played by the deeply camp and long forgotten 101 Strings Orchestra. The Sound, it says on the record cover, Of Magnificence. Despite a part of me longing to take it off and hurl it into the far distance, a good deal of me wants to give into this romantic, unselfconscious medley of passion. Put that way, who wouldn't? Much of me longs to melt into the violins, the accordian, the thing that sounds like a Hammond Organ. (Hammond Organs mean ice skating at Richmond Ice Rink in the 70s. Remember?) And the rest of this music makes me feel I am in a Peter Sellers Pink Panther film, with technicolor in my sitting room. I am unsure whether the music is making me happy or violent. But as I write this, a passionate Tango has just struck up, and I am full of angst. Oh oh oh. How will I tell Peter Sellers when he comes into my film set sitting room, that I am a) someone else b) a murderer c) married? But patience, the Tango has finished and another one has started up that makes me feel I am now in full Flamenco dress on the Spanish border singing across the dust and guards that my heart is true and even though I am dressed like this, I can be sensible and fling myself into a proper job till you, oh my love, come back over the border to claim me.

I have just come back from a course in Dorset with Felicity Warner, where I have begun my training and my first steps into the work I am wanting to do. Felicity has set up a foundation called Soul Midwives - see her website www.soulmidwives.co.uk . She has begun to train those of us who want to do this work, and sent us out to do our stuff. A Soul Midwife is someone who is an emotional and spiritual support and companion to the dying, helping those who are at the end of life to achieve the best death that they can under the circumstances, with as much dignity and attention and love as possible. A Soul Midwife is not medical (though many who train are already nurses and doctors) and aims to work alongside doctors and counsellors. We work one to one with those who come to us, and help by listening, by offering such things as gentle touch massage and often other holistic treatments such as aromatherapy or healing, for example, as many who train are already registered as therapists in these fields, to support and to be as practically helpful as we can.

Having gone to Dorset, I have come away utterly inspired and extremely nervous. I know nothing. Each person who is facing death is tied up with medical stuff, procedures, fears, expectations, unfinished business, legal business, family business and management and relief of symptoms. Oh goodness. Each person is different, each person will die in their own way, and as I am starting out, I wonder will I be able to help? Of course I can. This is something that I want to do. Everyone starts at the beginning, there is always the first step. And I have been working in my local hospice for a while now, and I do my wonderful A Graceful Death exhibition, paintings from the end of life (www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com) which as you know, is on in Birmingham for the rest of this month and you will go to Birmingham to see it, at St Martin in the Bull Ring, you know you will.

The course in Dorset was full of the most wonderful people. From all corners of the UK, and from all backgrounds possible. We all have experience of end of life care and issues. Some work professionally already with the dying - we had an inspirational Funeral Director who runs her Funeral Company with care, light, love and inclusiveness. Two people came from the care home they run up North, specialising with end of life care. I was very taken with their stories of how they deal with their residents, their families, and all the details of practical and medical care given to old people as they are dying. But I found their humour and dedication to the individual really astonishing. The stories they told of the old men were wonderful; the old men now ill and in the home, once vital to the life of the factories, pits and communities, being diverted to the pub for a quick pint on the way back from the doctors with the wonderful male nurse who came on our course. Full of love and kindness.

We had alternative therapists, we had all faiths and none, we had trainee celebrants, we had even an Angel Rieki Master - a lady who works with angels. We had nurses, mums, healers, and a dance teacher. And me, an Artist. All of us bound by our passion to work with the dying and to apply ourselves to becoming a friend and companion to those that come to us asking for help.

So back to today. I set the scene with the help of my passionate Tango medley music, so that I could write this and pour out my heart, this sunny Sunday afternoon in Bognor Regis. But, the music forced me into a Peter Sellers film on the Spanish border, with all sorts of passionate and conflicting feelings and all in all I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. So that didn't work. I have started to talk about the Soul Midwife course, but have found that I don't know what to say yet because having done the course, I am exhausted and full to bursting with unprocessed thoughts.

So. Here I sit with the Tango record back in it's sleeve (and not flung far into the garden), the butterflies twinkling and dancing in the sunlight in the window, and my eyes crossed with the effort of thinking. At times like this, in order to move on to the next stage of life, one needs a nice strong pot of tea and some Cadbury's dairy milk. I can cope with that. I have to start somewhere.

A New Ploy. Saying Yes To Everything.

2011-11-14T05:48:00.000-08:00

"Mum!"
"Yes."
"Can I go on a bender and lose the plot?"
"Yes."
"What?"
"Yes."
"And maybe die?"
"Yes."
"You won't change your mind?"
"Yes."
"You will change your mind?"
"Yes."
"So you don't mean yes?"
"Yes."
"You do mean yes?"
"Yes."
"Oh no! So I can't go, this is what you mean?"
"Yes."
"Damn."
"Yes."

"Oh what is happening nothing is safe any more nothing is as it was. My mother is either too deep for her own good, or she is barking."

"Yes."

I have had a tough weekend. It is all sorted now, and I am sitting in my studio with my fourth cup of tea on this Monday morning, and thinking over how much time I didn't spend doing nice things. I spent a lot of time being grown up over the weekend. I spent a lot of time wondering if instead of sending my children to the World's Strictest Parents (a TV programme I am told), I should go and pick up some tips. I like the idea of my children kissing my hands before each meal, and washing my feet after. And carrying me shoulder high into a bath of bubbles and scented soaps before bowing their way out backwards as per the King of Siam. There were highlights, there was tons of lovely food cooked by my Daughter, so we may have had a fiery weekend, but we were all very full up for it. Passions ran high, but slow, as we were all eating an awful lot. Last night, though, the tsunamis of passion and fury had quietened down to such an extent, that everyone went to bed early and exhaled a teeny burp and a sigh of relief. And so, this morning as I turned on my computer, an ad popped up and said with a little conspiratorial wink - Simplify Your Life!. I will, I said to the computer, but not in the way you are suggesting. Not by taking out the insurance that you insist will simplify my life, but by finding another more personal way. I intend I said to the ad, to narrow down my response to the word Yes. I will, for a week, say Yes to everything.

Many things may happen. My children and those who deal with me may cotton on very quickly that this new tactic. They may cleverly tailor their requests to make sure they get what they want. "Mum?" "Yes." "When you said that you love all your children the same and that you don't prefer me above all else, you meant something else didn't you?" "Yes." "You meant you like me the best didn't you?" "Yes." "Ha ha! I knew it! I am the favoured one, I am the golden child!". Half an hour later, "Mum!" "Yes." "I am your favourite child, aren't I?" "Yes." "Ha ha! You have fallen from grace, I am the one and only now!" Ten minutes later "Mum." "Yes." "You are mad aren't you?" "Yes." "You are playing with our minds, aren't you?" "Yes." "Run your own bubble baths and wash your own feet. Bah! We give up." ("Yes.")

They may not want to risk a change of mind once they get a Yes. They may ask no more questions, and act on what they have heard me agree to. "Madam," "Yes." "We are reputable traders, and we think you need a new roof." "Yes." "Fine, stand aside, we will start with that bit there. It will be fifteen million pounds. OK?" "Yes." A small discussion amongst the reputable traders, and a hesitant, "no personality disorders we need to know about? "Yes." "What? Are you known to be unpredictable and violent?" "Yes." "Run boys! Save yourselves!" ("Yes.")

And they may have seen the same advert for Simplifying Your Life, and had the same idea. They may just leave me to it. "Antonia?" "Yes." "Seen the advert for Simplifying Your Life?" "Yes." "Saying Yes to everything then?" "Yes." "Thought so. Me too."

So far, though, I am having a lovely Monday morning. I have work to do, but I have spoken at length to my lovely cousins Maddy in Tunbridge Wells and Marlayna in Detroit, and to my splendid brother John in London, and I have facebooked witty one liners with all sorts of people who just want to have fun. I have made a few important calls and left messages on answer phones, and very soon, the effects of the weekend will evaporate, and I will stop saying Yes to everything.

"Mum!"
"No!"
"Can't you say Yes any more?"
"No."
"Are you going to behave yourself?"
"No."
"Oh I give up. I'm moving out!"

"Yes."

A Gentle Day, A Clean House, And A Semi Comatose Mother and Artist

2011-11-06T14:50:00.000-08:00

In case that you think that while cleaning my house one gentle day, I found a semi comatose artist in one room and a semi comatose mother in another, I am afraid that you are wrong. I am, dear reader, both the semi comatose mother and the semi comatose artist. One body and one soul.

Alan and I set up the A Graceful Death exhibition in Birmingham, and Eileen (www.eileenrafferty.blogspot.com ) and I were there with the poet Penny Hewlett for the opening. I came back from Birmingham for one day during the week, because deeply beloved Youngest Son, the one who is learning to be gentle and sweet, turned 15. Early the next day I shot off back to Birmingham and got on with the opening. Late on Friday, Eileen and I arrived home here and I started to clean. Hello, I said to all who were here. How are you all, lovely to see you, pass the cleaning fluid, and tell me your news. In fact, I said, tell Eileen. I am going to clean the cooker and take out the rubbish and wash the kitchen and bathroom and re-tile the roof. So Eileen sat and listened and I entered an alternative universe and repossessed my home by cleaning it. It is something that I find I have to do; after being away I cannot sit in the house without putting it immediately to rights. It has to be exactly perfect or I will die. Now. I have to do it now. It must be a kind of mental thing, there is no reason for it, but it is rare that I come back from being away and sink with a contented yawn into the nearest chair and say Yeah, whatever, bring it on. I want perfection after being way from my home and I want it now or a comet will drop on our heads. The only thing I couldn't do was hoover because by the time I was ready to hoover at midnight, everyone had gone to bed and not only were they in the rooms I wanted to hoover, with the lights off so that I couldn't see (goddam it), I would have woken them up and they would not then want to make me tea in the morning and let me eat the banoffee pie that was in the fridge. So twitching and frothing, I went to bed too.

On Saturday morning, dear Fatema who had sat in for me here while I was away, caught the train back to her world. I spent the day finishing the housework. And the shopping. And the washing. By late evening, the house was glorious, everyone was fed and I was a shadow of my former self. I looked 80 years old and I had lost the power of speech. I crawled into bed like a man crawling out of the desert into an oasis. Sort of. If the man had only been lost that afternoon in the desert, he had gone the wrong way coming back from the loo behind a sand dune and spent the afternoon being lost and feeling dreadful. Anyway, a man who was not really in dire straights, just a bit needy for the time being, crawling out of the desert into an oasis. That was how I crawled upstairs to bed.

This morning, while lying in bed, I decided to wear my pyjamas all day. I thought that if I did that, my whole life would fall into place. It was a relief to feel that at all times I was connected to my bed, and that it would take no time at all to rush back upstairs and fall into it. It was after all, the place I was dressed for. Oh the joy of putting on a dressing gown and slippers. There was nothing anyone could do - I couldn't possibly leave the house for anything ever, there was a huge barrier between me and the outside world - my pyjamas. They said No! I am mentally and physically deficient, I cannot go further than the front door! Bring me tea! So I drifted from room to room, patting a surface here and smoothing a cushion there. I smiled with a trembling and weary smile when any of the Sons came near me - I am weak, I made it say. Do not ask more of me than my fragile body can manage. I drifted from the kitchen to the sitting room grasping onto the furniture if anyone was watching and holding myself upright. See? I am in my pyjamas and my strength has gone. I hold this furniture because I am spent. Bring me a sandwich or I may collapse behind this sofa; and if they were still watching, I would pass a weary hand over my brow and sigh.

Oh but the house is so clean and tidy today. I am fulfilled. Yes, the exhibition is up and running, yes, Christmas is coming but right now - my house is wonderful and sparkly and I am in it, ready at a moment's notice for bed, and all my world has narrowed down to being hopelessly delighted in a hoovered and polished house. With, of course, lots of lovely flowers and scented candles. I am after all, an artist.

Here is my kitchen. I want you to glory in the lack of rubbish on the floor and the Mr Sheen shine on the table. Now look at this.

Do you see the tray of tea on the sofa? That is for me! And the big cushions for me to sit on. I can't launch myself onto them, because I am supposed to be a faded, wizened and pathetic creature (until tomorrow) so I stagger from door to mantel piece pausing for effect, and then a face forward fall onto the sofa cleverly missing the tea tray.

And when I do get onto the sofa and sit up, I see on the other sofa, the excellent Eileen Rafferty - dressed and in control! Eileen has already been for a walk on the seafront. I screamed when that was decided, in case I had to go too but I didn't. So I stopped.

And when the going gets tough, this is where I lie my weary head down. That is not a pillow under the window, it is another big double duvet in a spotty duvet cover in case I get chilly in the night. It sits there, large and poised for action, to save me from any discomfort and inconvenience. I hope you note the spotty bra on the chair. Marks and Spencers.

Now it is late and time to go to bed. Tomorrow is Monday and it will be a day to get dressed. I need to build up my strength so that come the morning, I will bounce out of bed at 7am with a roar of defiance, and pummel the day into shape. Perhaps. I am still a bit weary...

Feeling the Feelings, Thinking the Thoughts

2011-10-23T10:21:00.000-07:00

This is quite a brave thing to do. It feels very uncomfortable to sit and feel what we are really feeling and think what we are really thinking, right through to the end. For example, I feel worried to death about getting the exhibition A Graceful Death ready for Birmingham next week. Don't like this, I say to myself, Laaa laaaa laaaa, and I drown out the thoughts and look for a nice way to not feel anxious. I do some more housework, Laaa laaa laaa, can't have silence because it makes me anxious so I put on the radio. Going into the studio gets harder and harder to do. I need to talk to the Glorious Clarissa now for hours, and then to Lovely Lucy Martin, Whirlwind Extaordinaire, and then to Olivia who will agree with me on everything...

I have been advised to sit down, when this is happening, and really feel the feelings and think the thoughts, and in squaring up to them, taking them on board, wrestling them to the ground, see that it isn't quite as awful as I think it is. I have been told to take a pen and paper and make a plan. But not until I have felt the feelings and thought the thoughts. Until, in other words, I have faced up to the insurmountable problem of worrying myself to a frazzle about, amongst other things, next week and the exhibition. Such a simple idea but so difficult to do.

We all know about my Sons. Fabulous creatures, both of them, but quite a handful. Feeling my feelings and thinking my thoughts about them was at first very alarming because I expected the logical conclusion to be that I would have to sell them both on Ebay. I thought, if I actually follow my thoughts and feelings through to the end concerning these two, I may find that I am not a very nice mother. I may come to the conclusion that selling them to NASA is a good thing, and that they would do very well in space learning how to orbit for a few years. What happened was much less exciting. I did sit down and let it all happen, and I realised how very tired both boys were making me. That tiredness was spilling over into all other areas of my life, and the anxiety about putting together the exhibition for next week was not helped by being so exhausted keeping my Man Cubs going. I felt real anger towards them both, and I felt real compassion. They simply haven't got a clue. There they are, thinking with such conviction that they have nothing left to learn and that they are in control; there they go, furiously judgmental and self righteous and then, coming to me because there is a spider in the room and they can't stand spiders.

After a little while of discomfort, feeling and thinking, I realised that I am doing the right thing with the Sons. That is a relief. I also realised that I am tired and angry and need some time off from them. And that it is, actually, up to them quite a lot. Not up to me. Hoooray. Now that lets me off the hook a bit.

As for the exhibition. Well, thinking and feeling and so on, made me cancel everything that I could until further notice. I simply need the time here to get the exhibition properly sorted, catalogued, prepared, packed, finished and mirror plates screwed onto every single painting. There are now 48 paintings. Blimey, that is a day's work and no mistake. I still have to finish a painting for it, and I still have to plan my journey. And to leave everything in place for 14 Year Old Son to survive the week with a friend who is coming to stay to look after him, and of course, to make sure the friend is safe. (Here, have this taser and don't be afraid to use it). After sitting and thinking about the exhibition, I understood that I was avoiding getting it ready and that I felt it was too difficult. Well, it was too difficult if I was planning to do a hundred things other than the exhibition in the hopes that it would all go away and that somehow, Eileen might do it all long distance when I was not looking in between doing her own job, her degree and her own photography work. So. After sitting and thinking and feeling, the eureka moment was Cancel Everything, and so I did.

Another major Don't Want To Know Laaa Laaa Laaa item on the list is my health. I am a veggie and I don't drink alcohol, I love water cress and I think chickpeas are fab. But, I am a twit when it comes to sleeping well, being realistic about how much I can do, and being sensible. So, sitting down and thinking and feeling and so on, makes me see that I avoid sleep. Idiot. What do I want to do that kind of dumb-ass thing for? I avoid sleep because when I lie down in bed there is nowhere for my thoughts to go except round and round, and because I don't like feeling the feelings and thinking the thoughts and so on, they are chaotic. And I get nervous and I get overwhelmed and the best way to deal with that is displacement. Empty the dishwasher! Get up and even though it's midnight, put the washing on! Clean the bannisters! And now, since I am up, do the hoovering! Oh no wonder I have been feeling worse and worse. I don't sleep, I try and avoid thinking and I am not facing up to anything. And when I did start to unravel it all by letting myself think and feel all the way through, the things I was worrying about weren't that bad at all. The most sensible outcome from that particular little sitting and thinking lark is that I have been exhausted for well over a week now, and have been sleeping early instead of late, having a wonder-snooze during the day and longing each morning for night to come so that I can go to bed all over again. Blimey O'Reilly. It's tipped a bit too much the other way though, and once I have caught up on my rest, I will be more normal. Don't laugh.

Well. Perhaps things are improving.

Boxing Boy, the sweet natured Viking in our midst, has just bought me a penguin biscuit. Seeing how quickly it went, he went and bought me another.
Furiously Independent Son, the extemely angry and world weary despot in our midst, has just done two loads of his own washing.
It is just after 10 past 6, and bedtime is getting nearer and nearer.

I'm going to take all the penguins to bed with me tonight, I know where they are hidden. Result.

An Amorphous Mass Of Nothingness

2011-10-15T10:35:00.000-07:00

Yes, well, amorphous-ish. Amorphous mass of nothingness is about a state of mind. It is what happens after a dramatically busy week where the plans you have for being gently industrious, are steamrollered and you spend the week reacting and going Yikes! and Duck! and What? When, eventually, you get to an oasis in the madness, and quite by chance you have some peace and quiet, you sink in slow motion onto the sofa and cry aloud with insight, Amorphous Mass Of Nothingness and know that you have described what has happened to your mind.

It sounds majestic. It sounds nihillistic. It sounds fancy. It sums up the brooding grey clouds of formless thoughts that rise from nothing and go back to nothing. It sounds awfully clever. It's very effective.

So here I am on my sofa. I have never sunk so far into amorphous masses of nothingness that I could not go and make a pot of tea; I sit here with my tea and a bowl of wild rice and garlic and think that perhaps the mass of nothingness was temporary and that I am over the worst. This last week, my 14 year old son, who we call Boxing Boy, had a surge of testosterone and turned into Colonel Gaddafi. We are dealing with it, and when things have died down I will say to him, Well, that didn't get you very far did it? Banned from polite society and wearing leg irons, tsk tsk my son. Time to find another approach to life. And the other son, the older one who we have called the Muppet, or the Furiously Independent Son, he has not found a way out of his furious unhappiness yet. I stand in the side lines watching and waiting for a way into his world, and thinking what if I never will? What if he is lost to us forever?

Back to the sofa. I like it here, it is a rare moment in my house when no one, absolutely no one, is home except for me. My lodgers are out. My children are out. Alan is on his way back from Greece, and I am utterly alone and utterly silent. I have had a bath, I have made the tea, I have got my books, but all I want to do is Nothing. Not read, not eat, not talk, not even think. All I really want to do is listen to the silence. My grandfather clock is tick tocking behind me, and the odd car is swishing by outside, and in between those sounds is such a deep quiet that I can feel my soul recovering. Funny really, I had this past week set aside for plodding along with my preparations for A Graceful Death in Birmingham next month. I thought, I have been such a busy bee, such a focussed individual, so nice to everyone, oh my reward will be to be hidden away in my studio painting and fiddling and humming away to myself - a dab of paint here, a tweak there, emails pinging to and fro between me and fascinating people, it was to have been a glorious week. But it wasn't to be. If you are to be taken seriously in this world as a painter and a person of substance, said God, you need to be able to deal with character building stuff that I will chuck at you when you are least expecting it. And so last week was a week of character building stuff that I was certainly not expecting.

However. Despite the madness of the past week, I have done the following. It's quite impressive -

Started the Sue and Stuart portrait diptych for the new A Graceful Death exhibition next month
Wrote and sent out a press release for the same exhibition
Bought a shed load of food
Went to see my Old Dad in London and took him through the Soul Midwife course that I am going to do with Felicity Warner next month
Listed and noted all the paintings for AGD and repainted bits of them that were damaged and had marks on them (like boot marks. Not really, just thought that was quite funny)
Spent the afternoon in the Hospice making tea, chatting and listening.
Collected my daughter from Haywards Heath because she was too tired to move (she is a student nurse and works too)
Did a mercy trip to Petworth to save my mother who had a cold and needed her bed changed, a nice hot bath and some oatcakes and smooth pate.

So sinking in slow motion onto the sofa this afternoon crying Amorphous Mass of Nothingness was perhaps not so much a state of mind that was a result of the Sons and their bids for World Domination, it was perhaps an appeal. After all the dreadful things that the Sons got up to last week, Amorphous Mass Of Nothingness was a desirable state to be in, a relief, no less. Instead of the images of Wagner and Valkryies and impending doom with full orchestra, the image is more of Morpheus and dreams and the underworld. Oh I like that. When my household eventually come home, they will find me happily suffering from the latest designer condition, the amorphous mass of nothingness, which prevents me from doing any dinner or washing up. For ever.

A Graceful Death Exhibition

Paintings from the end of life

St Martin In The Bull Ring, Birmingham B5 5BB

Open daily

4 November - 29 November

Open Event with poetry workshop by Penny Hewlett, poet in residence

Thursday 3 November 2-4pm

~Tea and Cakes. All Welcome~

Getting Older. Lessons From Joan Collins and Lionel Blue.

2011-10-05T11:23:00.000-07:00

I have been reading two very different books by two absurdly different people who do have one extraordinary thing in common. They are old. And the subject of each book is the world according to them. Two things in common, then.

The first is called Godseekers by Rabbi Lionel Blue. The second is called, spookily enough, The World According to Joan by Joan Collins. I don't quite know how old Lionel is but he must be over 80. Joan is, I think, 78. I have been reading eagerly to see what they have to say about life, age and themselves and whether I can prepare myself for the day I wake up and turn either 78 or 80. Here is what I have learned.

Joan can't help being the way she is. She has always been this way and is lucky to have wonderful skin and a superb figure.
Joan works hard to maintain her looks and it is a shame that other people let themselves go and become ugly and old.
Lionel is full of fun and advice for those who are in difficulties with their lives. He was, he says, a dreadful bore when he was younger and deeply unnattractive.
Lionel says that a sense of humour is vital to get one by and that God has a finely developed one. Life when you are young can be terribly earnest, and a good way to lighten up and see things from a different perspective is to laugh at yourself.
Joan is outraged at how badly everyone dresses, behaves, thinks and is these days.
Lionel says he enjoyes the company of his friends and is grateful.
Joan thinks that if everyone was a bit more like her she wouldn't have to complain so much.

Recently, Olivia Fane (On Loving Josiah, her new book and worth getting) asked me how I was getting on. Oh, you know, I said. Feeling tired and frumpy. Haaa! said Olivia, I know what you mean. I am spending my days at the moment watching my body become older and feeling my youth drain away. I am preparing, said Olivia, to be old. And if Olivia is doing that then you can bet your bottom dollar that she is doing it with gusto. Olivia has no vanity at all. She does not care a jot whether she is old or young, whether she is well dressed or not. She is so eccentric, so cerebral and so funny that she is a tonic to be with, and always takes a slightly sideways look at life and has absolutely no intention of behaving well for anyone.

I am feeling tired and frumpy. I have watched myself pare away at my busy schedule so that often now, I am sitting alone in the afternoons, with nothing much to do. I have been sleeping more and have stopped fussing about doing as much as possible Now because I ought to and am left with, well, not much. Time, a bit of silence, a feeling of weariness and some more time. And of course, the world has not come to an end. None of the kids are dead from starvation. The house seems to be ticking along without being hoovered and we all have quite clean clothes to wear, much of the time. All that needs to be done is done, and I am quite enjoying the sitting alone in the afternoon with nothing much to do. I have taken to having a nap. I am finding that I am longing to snooze in the afternoons and go to bed early. I say to myself, Lie down on that sofa, in the sunshine, and have a little think about things. Go on, and later, if you feel like it, you can see if you need to do an email. Don't mind if I do, I say in reply to myself, and within minutes I am drifting off into that delightful half way land between sleep and waking where all things are possible and Joan doesn't mind if you tell her she ought to be a Marxist like Lionel was once.

Getting older has been very much on my mind these last months. I am 51. Oh, I hear you cry, like Joan, you don't look your age. Well, thank you kind people. Fact is, I do look it. I see my face and sometimes when I can bear to look, I see my body. I am never going to be smooth again, if I want to be firm I will have to do as Joan does, and jolly well make the effort. There are lines on my eyelids, there are deep lines from the corners of my nose to the corners of my mouth, and if I don't go every six weeks to the hairdressers I would look like Gandalf. My fingers look like chicken bones, my neck has those double parallel vertical lines from under my chin to my collar bone, and oh this is something Joan avoids by painting her lipstick on with glue and giving herself a bigger pair of lips than she actually has, my lipstick bleeds along dozens of teeny lines around my mouth.

I don't mind all the above so very much. With determination, I can still scrub up pretty well and once at a gathering of people, being an extrovert I can have a laugh. What I do mind is that I am much slower, tireder and more forgetful. I seem to sigh as I get up from my chair and lope off to wherever I am going, stop half way, wondering why I am there and gratefully lope back again to the chair where I sit back down again with a second sigh. This intrigues me. What happened to the zappy 50 year old? When I wake up in the morning now, I think that what I would like to wear more than anything else is a blanket and slippers. Once, when I was 50 and younger, I would select fancy clothes and colours and feel Yes! Bring it on! Now I think, wonder if anyone will notice if I wear my duvet all day and if I pass the sitting room, wonder if I can have a lie down before I do anything else?

I read Joan with interest. It is important to her that one doesn't let one's standards drop. It is important to make the most of yourself and to stay healthy and fit. Quite right. I read Lionel with interest too. It is important to him that your God is accessible and that you can tell your God off when you are fed up. To Lionel, life is hard but there is a way to cope and kindness to ourselves and each other is fundamental. Miracles are possible in the strangest of places, and to Lionel, people need their miracles. Joan looks a million dollars for her age, but seems unkind, competitive and intolerant. Lionel looks like the back of a bus but is wise, loving, humourous and kind.

Still, it would be nice to look like Joan and be like Lionel. Perhaps that is the plan for being 52. Until then, until the feeling passes, I will get back into my duvet, compare notes with Olivia, and have another snooze in the sunshine. Bliss.

Bognor Regis Football Club. A Place Of Passion And Insight.

2011-09-19T13:54:00.000-07:00

On Saturday Alan, 14 Year Old Son and I went to a football match here in Bognor Regis. Bognor was playing Sittingbourne and so who could resist? The stadium is but five minutes from my front door and we knew there would be a passionate time ahead if we went. So we went. It cost us £2.50 per ticket and for an extra pound each, we could sit on a more sophisticated type of plastic chair in a posher part of the stadium. Of course that is what we did, and were lucky that so many of the seats in front of us were broken as both Alan and 14 Year Old Son have legs that start just below their ears and go on for miles. The broken seats were no longer attached to the ground and gave more room to long legs which made all the difference, and so the extra money was well spent.

This, said Alan, is the soul of football. He was very moved and perhaps a little tearful. " I played at this level once", he said, looking wistful. " I remember the excitement and nerves before playing an FA qualifying game, such as this is." 14 Year Old Son didn't hear Alan though, he hadn't brought his hearing aid because it has once or twice picked up someones mobile phone conversation in a crowd, and made him think he was hearing voices from God. 14 Year Old Son has been known to carry on surreal conversations with people who don't know that he has not got his hearing aid in. Not quite connecting to what is being said, he carries on chatting about what he thinks the other person is talking about, and is so batty and conversational that it is only the intervention of a very confused third party asking what the hell they are talking about, that the penny drops. Recently, Son spent time chatting happily to an elderly man about football while the elderly man talked about world war two spitfires. It was only when the whole table (it was at a Sunday lunch) fell into a mesmerised and pained silence that someone noticed that neither party had their hearing aids in. Both Son and elderly man had been thrilled to have met someone who could talk with such depth about football/spitfires, and neither could actually hear what the other was saying. It seemed cruel to disillusion them but the conversation had become so loud and so bizarre that something had to be done.

The football match began. All around the pitch, men and boys gripped the seat in front of them and settled in for 90 minutes of sheer bloodcurdling emotion. Onto the pitch ran the players, one lot wearing green and the other lot wearing blue. Now wasn't the time to ask the old warrior next to me, "And which, pray, are the Bognor lot?" I would work it out. And I would also work out which end Bognor had to score. Then, I would be one of them, an old football hack, able to roar appropriately along with the best of them. And not shout "Oh jolly good!" from the Bognor side when Sittingbourne scored a goal.

I am not a sporty person. I do however, possess a very sporty son and a very sporty other half. What I love when I go to matches and sporting events with them, is the passion everyone feels for the game. I love the furious excitement, I am full of admiration that they know the rules and can follow what is going on, and I am impressed at how personal the playing becomes to each and everyone spectating. It is as if each player is only playing like that to annoy that one man who is beside himself with passion. "You're only doing that to annoy me!" he shouts, but not in those words. That is only the gist of what he is saying. Much of what he says is cunningly wrapped up in personal comments about the player, the team, the ref and his mother. You have to listen between the lines, so to speak. Oh how football matches clutch at the heart of those dedicated to watching them. There is a universal need, it seems, for every man there to shout instructions to every player on the field at the top of his voice, from wherever he is in the stands, and expect the players to hear him and for it to make a difference. Oh thanks! he expects the exhausted fellow sweating in the middle of the pitch, to say. I didn't think of that! I'll just do that now. Or, Excuse me! You there, in the left hand row at the back of the stands! What shall I do now? Give me your advice!

Each man in the stands, watching the game, if they were not singing, was yelling till he was red in the face. Instructions, furious arm movements, match advice, and a running commentary on his personal feelings for game itself and possibly the ref And his mother. A heartbreaking camaradarie broke out within the stands, and fans would turn to each other and say in so many words, "Back me up, pal. I am sinking fast into the Slough of Despond, tell me I am right and that these fellows playing need to be sectioned" or, "so and so is playing like a hero today bless his cotton socks, and long may he continue to do so" and so on. And these men were loud. Caught up in the intensity of the moment, nothing would do except an all out bellow to join all the other all out bellows from the very core of the souls of the other spectators. All of whom were giving life saving advice from their own point of view. (The right one.)

Gosh, I thought. What would women do if we had something that moved us to shed all our good manners and yell advice at the top of our voices to whoever was entertaining us? What, I thought, am I passionate about? Colour was my first thought. A whole sea of women becoming unhinged at a spectacle where teams had to choose colours and paint something in those colours? I don't think it would work. (Red! Orange! No, no no, not blue, tell me you won't do blue AAaaaaaagh! Yaaaaahhhhh! Pink! etc) I wondered what would move me, as a woman, to identify with a game so much that I would merge my soul with it and at the same time give myself a hernia telling it what to do. I couldn't think of anything. I do love painting, but that is a solitary act. I love eating - not quite. I love reading. Nope. I love dancing to reggae. Nope. I love funny people. Nope. Nothing it seems, in my own life, could match football in a man's life.

I did have a small insight though. While at school I would try and try to get onto the Lacrosse team. I never made it, and couldn't understand why not. I ran around didn't I? And sometimes I caught the ball, didn't I? What I lacked, and still lack, is ability to see the bigger picture. Once I got the ball, it was meant to be passed on strategically to someone else (on my team) so that someone could hypothetically go on to score a goal. Well. I was so delighted to have caught the ball that I would not be too worried who I gave it to. Look at that! I wanted to say. I got the ball, I am definately team material. But I see now that it didn't stop there. As part of a team I was duty bound to act not as an individual, but as a cog in a wheel that was destined for victory. I saw all that in a flash on Saturday, at the Bognor Regis v Sittingbourne match. And while I was watching the match, I realised that I had no idea how anyone knew where the ball would be in this very game, or how the game would unfold. It was blindingly clear to those men having metaphorical heart attacks around me. But all I could see was a collection of men working together with some kind of divine knowledge not available to me, a game making sense with a plan, doing something together that they all understood and working together as one in a team in a way that was utterly beyond me. There, That is the nub. I am not a team player. I am a lone worker, an individual, and as such, no darn good in a Lacrosse match.

Well, Bognor Regis won. They wore the green outfits and no one died watching the match. I understand more about Lacrosse now than I did this time last week. And in the relief of the discovery that I am not a team player, I will make a badge that says "Don't ask me the rules. I'm a loner."

My Tracy Emin Moments.

2011-09-09T12:27:00.000-07:00

I have coined a new psychological term that may be useful. It is called the Tracy Emin Personality Association Complex Disorder Thing. It refers to the sudden realisation that you want to do exactly and only what you want from now on, be paid a lot for it, basing all that you do artistically and expressively solely, utterly and only upon yourself . It is a very good thing. It means that you are rebelling and you are probably going to do something dangerously different. Tracy Emin Association Complex condition comes on quite suddenly and can feel like a bolt out of the blue. Hang on, you say to yourself as you make your tea and chocolate spread sandwiches, I don't want to do this painting that I am doing so nicely and lovingly for someone else. I want to let rip. I want to paint trolls in the background and give all the women moustaches. I want to express myself and let my inner artist out. I don't care to please anyone any more, I'm having a Tracy Emin Moment!

It is far too hard to take this on board the first time it happens. Like a vocation to the religious life, you fear it and pretend it never happened. Don't know what came over me, you say, as you wipe the sweat from your brow and remove the chocolate spread sandwiches from your fist. You don't know why you punched them, but you blame low blood sugar in the morning and the stress of not waking up slim and beautiful as you hoped you might if you didn't eat the coco pops you so wanted just before bed last night.

The next time you are struck by the Tracy Emin Thing is when you are feeling listless in the late afternoon in the studio, and not wanting to call up new venues that may be interested in your work. Before you can stop yourself you have called a gallery in London and told them that whatever they wanted from you, the answer is No and what is more, you are going to roll in flour and red paint to make an installation called "It's All About Me" and write down all the names of those who wanted to marry when you were twelve. Like, for me, Alvin Stardust and Bryan Ferry. What is happening is that you are experiencing an extreme reversal of your artistic choices and whereas before, you were happy to do whatever anyone wanted in the style they wanted, now suddenly (it seems) you are filled with a passion to shout Knickers! to your clients, and a furious need to do only what you want in your studio, with your art, for ever. And alongside this furious reversal of your whole artistic ethos and business model, is the utter conviction that everyone that has anything at all to do with your new madness, will absolutely love it. Adore it. Fete you, promote you, write books on you and ponder your inner meanings - even ponder your soul. Bring it on! you shout as a kind of battle cry, from now on it's Me Me Me!

I have been having a few of these moments recently. I have been shifting slowly, it feels, towards simply doing what I want. I have had enough! I said to myself. And so the painting of Rev Rachel Mann which was like this -

has been wiped out and is now this -

Poor Rachel has not seen it yet but this is how it is going to be. Courage, Rachel, all will be well. It is going to be mainly black and white and I bought loads of magenta paint to go somewhere in the back ground so it really will be something.

This is just the start of the creeping Tracy Emin Thing. So far with me, it has only taken the form of Doing What I Want. Soon, unless I practice deep breathing and eat lots of healthy vegetable soups, my whole artistic oeuvre will concern only, and obsessively, myself. And if I am to do a proper Tracy Emin Thing, I will have to do it extremely well. I will have to make my dirty laundry really speak to you. I will have to exhibit my toenail clippings with passion.

The bottom line is that I like Tracy Emin a lot. She is fascinating to listen to, she can actually draw and she does what she does well. There is an integrity to her that I admire, and I love her intelligence. So onwards, my troops, with this sudden explosion of assertiveness. You never know, Tracy may get the urge to paint Angels and Veg Fairies and have a breakdown and I may exhibit my tonsils that were removed when I was twelve and have a breakdown too.

But this is getting out of hand. I don't want any breakdowns. The whole point of this Tracy Emin thing is that it is healthy. It is about doing your own thing and being bloody minded about it. So as Johnny Rotten so sweetly put it

"No feelings, no feelings, no feelings for anyone else. Except for myself, my beautiful seeeelf."

Quite.

My Tiny Feet Are Frozen

2011-09-05T10:33:00.000-07:00

My feet are cold and so I will be brief. It is September now and the wind is blowing around my garden under a low grey sky. It is only natural then that my feet are cold. I did not think twice about putting on my usual flip flops this morning; during the summer months I choose my flip flops to suit my mood, my outfit, or both. I paint my toenails red, or pink, or often paint the red over the pink and vice versa, and keep going like that until I have very tall toenails.

I am sitting in my studio as I write this, thinking and making plans but I keep coming back to how cold my feet are. Despite the difficulties in concentrating, I have made a wee plan for today and I am going to stick to it stubbornly even though, even though - my feet are cold. Very cold.

My plan for today is to email three people to say thank you for various lovely things, which I have done. Then to write the A Graceful Death blog which I have done too. (www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com). Oh, it is pouring with rain now. When I leave here I will have cold and wet feet. Why do I have to suffer so?

My plan. Back to my plan. I have this blog to write and then I am going into the house to tidy, clean, wash and do laundry with Oldest Son who is, I hope, going to let me into his Quarters so that we can make his surroundings a bit more crisp. If I ever finish the cleaning thing in the house, I will come back in here and paint more of Nushi and more of Rev Rachel Mann.

Rev Rachel Mann has been a bugger to do. I have wiped the wood clean twice now and am starting again with a completely and utterly different style. I am going to try to do her in black and white paint, with grey and maybe bright scarlet too. I think this may be the answer, I have begun it and hope that I can make it work. It is taking for ever, but I hope I will finish it before Rev Rachel makes it to Archbishop.

There are goosebumps on my arms now. What is this coldness? I have a warm boiler suit on and a long sleeved teeshirt. I have blue and white spotty flip flops which we have agreed will not keep me warm, but the boiler suit has always kept me warm before. Maybe I am coming down with something. Maybe I am fading away. Unlikely. I had a dream the other night that I was now officially fat and got a certificate to prove it. I don't think I am fading away. Maybe I will be discovered like the poet Chatterton, dead in my garret, my tiny feet as blue as as my flip flops.

Henry Wallice The Death of Chatterton. The young starving poet is found dead in his attic. His feet look fine.

Oh! I got it wrong! says Puccini, I meant to say, your tiny feet are frozen.

A rather sinister thought is that Socrates felt the effects of Hemlock from the feet upwards. He lost the sensation of his feet first, they became cold. The rest of his body followed. I have not taken any hemlock that I know of, I had PG Tips for breakfast, there wasn't any Hemlock in my tea caddy. I think.

No. I am not going to die. I am being dramatic. I am simply going to go back into the house now and put on my fluffy winter slippers. I will put all my flip flops into a plastic bag and fling them to the back of my wardrobe as if Finally. Our relationship over the last few summer months is over. There is no more need of you here. It is time for boots and fur lined slippers. It is Over, do you hear, Over.

Whoops! Time to go and clean the Son's Rooms. Best foot forward and all that ha ha ha.

"What I Really Think" By The Dalai Lama

2011-08-29T02:42:00.000-07:00

I wonder what the Dalai Lama really thinks. My cousin Maddy, when the chips are down, says think Loveliness. The Dalai Lama does Loveliness, and is trained to be above average in the human being stakes. He twinkles and smiles, he does meditation and politics, he fasts and wears robes and does not do cold turkey without a cup of tea. He is full of mindfulness and love. But what does he really think? While he is meditating and slowing his heart rate to a tenth of, say, mine, does the image of a cheeseburger cross his mental line of vision? Does he ever wake in the morning and say under his breath as the icy air creeps under his robes while dressing, "No more Mr Nice Guy. I am going to smack someone today." As people queue up to touch his hand, does he ever want to say, "Gerroff."

The Dalai Lama is the top Lama. There are plenty of other Lamas, all of whom are trained to be Other and Wonderful. What do any of them really think? Because the Dalai Lama is a public figure, I am very taken with his hypothetical book, which will never be written, called "What I Really Think."

So as ever, comparing myself with the Dalai Lama, I have been thinking of the difficulty of writing a book called "What I Really Think." If I wrote about all the things that happen and what I thought at the time, this blog wouldn't be the jolly, measured account of life and love in Bognor Regis. It would be a teenage tantrum about things not being fair, and how I hate everyone and it is all their fault and why does everything always happen to me etc. And there would be a list of people I hate and what I want to happen to them. I would be lost in self pity and want to tell you all about it so you could plan revenge on my behalf and I would be the centre of attention in the playground. But - I work through that stage before coming to write it all down for the world to see. I do Loveliness, and think of things like consequences, and have a cup of tea. Often I don't even mention the things that really bother me, in case I tell the truth to all of you and get really personal. I am always in danger of folding my arms and pouting and wanting to stun people into submission by my silence. I suspect that it never works because the victims of this powerful tool of Pouty Silence are quite relieved and think oh good, she has shut up and now I can get on with my life. I, on the other hand, hope they are saying, goodness how wrong I am, it is all my fault and her stalwart silence is covering a truly broken heart and a gentle righteousness that is a lesson to me. Does this ever happen to the Dalai Lama? If he maintained a pouty silence, those around him would think he is just meditating again and leave him alone. Don't make a noise, they would say to each other, he is in another realm. Whereas the DL is wanting some real attention and someone to say poor you, have a cream cake and tell me where we have gone wrong.

I am always wanting to find peace and love. And adulation and glory. I want to do the right thing and I wish I was wise and deeply memorable. But I want that while being fed my favourite foods and being told at all times that I am fab, my paintings are fab, that my writing is fab and that really I am the bees knees. At all times. And when someone tells me they don't like me/my work/anything about me, it is because they are simply jealous.

I did go to France with Alan, to join the wonderful novelist Olivia Fane (her new book On Loving Josiah is out now) and her husband, and 20 other people in a Chateau in Cherbourg. I did paint there, and I did almost finish the portrait of Nush Khan Levy. I did feel very vulnerable too, because the people who we were holidaying with were very cultured indeed, and I realised that they may not like what I paint at all. No one said anything about the portrait, I didn't get the Blimey you are Marvellous comments that I long for, but then again, I didn't get the sniggers behind the hand either. I loved painting in this holiday in France. I loved how easy it was to set up in the attic there, and I loved how I actually did it. One guest staying there was an art teacher and an artist of high renown. When she came up to see what I was doing, I was afraid that she would say this, Antonia, is on a par with painting by numbers. But she didn't, she gave some very helpful practical advice which I followed and felt even more proud of myself for even starting to paint on holiday. Instead of just talking about it, you understand.

So what do I really think? I think I must go now and collect Eileen from the station. She is coming to stay so that we can work on A Graceful Death together, and for her to have a bit of peace. Eileen always tells me what she really thinks. If I don't go and collect her on time, she will think that I have deserted her and fallen forever into a pouty sulk. I had better go and get her, and tell what I really think, which is that having just arrived at my house, she should do all the housework for me.

You can imagine that Eileen will not spare her words telling me what she, too, really thinks.

Chin Up, Chest Out, Best Foot Forward, Smiles All Round

2011-08-07T11:42:00.000-07:00

I am fine. I am wearing pink. I am glowing with a gentle tan applied a few days ago and still here, I have not taken a bath in case I go all white again. My studio feels like home once more, and yesterday I had the birthday meal to end all birthday meals . I had chips, crisps, sweets and a white bap with processed cheese and overfried onions. I drank diet coke and sweet tea from a polystyrene mug.

My hair it shineth. My kids, they joketh. My house, it is clean forsooth. And my garden, it noddeth (with flowers) and all is peaceful in the August sun.

Yesterday I was 51. I had the most wonderful birthday, I had so much attention and kindness from everyone that somehow the tension from the last few months feels as if it is evaporating. There was a certain Oh what the heck! in my heart as I woke this morning, and a very slight bubble of excitement in my tummy as I thought - I am going to make a list! This list was a sensible list. It was a real Can Do list of small and effective actions that I could do today that would, possibly, make tomorrow easier. It was six items long. It involved lists of people to email with teeny requests and reassuring statements. It involved phoning a certain lady who I want to speak to about training to be companion for the dying. And it started with a very sensible item, "Ask for help".

Two wee miracles happened in the space of two days that enabled this recovery. The first wee miracle -

I have been longing to go away on my own to paint and write. Just a week, I reasoned, one week of utter silence. In a small cottage, by the sea, in a thriving little village, where I can be solitary amongst other people, and use the silence to create. St Ives! I said to myself, is the answer. Well, the cost of getting there, the cost of staying there and the difficulty finding a nice place that would suit me was too difficult. "Woe," I said finally. "I live by the sea in Bognor Regis, I have my studio here and a constant food source. I will stay here and create my St Ives holiday here. Woe." The next day, a busy travelling and seeing people day, I received an email which was titled "St Ives Invitation". I was just getting out of the car at the time I received it, and managed to say "What the," before falling out of the door. I sent it on to Alan and asked him to read it because I thought it was a joke. A while later the email came back via Alan saying It is true! Go! St Ives awaits!

An old school friend that I have not seen since about 1976 had seen me on facebook, had read a few blogs, had looked at the work, and had had an inkling that I should be there, in St Ives, in her renovated cottage while it was waiting to be sold, in order to lift my heart and spirits. She had intended to write and offer a wee holiday there before, but had not got round to it. But the day she did send the invite, was the day I most needed it, and the day after I had thought that it would not be possible. And she lives in St Ives! Blimming heck that is spooky but welcome. So I am going. I will work out when, and I will go.

The next wee miracle -

I have been doleful and morose of late. It is true. I have not been able to work, I have felt empty of inspiration and heavy of heart. I have been fatigued right to my very soul. "Wassit all about?" I asked myself morning noon and night, as I trudged around the house eating bread and butter and feeling fat. Yes, lots of worrying things were happening with my boys, my Youf of Bognor, and still are - but - the effect on me was to put me into a state of Shut Down. Why, I would mumble, when I could bring myself to remember all my painting enagagements and deadlines, am I watching my artistic life slide away from me? And I cannot for the life of me, give a jot? And then there would follow a terrible feeling of panic and helplessness. Haven't I done enough? I would say with sad eyes, to the wall, to have made some difference in the world out there, without always having to push myself and work so hard?

On Friday, the Sunday Times contacted me about an interview for A Graceful Death.

Enough said. Even if nothing comes of it, someone out there, who writes about The World beyond Bognor, was interested enough to want to talk to me about my work. That contact from an established newspaper has woken me up. "I am fine now!" I said to myself. "Time to wake up."

And today, because of the two miracles and the lovely birthday, I have made my list of six things. I have already done four of them. I have stepped out of the coccoon I have been in and am emerging slightly crumpled, as an Artist again. Next week I go to France with Alan to join a house party. Until a few days ago I had planned to run away and hide there. Only Alan would be able to see me, I would be the Recluse that Must Not Be Disturbed. Now, thanks to the St Ives and the Sunday Times email, thanks to my lovely birthday, I am taking my painting things to Cherbourg with me, in Alan's lovely posh car, and spending the week painting the portrait of Nush Khan Levy that I should have painted ages ago, for A Graceful Death. And I am excited about it.

"Ahhh," says the Dalai Lama reading this. "All things have ebb and flow. All things are cyclical. You have just finished your ebb and are starting your flow." Thanks Dalai.

How Can I Not Work?

2011-08-01T07:45:00.000-07:00

This may look like the cry of a workaholic who is seeing the light.

It may look like someone who is snowed under and longs for Batman to come and take it all away.

What I am actually saying is No, really, what can I do to not work?

Today is my first day back in the studio for ages. Today I am not only doing all the washing and getting some food in, I am dealing with my desk and all the backlog of papers piled up there. I am going into the painting part of the studio and saying Pah! Chicken Feed! I can do this. Bring it on. I am saying to myself - Now what is it I am avoiding most, and then saying That is the thing I will start with. The phone is with me, the computer is on, my teapot is full and my diary is open. The paintings that need to be done have been set up a while ago and I will joyfully remove the cobwebs from them and blow clouds of dust from the paints and brushes. I have lit a scented candle and opened the windows, and have practiced smiling while doing all this to get myself into the mood, to tell my subconscious to tell me that it is all so much fun. Look what you can do today! I want my subconscious to say to me, what a lark! So much painting, so much creativity, you know you love it and Lo! There is tons of it to do! Piling up! (Easy, easy. Deep breaths and Smile. Do, as my dear cousin Maddy says, Loveliness. Do Loveliness)

But what is really happening is that I am afraid. I am afraid that I am not able to do it any more. I dread the idea of starting because it feels like a mountain to climb, and I am only wearing flip flops. At the top of the mountain are my Goals. I am at the bottom feeling weary and fat, empty and boring, and having to put my sunglasses on to glimpse at the golden shining Stuff at the top of the mountain. Which, if they are my goals, I have put there. How did this happen? How did my goals get so distant and so dazzling? If I put them there, where was I on this metaphorical mountain when I did so? And then how did I get to the bottom of the mountain and feel I can't look up to these goals without shading my eyes?

I don't really know how it happened, but it did. There have been Family Issues, yes. We all get them. Decisions to make - big ones, yes. We all get them. There have been personal issues too, like getting older and being different to how I was a year ago. There have been health issues which have come to nothing and as far as we know, I am as tickety boo as I have always been except - except - I have become terribly terribly tired. I am coming up for 51 and am menopausal. I am well but changing. My family are changing too, the children are getting older and are trying to prove that they are invincible, that they are always right and that I should blinking well get a life, but after I have proved I love them by getting in their favourite ice cream. My parents are getting older and are saying what they really think very loudly in public, and my friends - ah. My friends are changing like me. They are often terribly tired, and they have, from time to time, ground to a halt too. It is reassuring to try to explain to a friend how blobby and unexceptional and miserable you feel, to hear them say, I hear you. I too am a Dowdy Frump.

I have been to Ireland again. This time I went for my annual stay with Darling Dublin Friend and her husband, The Nicest Man In Ireland and their family in the cottage they have by the sea in Arklow. I have been going there with them from before I had my second and third child, and they had their two. There is history there, tons of history, and it is full of happiness and memories. My history there is only that I go every year from just after my daughter was born, then bringing each of the boys with me as they arrived in my world. The deeper Irish memories and histories of this cottage are generational, full of the myths and stories of all those that have been there over the years. My visit to Arklow, with my two sons in tow, was to mark a turning point for me. I had decided this before I went. While at Arlkow, I told myself, my introspection will have reached its limits. I will make a plan for a sensible and practical return to the studio and my life therein. I will, I said to myself before I went, prioritise. And if I come first on my list, well blow me down, lordy luvaduck, it's not such a bad thing. So now, having spent that time in the silence of the cottage in Arklow, where there is no telly, no radio, no music, no distractions but the gentle and uplifting conversations with those around me; no distractions but the very cold sea to swim in and the sand dunes to lie in; no distractions but the books to read, the board games to play and the mammoth meals to cook and eat, and having spent that time in silence, I am ready to come back to the studio and just Start. Theoretically.

So here I am. Not, as it happens, tired at all. Onto my second pot of tea, and some phone calls out of the way. The washing is done and is drying nicely on the trampline. The shopping is done, so Furiously Independent Son, who is upstairs at the moment, will have ice cream and green tea when he wants it, and daughter is unexpectedly collected from the train station. The mess of papers on my desk has been marked, sorted, stapled, hole puched, and thrown away. I am wearing a very fetching summer dress, I am wearing perfume, I am challenging my inner blob. Tomorrow I will paint, tomorrow will be different. Tomorrow I will wear my painting boiler suit, and that means Business. Can't back out of it then. I will arrive early, and say matter of factly to my studio - Morning. Just going to do some masterpieces, don't mind me, just doing my job, thanks very much, and so on. There will be a little pouff of dust as I sit on my painting seat, a brief intake of breath as I select a brush, and the day will begin. I will bear in mind that even the most accomplished of artists have spent a day gazing at their work, and just before sundown, tweaked a single tiny detail with the smallest brush they own. That will give me scope to do quite a lot, if doing the single late-in-the-day-tweak is still acceptable. Even is I do two tweaks, that is progress.

In the meantime, I have begun the steady trudge back up the mountain in my flip flops. I have been thinking, that you do have to stop and think about things. You do have to spend time not being effective and not being productive. You do have to give up and give in and crumple like a slow motion video of a tower block coming down, and you do have to allow youself to be vacant. It is good to sit in your blobbiness and try and remember what you are here on this earth for, and eat white bread sandwiches with Nutella. But there is no other way out of it, I think, than eventually saying to yourself (as if speaking to a very old dog that needs to come in out of the rain and keeps sitting down in the mud with exhaustion, tail wagging, and still trying her best) - Come on old thing, time to shuffle back into the day to day out there. Can't be that bad, can it? Start at the beginning, don't expect too much, and just do what you can. There now. (Dog falls nobly but pathetically over the threshold and tears all round from the assembled kitchen staff).Watch this space.

"Bear Up," Spake The Voice From On High, "It's Not Over Yet"

2011-07-13T06:55:00.000-07:00

Bear Up, Ye Of Many Small Heart Attacks, Thou Shalt Be OK

If I were to write in Biblical terms of a conversation with God, with a bit of Hollywood, this is how it would go.

And Lo, the Heavens parted and there unto my eyes were Angels of Light and in the midst was a Light more bright than any I have seen. "Thou," said the Light in a thundering voice that rattled my teapots on their shelves, "thou art in a proper mess."

"Oh tell me who you are, Light that is too bright for my eyes," I said in a whisper, quaking with fear. "Are you God?"

" I am." Said the voice. "And I have words of comfort and wisdom that wilt be of enormous benefit to thee. Hast had enough? Thought so. Make thyself comfortable, oh my daughter, it is not just thee that hast loads to cope with, thou joinest an enormous throng of parents that despaireth that their offspring will ever be normal." And with that, each of the multitude of Heavenly Angels lifted up their instruments and played a fanfare of terrific joy and then - and then - was that a piano? Was one of the Angels playing a piano? "As a token of my personal attention," said God from the midst of what was now a wonderful virtuoso display of music, "I have commanded that we conduct this interview to music that you adore. My seraphim and cherubim will play Scott Joplin for you." And it was true. We were speaking to the gentle but syncopated rhythms of Fig Tree Rag played in harmony by a thousand Heavenly Hosts.

"Now," said God. "I knowest that one of thy offspring is off tripping the light fantastic. He will return. It is written that he will do this thing. I have made him with love and free will, and I will be beside him even at the crummiest of night clubs; I will be with him. His soul is never lost, I have it in my hand, but his way may be dark and dangerous. Fear not, oh Artist Lady, for though his path is many forked, and there are many choices he could make, at no point is he alone as I am there with my hand on his head waiting for him to work it all out."

There was a pause and the angels started to play Maple Leaf Rag. "Feeling better, oh thou of huge need of a lucky break?" said God.

"I think so," I replied.

I gazed with wonder around me. I had been standing in my kitchen which was transformed into a place of wonder and light and love and Scott Joplin; I was enveloped in the light that was pouring into the room from the vision of glory that filled my entire line of vision. I was in awe, I was both afraid and unafraid, I was longing to hear more.

"Thou art longing to hear more," said God from the centre of the joyful throng of Angels and pianos. "And now I say unto thee, listen up and thou wilt have peace. Thy son who is 14, he who they call Boxing Boy, he who is of a golden heart but mighty of fist, he who is now in a pickle and mighty are the consequences. Courage!" the voice boomed. I jumped and spilt my tea. "Courage! He has only the semblence of a mountain troll, in truth, thy son is nice fellow. I have given him the ability to do many things, many wonderful things, and as yet, he cannot see them. Thou hast found a piano teacher for him? Good. And he will, I say unto thee, go back to rugby and boxing and all will be well, he will pulverise others in a controlled and legal manner. And lo. These children are yours, remember that, they have quite a few of your genes and thus may become nicer as time goes by. Thou hast a daughter too. I have shown that all will be well, thy daughter has an ISA and a pension and has pulled herself back from the abyss. She is training to be a nurse and is a jolly good one too."

A pause. We both remained silent. The Angels broke into Magnetic Rag. The light beamed and filled the room and I heard God shifting and clearing his throat. He was right. Beautiful Daughter, she who fell as a teenager headlong into a hell of chavviness and drink, is now a force to be reackoned with. She is now working and studying at the same time, and is living with Dolly Parton as a role model in Brighton.

"It has been tough," said God quietly, " and it is not over yet. But Hey! I am with you and I hold all of you deep in my heart."

"But everything is so goddam hard," I said from the kitchen. "I don't know what to do next and nothing is being done and I can't think clearly."

"Oh My Lovely Artist Lady!" said God with a chuckle. The Angels broke into the Entertainer. "All things are possible! Much is being done, much is being achieved, you cannot see it and you do not expect it, but all is good and all is being done that needs to be done, and Lo! There is time! Why not trust me, love your ghastly offspring, and get an Indian Takeaway. Take thee to London and see a show! Thy painting work is ongoing and a whole different kettle of fish, trust me that thou art a good painter but right now, it is not the priority. Get thy lads sorted and take it from me, I have you all in my sights and know well what you feel, and somehow, it will all sort itself out."

And with that the Angels upped the volume of Heavenly Rag Time, and a hand came from the sky and wrote in the white board I have for notes in my kitchen -

Bear Up, Ye Of Many Small Heart Attacks, Thou Shalt Be OK.

The vision cleared, and silence fell. My heart felt light and the room looked brighter and cleaner. Wow, I thought. I have been given a thumbs up from On High. I am not alone, it is not all a wasteland of gloom and dreadfulness, though I have to say it feels like it. I looked up to where the glory of God had been, in the centre of such a wonderful light, up in the ceiling of my kitchen. And as I looked, the faint chords of Scott Joplin could be heard echoing in the distance and fluttering down to my feet was a piece of paper. "Special Offers At Your Local Indian Takeaway" it said. Thank you God. A sign indeed.

Madam, Your Children Are Unruly And You Are A Disgrace. And Did You Enjoy Ireland?

2011-07-07T04:21:00.000-07:00

Madam, You And Your Children Are Unruly. How Was Ireland?

Madam, Fate says this morning, Your Children Are Unruly. Yes, I say, I think you are right.

I wonder how many mothers live like this. We have our selection of children, we have one, or two, or three or more, and we do our best. We get on with raising them and hope that they are all still there and breathing at the end of each day, that they will go to bed and sleep like the cherubs we hope they are, somewhere deep inside their subconcious. We need to keep tabs on each child as they grow, because they know that they know best. We were born, they think, fully formed as adults and know nothing about life and are really stupid. The older they get, our little babies, the taller they get. And in my case, I ended up with tall, glorious and powerful children, one of which is tall enough to use me as an elbow rest. For that child in question today, with the height comes power, and with this sense of power comes the lust for battle and with the lust for battle comes regular punch ups. It is as if I am looking after a toddler who is the size of Godzilla. But Godzilla, King Kong, The Terminator, Thor the Thunder God didn't understand that they didn't have to thwack things and flatten whole cities when they were annoyed. No one was there to tell them not to. A chat with an understanding adult may have helped. A game of rugby, a round of boxing in a gym, a bit of time spent on a survival course in the North Sea, anything but Incidents Outside School where there are no sensible adults (or kids) to say Go Home You Fool.

Madam, said the school this morning, your son has not turned up for class. Are you aware of the Incident Outside School yesterday? And having got one furious, resentful and disgusted offspring off to London yesterday from where I am to be disowned as a punishment for being alive and wrong, I wake up this morning to the next furious resentful child thinking My Turn Now! Watch This!

Yes, I say to the school, I know about the Incident Outside School. I feel that waves and waves of consequences are coming. Gird Your Loins, I say to myself in the mirror, Life Has Its Ups And Downs, And This Is Another Down. By implication, an Up will follow, so I paint my toenails red and say Bring It On. We Have Done All This Before, We Will Do It Again. And I think, this is my youngest child that is on this rocky path, and when he is grown up, I don't have any other younger Visigoths In Waiting. It will then be time to hire a camper van with my old school pals Caroline, Sarah, Sharon and Vicky and go in a convoy to the ends of the earth where everyone is sensible and fun and before anyone hits anyone else, they have a jolly good chat and a cup of tea, tell each other some really funny jokes, and sort it out.

When my kids play up, I feel as if I were to blame. I feel the unspoken words at the end of every phone call about them is And You Madam, Are A Disgrace. I feel that I missed important signals that they needed help. I feel that they must have been trying to tell me that things were not right and that I merrily ignored them. I was too busy chatting to friends about the meaning of life and what constitutes a great blueberry muffin while my darlings were agonising over whether to bash so and so or not, or whether to furiously disown me until they needed more money, to teach me a lesson for being so embarrassing. Maybe my dear Boxing Boy, my youngest son who is trying out Thuggery as a bargaining tool, longs for something I am not giving him. Maybe I should allow him to do Junior Cage Fighting. Maybe not. I feel the frustration of those who have to deal with the misdemeanours of my kiddies, and long to say I Am A Disgrace. I Am Sorry. We Are All A Disgrace.

Ireland was not a disgrace. Ireland was absolutely wonderful. Briefly, I took my Furiously Independent Son to Dublin for his birthday, and stayed with Darling Dublin Friend and her husband, The Nicest Man In Ireland. We joined the Husband and about 28 other Dubliners and their children, and went up a mountain in Co. Wicklow, where we camped for a magical midge infested night. The next morning, we woke (those of us who slept) and having packed up, left the stream by which we had become a Midge Banquet, and walked down as a tired, happy and very dishevelled bunch of campers to end up at one of the camper's homes where his wife had made us all a special gourmet breakfast. I will never taste better food. There were over 100 pancakes, which the kids finished before us adults could say Guinness Loaf. The lady in question is a trained chef, and is probably the best cook in the world. To me. Now.

I was too, the only Mum to go on this camping holiday. I put my name down with huge excitement and asked no questions at all. It turns out that all the Dads went with their kids, and all the Mums stayed behind with a view to visiting each other for an almighty knees up before helping out with the mammoth breakfast the next day. It should have been obvious. What Irish Mum would choose to go up a mountain for a night with midges and dirt and their husbands while the kids go quietly ferral, when they don't have to?

The Dads had fab tents, equipment and know-how. Darling Dublin Friend lent me her tent and when I unpacked it, I was not only the only Mum, I was the only one with a cow tent.

Madam, you are not a disgrace, you have slept on a mountain in Wicklow in a Cow Tent. And your children are not a disgrace either. They just need time, a padded cell and to join the army. Fear not, Lady Artist, all this shall pass and one day you will be in a camper van far far away telling jokes and drinking tea with the Bedouin with all your friends in camper vans of their own. Cow camper vans.

It's Been Lovely But I Have To Scream Now

2011-06-29T03:12:00.000-07:00

It's Been Lovely But I Have To Scream Now

It has been interesting, it has been difficult and not much of the past week has been lovely, and sometimes I do want to scream but here we are. I am as ever, at home. Furiously Independent Son is here too and is in the garden, lying on the trampoline smoking and sunbathing with all his black clothes on. Daughter is sunbathing on the hammock next to him in her undies, shining with well applied suncream and being grimly determined to stay there despite the cigarette smoke. These two are not talking to each other. It goes back a long way, and it is a shame. Both would be very good for each other but both think the other is a ghastly mistake and should be exterminated. They both came from me and I am very nice, but I expect I am only very nice now that I am 50. And exhausted. When I was that age I was a pain in the bum. So patience, Lady Artist, patience. Here is the story of your youth and all its mistakes being played out before you, twice, in your two oldest children. This, says a voice from the sky, is your next learning curve. This, continues the voice from the heavens, is how I feel. Up here, knowing it all and not being listened to.

I am sitting here in the studio watching them from my window, and thinking that they are really very similar. And that they could be so happy together once the power struggles, status stuff and sibling rivalry has been sorted out.

I have the Furious Son home again. His aura is not dissimilar to broken glass. He is avoiding any talk and avoiding any resolutions. He is full of pain and misunderstanding. My wider family watch us with concern, him and me. I watch him with concern, and think that he is living two lives and that he doesn't need to. I know what he does and where, and I am still here with my heart bigger than ever for him. He probably does need to live divided. Maybe this is all part of the process. I know about living with two identities, but I only know about it because now I don't do it any more. He is older now and things will change for him outside, but inside there is no change. No sudden shaft of light from above that illuminates the secrets of life for him. I know a lot but my job is to keep quiet and say as little as possible while watching like a hawk.

I thought of many things this past week. I thought of the madness of youth, I thought about way my mother is getting old. I thought about people who are coming to the end of their lives and still feeling young inside. I thought about what it is to have your life ahead of you and to be ignorant of your place in it. I thought about myself and how I always felt an outsider. How I had no idea of my worth when younger. I look at my Furiously Independent Son and think that he is full of the wisdom of the planets and stuck with the confusion and vulnerability of a small child.

Today then. Back to the day ahead. I go to the Hospice to do a volunteering stint over lunch time. I go shopping to buy food and I have a fancy to buy some clocks. I have an Arsenal Angel to do, and then with luck, tomorrow will come and I go to London to a fancy dinner with Alan. Over the weekend I go back to Dublin, with Furiously Independent Son, back into the arms of Darling Dublin Friend and her husband, the Nicest Man In Ireland. This is my birthday present to my newly grown up son. The Nicest Man In Ireland is taking him and me, and lots of other small kiddies and parents, camping on Saturday. I am going for the fun of it, FIS is going for some reason I can't fathom. A few days in Dublin will be great fun, and time spent with FIS alone is always great fun. Even though I am embarrassing and forget to bring my caravan.

Thanks you to all of you who contacted me with kindness and love over the past week. It means a lot to me and I am grateful for your care. And now, if any of you want to

Adopt FIS
Take me away on a holiday to the sunshine
Buy all my art
Give FIS a job in Alaska or South Pole or The Moon

let me know.

In the meantime

It has to be the answer.

I Can't Find My Safe Place.

2011-06-25T14:15:00.000-07:00

I Can't Find My Safe Place

When Steve was in his hospice bed once, he became very restless and agitated and I took his face in my hands. "I can't find my safe place," he said with his eyes closed. "I want to go home now." "This is your safe place," I said, "this is your safe place. And you can't go home."

I don't remember if it made him stop bunching up his sheets and trying to find a way to be comfortable, I think he was calmer and I think I sat for ages watching him and wondering about safe places. I don't really remember. It was as if the safe place he was looking for was in one of the corners of his bed, it was a physical space that was mislaid. At hand, nearby and temporarily out of reach. He thought perhaps, that someone would say, "Ah. Here it is, this little square of sheet here at the top left of the bed, remember? This and this alone is your safe place. This is where you must try and fit yourself because here, you cannot be unsafe. Let me help you get back to it." He wanted to go home too, and I don't blame him. But home was no longer a safe place, it was once where he was able to rest and relax but now those days were gone forever. He needed a new safe place while dying, and this safe place had to be found within his bed.

I never consider my safe place until I feel unsafe. Until then, I continue making plans and writing lists. I think that I will contact this venue and ask if I can exhibit, and I will send an email to that person to say that I am an artist and that they may love my work. While I am doing that, I think, I will do the washing and go to Tescos. I say Yes to a new commission and I say Of Course to a party invitation; I make a press release and I say to Eileen, "Let's ask Clarissa if we can have another fund raising event in her big Wimbledon house" and I know what I am doing. Antonia gets tired but she is well able to cope. How do you do it? is music to her ears. Shucks, she says looking bashful, you know. I just, do. And then something I don't expect shakes the ground under me, and I didn't see it coming, I didn't plan for it and I didn't practice to deal with it. All my coping strategies aren't about coping with this. I feel I am only eight years old and have been asked to cope with a mighty grown up problem. At times like these, I can no longer find time to sit and read. No time ever to have a relaxing bath, no time to go to bed, and no point in sleeping. No time for anything that used to make me feel comfortable and peaceful, no safe places.

Last week Furiously Independent Son went missing. He really went missing and I called the police. While he was unfound, I discovered things about his life and lifestyle that made me afraid that I would never see him again. I contacted people last with him at night clubs from his Facebook page, but no one had seen him at all. Gone. Other people started to ask where he was, and one or two even emailed me to ask. Furiously Independent Son keeps his home life and his outside life separate from each other. He is pathologically secretive about every step he takes once out of this front door, I don't know the names of any of his friends nor do I know where any of them live. While on the quest to find him, I discovered he had told everyone that I was a Traveller, a Catholic one, living in a caravan. Irish. An Irish Catholic Traveller in a caravan. And that his grandparents owned Rolls Royce. Ah. That is why we are kept so far apart, his friends and me. I wouldn't stand up to scrutiny. I am not Irish, I have quite a posh accent, I have a house in Bognor Regis, a bike and a VW car. No caravans. No horses and no big gypsy weddings. Though my name is Rolls, my parents don't own Rolls Royce, though because my lovely old Dad has had a few strokes and doesn't always remember clearly, he would probably agree that he did, after all, own Rolls Royce.

I could not sleep. I could not find him. I didn't like what his friends told me and I wanted the police to find him. Trawl the hospitals, I told them. I know something has happened to him. I saw him in my imagination, unconscious and vulnerable, forgotten and dying in the boot of someone's car and his phone lying just out reach ringing, ringing, ringing. I saw him in my nightmares cold, confused and crying silently and I feared that I would never find my way through this.

And then I got a call from a train guard in Orpington. Your son, he says, has been found avoiding paying his fare by locking himself and his friend in the toilet. Oh I said. Ask the name of the friend. My first instinct was to put a name to someone that my son knew and because the guard asked, he would have to say. Why, I asked the guard, is he in Orpington? As if the guard could say Well Madam, it's like this, see. Here is a run down of your son's actions since last week, bear with me, it is going to be a long one. In fact the guard said he didn't know and who was going to pay for the ticket. So I put the guard onto the police that were looking for son and said They will deal with this.

And, I said to the guard, will you tell him to come home?

And then I thought, with a ticket.

Furiously Independent Son did eventually come home, the next day. Incandescent with rage that I had spoilt his life. Full of scorn for my worry, full of the dreadful arrogance of someone who has never had to feel much for anyone else. He filled the house with a subversive fury and I thought, is this me? Do I take the credit for making this 17 Year Old Son so very unrecognizable? At what point, I began to think, did I begin to get it so wrong that this is the result? What is this thing called Love that mothers feel for their children, and is it this Love that is preventing me from smacking him on the bum with a breadboard and cutting holes in his best tee shirts? Much talking was done. Not much listening, but that is what youngsters do. Not listen. They don't like it, it threatens their sense of self. If they do listen, they may hear things that contradict their conviction that they are immune to harm, able to control drugs, dead cool and the law doesn't apply to them. So there was not much progress there, and I felt that this never ending ocean of parental love we hear so much about may have been a little exaggerated.

So now, there has been a resolution of sorts. He is still up to no good doing whatever it was that made him go missing last week, no lessons learnt and no interest in anyone else. However, he did become quite calm and had the grace to look a little nervous about going back to London. I have had gentle words with him and we are going to change the rules a bit from next week. He will be 18 and I will no longer support him. He can get a job and I will no longer fund his lifestyle. And it turns out that I was right to be worried last week. He did experience something that could have been very dangerous, and it was on the very day that I called the police and tried to find him. He got away with it this time, but if it happens again he may well be glad that I go all out to find him and bring him home. Safe.

I am full of sorrow today. I have no place to rest, I have no space in my body to find comfort. I can't find consolation in the things that console me when I am otherwise so busy, so full of plans and ideas. I have no safe place to go. I have no place where the worry and the shock of the last few days can't magnify in my brain and make me long for sleep to forget it all. And Furiously Independent Son? He is back seeking what he thinks of as his safe places. They are very unsafe places though, they will not give him happiness and strength. They are dangerous and shallow and he will have to find it out for himself. He will have to find out that he is not invincible, that he is no different from all the other young men who think they can do what they want without consequence nor harm. He will find out that just because he denies responsibility, doesn't mean that it will go away.

I am lying on my bed. The house is quiet and the FIS is safe in that he is alive. I wonder what was the point of all that determination to find him last week. I did as any good mother would do, and I guess he did as any foul clubbing raving 17 year old son would do. My safe place, like Steves, has dwindled to a space in my bed where I am going to curl up and sleep.

What Will You Say Of Me When I'm Gone?

2011-06-14T10:56:00.000-07:00

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for the Jesus on the Tube image and idea
www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for the A Graceful Death exhibition, paintings from the end of life

What Will You Say Of Me When I Am Gone?

14 Year Old Son, he of the let's-settle-this-with-some-loving-fisticuffs philosophy of life, turned to me in the car recently. He looked as if he was wanting to tell me something important. "Mum." He said. Small powerful silence. I waited. "You may not be good at counting, or maths or anything." Yes? I said with my eyes, "you are not academic or anything and you don't understand things, but you are very nice." I smiled. "And?" my face tried to say - "and," he continued, "you cook well."

When I am gone, you can all say that I was very nice and that I cooked well. It made me think, what will I be remembered for? What will you be remembered for? 14 Year Old Son distilled all his love and passion for me into this declaration, and for him it meant a lot. "There," his dewy eyes seemed to say when he had finished, "beat that."

In my life story, the one that I write for myself often, the one that Desert Island Discs will use for when I go on and choose my eight discs, I am remembered for unbelievable brilliance, in all areas. "She was," say the historians of later years, "really something." Under the chapter headings of Academic-ness they will find my 14 Year Old Son, now in his seventies and living as a benign mobster in Amberly. "Who?" he will say, and then "Oh yes, she was very nice, and not terribly clever. Cooked well though. Wonderful woman." Under the chapter Cooking Well, they will contact my daughter, in her eighties and living in a pink apartment in Brighton designed to look like the inside of a cake. "Mother?" Daughter will bellow. "Fabulous scrambled eggs." And under the the chapter Understanding Things, they will call Furiously Independent Son's Agent to talk to Furiously Independent Son, both of whom are in their late seventies and living in a night club in Cairo. "My Mother," FIS will say slowly, "was slightly retarded but very well meaning." There will be a small pause before he continues sagely, "but she was very nice".

What will I be remembered for really? I don't know. I may be remembered for all sorts of things by those who met me, or knew me, and it may be For Wearing Red All The Goddam Time. It may be for not understanding mobile phones. It may be for not really knowing what I was doing while raising my children - and I really did not know what I was doing, any success they have is because they are fabulous themselves, not because of me. I may be remembered for doing an Anti Strip Tease in Aberdeen in the early 1980s where I started on the stage in my undies and people threw clothes strategically placed in the audience, at me, and I put them all on so that I fell over with the weight of them. And all to the manic sounds of a 45 record I found called Roger's Magic Bumblebee, a whacky interpretation of the Flight of the Bumblebee. I may be remembered for all the squatting I did in the eighties in London, and how I lost my way completely until my first child was born. My children were the making of me, they are the most wonderful gift I could ever have been allowed to have.

Back to the future then folks! I want, in my bio that I write in my head, that I mentioned earlier, to be remembered for Oh! Such exquisite Art! Lordy lordy, what a painter! And so witty too, it just isn't fair how clever and fabulous her work is! And that A Graceful Death. Oh. That exhibition changed my life. Oh. And did you see her Religious stuff? Oh what a Thinker! So profound, and yet so simple. How did she do it?

But let us not get carried away. Enough, I say. The reality is, that none of my art comes easily to me. None of the paintings just Happen. I work very hard to do all that I do, though I would love for you all to think that it was just tiddly pooh and done. Most of my time is spent on admin, marketing, PR, proposals, bill paying. When I do get into the studio, I often have to remember what to do.

So, in the end, perhaps it isn't really so bad for my tomb stone to say, "Mother. She was very Nice." And in teeny writing underneath it, "fabulous scrambled eggs and not very bright". Meanwhile, despite all, in London, my latest retrospective opens to a brass band playing Roger's Magic Bumblebee at Tate Modern and the latest reprint of Antonia Rolls's Mystic Mumblings is reviewed with passion in the Spectator.

Slipping Sliding Droopy Drawers

2011-06-11T10:36:00.000-07:00

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for my Jesus on the Tube website
www.agracefuldeath.blogpsot.com for the A Graceful Death exhibition, paintings from the end of life

Slipping Sliding Droopy Drawers

I have a headache and my tummy is tired. I have lots to think about and no solutions. I have had a wonderful time recently and now I am having an angst ridden time trying to work out why I am not having such a wonderful time any more. If only, my anxious brain says to me, loveliness just comes, through the ether, with no input from me, to me, and gives me a jolly nice lift. If only, it continues, you didn't have to work so darn hard to make anything happen. Poor you, my brain adds sympathetically, you really do have to keep on top of things, don't you?

I spent today in bed watching Disney films with my lovely daughter, the Trainee Nurse and Renaissance Woman. She loved it, I sought oblivion. We lay in my big bed in pyjamas and had eggy toast and tea, and watched Muppet Treasure Island followed by the Lion King. In each plot, I looked for clues as to how to live well and find a way out of this feeling of - well, nothingness. Disney and Muppets are good for droopiness of the brain, they have happy endings and the characters don't feel pain for long. Existential pain, that is. They don't feel the Meaningless of Life for very long. Someone always says something profound at the end like, "Remember who you are" and "I know who my real friends are" and "if you can't beat them, join them", and suddenly the sun comes out, everyone has a Eureka Moment and en masse, the whole lot of them have fantastic lives again.

It is not that bad here. Bognor is joyfully lapping up the sun despite the wind. So far, the shops are doing enough trade, the trains are running on time, and people are paddling with determination in the choppy sea at the top of my road. My garden is lovely, and the Cosmic Gardner did come and clean my windows inside and out. I can see out of my windows in a way that I did not think possible. And, I guess, I could see in too if I was outside. 14 Year Old Son, he who is 6'3" and a tangle of arms and legs, well meaning bear hugs and playful karate chops, put up all my mugs on special hooks he fixed himself on the new shelf in the kitchen, and made the kitchen look even more homely. Lovely. Furiously Independent Son spent a whole week here eating resting and not doing night clubs nor dreadful things, before going back up to London the day before yesterday to take his A Levels. That was nice.

I have bought a new hoover, I have thought about painting my house green. I have dreamed of having wooden floors everywhere, and I have done job bags for my new commissions. I even did a commission. I hauled myself about the house this week as if I was recovering from a long, debilitating operation, sighing and stopping for breath at short intervals. My mind, the same mind that I wrote about a few blogs ago as a deep lake catching the spindly long legged thoughts etc etc, has passed from being the deep waters and so on, skipped the bog stage and become a dried up canyon, deep, empty and scorched into nothingness by the blazing heat of the sun. Or that is how it feels.

I have had no good news all this week. No bad news either. I have heard nothing about all the feelers, proposals and ideas I put out into the world outside Bognor. No emails, no phone calls, no texts and no letters. I am in an Artistic Drought as a result. There are things I could do, there are always things I could do, but I don't want to. As I said at the start of this blog, my head aches and my tummy is tired. And my mind is a Grand Canyon of Whatever.

So what to do. Well, funnily enough, the best thing to do is Nothing. That is what I am aching to do, so that is what I will do. After a spot of Nothing, I will be ready to to take stock, and do Something. On Muppet Treasure Island, the delicious Tim Rice as Long John Silver gets his comeuppance. But that is despite being let go by the Jim Hawkins character. "Well done," says Kermit the Frog as Captain Smollet, "your father would be proud of you." And then we get a small clip of Tim Rice being bored to death on the Treasure Island by a Mountain with a Face telling one dreadful joke after another and I thought - there is justice. I am the Jim Hawkins character and I will do nothing but let the baddie go. The baddie, Tim Rice, is my Lack of Energy. Well, my lack of energy baddie will be punished by having itself bored to death by bad jokes. Serve it right. And Kermit the Captain Smollet character, well - he is my Higher Self and therefore the winner. Oh I knew Disney would sort me out.

And yes yes yes to the kind comment below, it is Tim Curry not Tim Rice that is in Muppet Treasure Island. Thank you and please come and live with me. You have a deep meaningful lake for a mind, not a scorched Grand Canyon and I may need the input. Thank you.

Planting Lavender, Painting and Decorating, and a Blind Man

2011-06-07T10:01:00.000-07:00

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for Jesus on the Tube
www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for the A Graceful Death exhibition, paintings from the end of life

Lavender, Painting and Decorating, and a Blind Man

The Cosmic Gardener came today. "Let us," he cried, "plant Lavender." We did so, we went to the Garden Centre and bought five little pots of lavender and he planted them. Planting the lavender has changed the whole of the front of the house; the five little clumps of lavender have made it into a Homes and Gardens home and I think the Cosmic Gardner knows what he is talking about.
At 2pm a Painting and Decorating Man came to look at Furiously Independent Son's room. Five years ago Furiously Independent Son chose to paint his bedroom yellow and green and his little en suite sitting room, purple and blue. In order that serenity and uncluttered thoughts flow through his part of the house I am going to have it painted white and off-white. So a nice man came to see it and gave me a jolly sound price to make it wholesome and normal. Job to be started in a few weeks, and I won't have to deal with it at all. That is how I like things, someone else to do it and be nice into the bargain.
The Blind Man is late. He should be here by now to give me a quote on making blinds for the TV room. We need something to help cope with the full on glare of the sun during the summer, as the room not only becomes very hot, but more importantly no one can see the telly.
The Blind Man has been and gone, a very nice and interesting fellow. He has given me a quote that I have accepted to have my TV, or Dining Room if you are posh, which I am, made into the kind of room that would suit having five pretty lavender bushes at the front of the house.
So there it all is. A fancy front of the house, a fancy back of the house, and a fancy couple of rooms upstairs.

I am very tired today. It is a sunny day, though windy. The best place to be is in my sitting room (and under the window, outside, are planted five of the snazziest lavender bushes in West Sussex). The best place then, is in this sitting room, on the sofa here, because the sun streams into the room through the red and orange gauzey Indian curtains, straight onto my gently reclining form, making me squint my eyes and think that I am starring in a French Film with very little dialogue and much sighing and gazing about. My boys are upstairs doing deals with each other (you go and make me something to eat, and I will let you have my laptop. You go and do all my homework and I will hide your beer. You go and buy me cigarettes and I will not tell mum that you do pole dancing after school etc.) I have had a busy day being here for fellows who are going to make my home look better, and now I am going to do nothing at all till it is bedtime. And since I am boss here, bed time could be any moment now. It is 17.24. Could be done.

Tomorrow morning my dear Polish Worker, who lives with us at the moment, is going to have a full cooked English Breakfast. I offered to cook one for him as he has never had one before, and he has requested it for tomorrow morning. It is not often that the thought of a full cooked breakfast makes someone so excited. Dear Polish Worker is going to take a picture to show his mother and family, so I had better make sure the breakfast is pretty professional. Then, only then, will I be able to get into the studio and paint what I have been trying to paint for the last week or so. It will be worth the wait though. The Polish Worker will be full up and joyful all day, the blinds are ordered, the garden is wonderful, and the purple, blue, yellow and green of the Furiously Independent Son's rooms has only three weeks left to live.

Before I lay my head back onto the twinkling feather cushions on my sofa, the sun shining into my very soul through the sitting room windows, there is one more job that has been taken care of today. My windows are dreadfully mucky, no one has thought about doing them for years. The Cosmic Gardner is going to do them on Friday. The tense and heated negotiations went like this.

(Scene - in the garden. Sun shines, bees buzz around the five lavender bushes that have become quite heroic. Cosmic Gardner stands next to me, both of us gazing into the middle distance as the odd car passes by in the road outside. Birds sing and both of us lost in our thoughts. He, about the best way to make gardens better, me, about what to have for lunch.)

Me:    I want my windows cleaned. Wish I knew a window cleaner.
C.G:     I'll do them for you.
Me:      Can you clean windows?
C.G:     Dunno.
Me:      Have you got a ladder?
C.G:    Dunno.
Me:     Think I have one in the garage.
C.G:    Oh yes, so do I. My ladder is in your garage too. Ha ha ha. Silly me.
Me:      Ha ha ha. What do you charge?
C.G:    What's the going rate for window cleaning?
Me:      Dunno.
C.G: I'll ask someone
Me:      How do you clean a window?
C.G:    Well, you just put some water on it and a bit of bubbles and wipe it off and that.
Me:     That's amazing.
C.G:    Friday do?
Me:     Yes.

Small pause. Sun shines, lavender bushes nod, all is right with the world.

Me: Can you do insides as well?
C.G:    Could try
Me: Thanks.

Oh I live in a cut throat world. I'm the only person Alan Sugar is scared of.

Thoughts Skimming The Surface Of My Mind Like Dragonflies

2011-06-02T06:38:00.000-07:00

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for the best known of my images, Jesus being ignored on a Tube Train
www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for the A Graceful Death exhibition, paintings from the end of life

On The Skimming And Flitting Of Thoughts

If my mind is as a bog, which it often is, then the thoughts - gentle spindly creatures longing for life and flight - go boing boing plod plod squelch across it. If my mind is heavy and thick, then it is an effort to catch and hold these thoughts. The surface over which they skim is too dense and muddy to hold them, and I am aware that whatever new inspiration, new idea, new insight I have, it can't sink below the surface. This is not an easy state of mind, and one which I think we all have for a great deal of the time. There is always inspiration from the world around us. There is always that colour that flashes past our eyes that makes us long to do something creative, that phrase someone uses in a sentence about sub prime mortgages on the radio that is the catalyst for something we want to do that has nothing whatsoever to do with sub prime mortgages, but makes sense to us on an inexplicable level. There is the chance meeting with someone who leads to someone else, there are countless such things that fill our days if only we can see them. If my mind is like a solid brown squashy peat bog then the best I can hope for is to just catch the tail ends of the thoughts and inspirations as they pass above me.

And then if the bog evaporates, these thoughts and ideas dance across my mind like those long spindly but exquisitely delicate creatures that skim the most tranquil and beautiful of lakes. If my mind is clear and deep, if there is nothing to prevent an idea from falling into it and dropping deep into the water, and then I can do anything. I notice the way someone is standing in town and use it in a painting that needs that pose. I watch colours pass in front of my eyes, noticing everything about them and place them in something that needs those colours. I can understand words, I can take thoughts and passing ideas and put them into a place where I can access them for future use. I can see how to link people into subjects for paintings, I can understand more than just what is said - I can understand what is underneath the words (not with everyone, only sometimes. Not quite Dalai Lama yet); if my mind is clear and I am not heavy and feeling dull , those wonderful thoughts, ideas and inspirations can dance and fly and skim the surface with a freedom that is wonderful to watch. Dancing like dragonflies, dancing together and allowing me to be filled with possibilities, with inspiration, with excitement.

I have just spoken to the Glorious Clarissa and mentioned thoughts skimming the surface, and Clarissa said her thoughts are inside her head, not outside. How Glorious, I said. And, she said, they are sometimes, occasionally, very clear and ordered. The rest of the time they are jumbled. But, she says, such is life. She is very happy to have clarity when it comes and accepts the muddle when it takes over. I see Clarissa as not muddled though, which makes our perception of our own thoughts very interesting.

My thoughts, I told Clarissa, are not really Dragonflies. I used Dragonflies because it sounds poetic. Actually, I told Clarissa, what I really want to say is that my thoughts (bless them) are like Daddy Long Legs all skittering about, light and buzzing, with their legs all in knots and bouncing off trees. Put that in, said Clarissa, Tell the truth. So here goes.

My thoughts are hovering, gentle and spindly, light and carried on the wind but alive and following a purpose that only they know of, like Daddy Long Legs flitting and skimming a summer pond. With their legs all tied up in knots and bouncing off trees and each other without damage. Even when their legs get tangled and they move around as a single unit, buzzing contentedly until either the legs fall off or they pull apart.

Here are a few thoughts from yesterday. These are based on the Daddy Long Legs flitting over a deep meaningful pool of stillness etc etc. It is fast turning into a scene from a Disney film.

Yesterday sitting in my studio, I heard a scratching and rustling from behind my chair. Yikes I thought it is one of those spiders from abroad, that eats birds. But when I turned to take a look, it was a small brown bird, hopping about in confusion by the door, looking desperately fragile and panicky. I opened the doors for it to find its way out. I was aware that it's life was at once very robust to live out in the open in trees, sky etc, but also so terribly fine as it could have died of fright, had I approached it. Hmmm. A flitting Daddy Long Legs of Awareness skimmed my pool. (Honest.)
I came back from Dublin having been with two of my oldest friends. Yesterday, another friend from those times called, quite by chance, for an hour and a half. I have not seen this friend for over 20 years, yet we were inseperable at Aberdeen when at university there. She is a fey, winsome, reclusive person, full to the brim of thoughts and creativity and yet never wanting nor able to live in the same day to day world as we all do. I drew and painted her endlessly, she was my muse. The only person to ever have been a muse in my life; and here she was, on the phone. I am longing to draw her again, if I can entice her to leave her flat and come here for a day. Later, my old pal Michael called. If he is happy to chat, he can be fascinating and curiously old fashioned. Last night he talked of nature and geology and C S Lewis. After these two calls, I thought - how wonderful is the influence of People. I felt a largeness in my life, as if knowing such friends made me bigger somehow. No, not fatter. My friends do not make me Porky.
In my garden, I have some magenta peonies. Blimey, I thought recently, they are so wonderful that I will think very carefully to recreate the influence that they have on me, in the studio. Stagger stagger flit flit go the spindly thought insects across the pond etc.
And finally, for today, the final Dragonfly cum Daddy Long Legs that dances like a sunbeam on my clean and clear pond of a mind under the willow trees and Disney wood sprites: I am not busting a bloodvessel to get my painting done, whereas before the Fund Raising Weekend (Fairies, Angels, Earrings and Cakes) I was. There is time in my day. I am getting things done, with time to spare. So what is this? Is all work a state of mind? Is all progress a state of mind? The same things are being achieved this week as before the Fund Raising Weekend, except I am freer and more calm. Oh this is a big thought. It will have to be characterised by a large jumpy frog. Skittish insects don't have the gravitas.

There is another thought with which to end. Do frogs have gravitas?

Dancing for the Guiness Book of Records In A Field In Co. Kildare

2011-05-30T02:12:00.000-07:00

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for my other website and best known of my images
www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for the A Graceful Death exhibition, paintings from the end of life

Dancing In A Field In Co. Kildare

Of course sending a text saying "Am in a field in Co. Kildare breaking a record for the Guiness Book of Records" to Furiously Independent Son in London was up on his facebook page in no time as something like "Just had a text from my mum who is dancing in a field in Kildare for some Guiness". It got quite a few ha ha it's in the genes comments. Interesting, everyone knows I don't drink alcohol at all, that I have very wittily been labelled teatotal for all the tea that I do drink. I expect I am good for Furious Independent Son's reputation there.

I am in Dublin again, in the bosom of the family of my Darling Dublin Friend. Eileen, Photographer Extraordinaire and I came out last week and have settled with purrs of pleasure into the life of this lovely family here. One of the items on the list for our stay was to go with DDF's children to a field in Co Kildare with nearly 500 other jolly folk, and do the biggest rain dance ever to break the current record in the Guiness Book of Records. Naturally, we broke the world record, despite about 40 people being disqualified for putting their arms down too soon, and I left the field with a teeshirt and a wee certificate. Lovely. I like to break the odd world record if I can, during my stays with friends.

Eileen and I met when we were 19 years old in Aberdeen, during the first week of University there. Two such unlikely people as Eileen and I would never have been a dead cert to meet and be pals for life by the bookies before that first week in Aberdeen. And yet, we sat next to each other for our first lecture in History of Art, looked at each other, were astonished and curious, and have not left each other's side since. I remember Eileen had such white white hands, and she remembers that I had very whacky red clothes. I asked Eileen if she powdered her hands, and she was intrigued enough by such a strange question, that we carried on from there. A little later DDF came on the scene. It is funny to think how affected we were at the sight of someone at University who seemed so together, so Arty and so In The Crowd. DDF belonged to the Drama Society. She did the costumes, and wore black with style. And she made her own clothes - I thought she was wonderful. My first meeting with DDF was on a coach from Aberdeen to some London Demo. DDF wore a woollen jumper of multi coloured stripes, in such wonderful shades of yellow, red, green, orange, blue that I was unable to stop looking at her. And them, in her gentle Yorkshire voice, she mentioned that she had knitted it herself. In the presence of genuis, I thought, bow low. Well, 31 years later we are still happy together and having a gentle holiday to celebrate Eileen's birthday in DDF's home in Dublin with her Husband, the Nicest Man in Ireland and his family, and the children.

DDF is very creative. She can make something out of anything, so to speak. She can sew, design, create and make it all look as if she did it when she had a few moments to spare in between answering the telephone and picking up the kiddies. She is great to go to the shops with, as her eye for quality and potential is extraordinary. And Eileen, who is such a fabulous photographer and I, love to browse and meander in shops and markets, feeling the cloth and dreaming of buying chandeliers (that is me, I want chandeliers). Eileen carries her very state of the art photographic equipment with her and takes shots of people and items and scenes that catch her fancy. I went to a large public garden in West Sussex with my old friend Michael and Eileen, once. Michael and I wandered around the garden, Eileen wanted to go off on her own. Michael and I kept hearing rustles in the shrubbery and flower beds as we walked. Fear not, we said to each other. It is not lions and tigers and bears, it is probably Eileen settling in for a fabulous close up shot of a teeny weeny rare flower. And so it probably was. DDF, Eileen and I make a wonderful trio, we all look very different and we all come from different parts of the UK - Eileen from Norther Ireland, DDF from Scotland and me from Petworth in the posh South of England. We have different lives and different creative directions but we all speak the same language. We share a history, a past, and know how we all think. In short, we are good for each other and love spending time together. We clear our minds for each other, talk things over about what to do next in our artistic lives and understand exactly how difficult things can be.

Last evening, we sat around DDF's kitchen table, in the house she and her husband designed and had made in the grounds of the In Law's house, and chatted late and drank tea. I can't even remember what we said but today I know I am OK, DDF is OK and Eileen is OK. We can all do our Artistic Stuff, we can all take the next step, we are all fine.

Of course, soon as I get home I will be struck by how dirty my windows are and how shabby the paint work is. I will wonder how on earth I can be nice to all three of my kids all of the time while trying to rock the world with my art. I will long for Alan to come and whisk me away to Greece or France on a holiday but fret about spending the time away and I will have to buy a new hoover as my old one broke before I came here. Goddam.

But Peace! I have been to Dublin and all is right with the world! I am safe in the arms of my friends and so I can do my thing.

I am coming back with Furiously Independent Son next month too, to celebrate his birthday. That blog will be utterly different. It will be "Goodness me, how did this happen? Goodness me, I didn't know my son did that. Heavens - I used to pick that child up with one hand and now look at him! No, he suits a beard. Perhaps we should put the Guiness away..."

In Recovery. Happy, Successful and Comatose

2011-05-24T13:07:00.000-07:00

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for one of the best known of my images, Jesus being ignored while on a tube train
www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for the A Graceful Death exhibition, paintings from the end of life

In Recovery - Happy, Successful and Comatose

This weekend, the Glorious Clarissa and I sold enough Angels to make God sit up and take notice. We sold enough Fairies to populate a Fairy Rave Up and enough earrings to make every lady who bought them a work of art herself. The Cakes - they always sell, and goodness me we did a brisk trade in large slices of Upside Down Cake, Boiled Fruit Cake, Lemon Drizzle, Chocolate, Chocolate and Smartie, and Flapjacks. Mrs Smith made and donated the most exquisite sparkly cup cakes to the sale, and lent us her fancy cup cake display thing. Of course, quite rightly, these cup cakes were worshipped by everyone before they were bought, and then they worried about eating them because they were so very beautiful. A certain part of London is now a stone heavier, which no one will notice because of the astonishing brightly coloured earrings they (or their wives) are wearing. I am happy to say that all of you who came have enabled me to cover the costs of the next A Graceful Death exhibition in Birmingham in November. Thank you.

So. When I come to do a show anywhere I come with an Army. Antonia Rolls does not arrive quietly and set up a tiny display of sensitive and meaningful items in the corner while no one is looking. She does not say, "Don't mind me, I'll be gone soon," as she tries not to get in the way. I come with a car stuffed with Art and cakes and so on. Banners, cards, candles for atmosphere, flowers, picture hanging stuff, display boards and half eaten sandwiches. I am usually staying so I have a bag with pyjamas, slippers, books, jumpers (I hate being cold). I have hammers, nails, fishing string to hang paintings with, I have leaflets, information, prices and painting descriptions. Sometimes I even have tables and bedding with me. They are not linked, I don't sleep on the tables I bring.

And then. Then the Army. Here is a general account of Helpers and Advisers that I am lucky to have. Ready? -

The Glorious Clarissa. Clarissa had twice now allowed me to come into her smart and enormous Wimbledon home and turn it into a gallery. Clarissa is smart, funny, sassy and kind. Clarissa is an excellent business woman. She is great at making people feel welcome, happy and good about themselves. And she doesn't mind a house bursting with people, she takes it all in her stride and enables everyone to feel at home and part of the show.
Eileen, the Photographer Extraordinaire. Eileen is consistently able to organise the exhibitions to make them really shine. Eileen is always there for me, and despite being extremely busy as a photographer and at work, she comes and helps with total attention and dedication to detail. Eileen is not afraid to tell me if something doesn't work, and so I trust her judgement even though I hate hearing anything that isn't fulsome praise.
Alan. Alan always makes the effort to come from miles away to support in any way he can. He will go and fetch things that I have forgotten, and he will be very strict about doing things properly. He chats to people, tells them about the paintings, and promotes the works wonderfully. He can count up in his head instantly which stops me from making dreadful mistakes adding up purchases. (Two cards? That will be £800 please.)
The Kids. Subsection A - Alexia, the Daughter. She came to help with the cakes and teas, setting them all up and using her wit and intelligence to sell everything to everyone. Alexia can also make all the cakes but didn't this time because she is working and studying full time. Both. At once. Amazing.
Subsection B - Costya the Older Son. Costya is the cool style guru. His first job is to look good and be seen from the right angle. Costya has helped in the past, and when he is in the right frame of mind, will mingle and chat with people and make me sound like God. He can do this, but he has to be in the Zone. Otherwise, he comes and often stays where I am staying, coming truly alive when the wine is opened and a meal on its way. He is excellent for one-to-one chats to members of the public, and if he is not in the Zone, I dread to think what he tells them about his Mum.
Subsection C - Dimitri the Younger Son. Dimitri is 14 and needs feeding so he has to be near a Food Source. He is a lovely soul, kind and clever, interesting and good natured but at 6'3" he tends to fall over his feet. He is also deaf in one ear and having lost his hearing aid (another will be ready on 6 June), will mishear things and the most cosmic of conversations can take place, where whoever is talking to Dimitri is not sure if he is a genius or certifiable. Dimitri has profound business ideas where he thinks I should pile 'em high and sell 'em cheap. Dimitri also needs to stay wherever I am staying, unless someone can have him while I am away.

Here is something to consider, on a different note. I went to the Mary Howe Centre today for a general health screening and cancer prevention check up. I had to have a scan of all my organs, while bursting for a wee. It is necessary, as all of you know, to scan with a full bladder. (The patient, not the Scanning Nurse). Recently too, I have been training to work as a volunteer at my local hospice, which interests my Mother no end. I phoned her after the Mary Howe Check Up today, and told her that I had had a scan with a painfully full bladder. My Mother is hard of hearing and was stunned that I had had a scan. Yes, I told her, we all have scans before we speak to the doctor. What is this? she said in confusion. Do all of you have to have scans to work there? And I realised she thought I was telling her about a training session at the hospice. She thought I had to be scanned to see that my pancreas and kidneys were in the right place before I could go and make tea for the patients on the wards. She thought that all volunteers had to have their internal organs checked before they were allowed in. No no no Mother! I said. And I explained and she was very relieved. I think she thought that as a visitor to the Hospice she would be expected to prove her liver was not upside down and therefore a threat to everyone inside.

To finish this account, I am terribly tired. So is Clarissa - we were on our feet with crowds of lovely people from 10am to 9pm all weekend, with no breaks. I packed up on Sunday night and arrived back home here at 2am. Oh but it was worth it. We sold loads, and chatted to everyone, and had a lovely lovely time. And at the raffle, a certain Carmel Suthons won the chocolate biscuit. When I phoned her to tell her she said, "Crumbs." And she thanked her parents, her team and all who knew her. Ha ha.

A Strawberry Fairy, A Dark Angel, A Long Red Pointy Pepper Fairy, A PMT Angel...

2011-05-17T02:34:00.000-07:00

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website

www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for Jesus taking a trip on the London Underground

www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for the A Graceful Death exhibition, paintings from the end of life

If You Don't See Your Dream Fairy or Angel This Weekend, Commission One From Me.

Angels, Earrings, Fairies and Cakes by

Antonia Rolls

Strawberry Fairy. 5" x 7"

You are warmly invited to a weekend sale of Paintings, Prints and Handmade Earrings

Wine and Tea and Cakes

Red Pointy Pepper Fairy 5x7" Dark Angel 5x7" Calm Angel 5x7"

Saturday May 21 10am - 9 pm to

Sunday May 22 10am - 9 pm

127 Worple Road, Wimbledon SW20

Bath Angel 5 x 7"

Sale in aid of the A Graceful Death projects, the Film and the Exhibition.

www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for more information

I aim to have this sale of Angels and Fairies and fun things while also displaying the latest information about the A Graceful Death exhibition and film. The weekend is about having fun with all of you, with colour, fun, wit and humour, alongside the serious business of raising funds for the A Graceful Death exhibition and film.

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The A Graceful Death Film Project -

Making a film of the effect an exhibition of paintings of death and the end of life (A Graceful Death, paintings from the end of life) has on those who are involved in the works, and those who come to experience them at exhibitions. Showing how the exhibition is created and broadcast, and hearing what those who love it say, and those who don't love it, say. And very significantly, showing how it feels to paint a sitter as they approach the end of their life, or as they face an uncertain future. A section of the exhibition shows Survivors too, those who have come through illness, or the bereavement process, and are living again.

Click on the link below to see our video and to hear more and to donate to this important work.

http://www.wefund.co.uk/project/graceful-death-film

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Well. What a fun time I have had in the studio. 14 Year Old Son has recovered and gone back to school, and is no longer in pain. I was terribly pleased that he had penicillin because that did the trick and it was just bed, sleep and ice cream for a week (only for him) which suited me very well, loving mother that I am. I could get on obsessively with the pictures, earrings, cakes and all the admin for the sale coming up this weekend in Wimbledon. To which you are all coming, remember? You cancelled the in-laws and put the dog in the kennels, remember? The car has been serviced and filled with petrol (no expense spared) and space created on your sitting room walls for the Angels and Fairies that you are buying - remember? Good. As you were.

It has been a singular experience, painting from dawn to midnight. This is how artists of old must have felt, inspired and focussed with nothing else in their lives but their art. I have been churning out paintings of Fairies and Angels with enthusiasm. I need months to really do as many as were in my mind - I never got round to the Aubergine Fairy or the Hysterical Angel. These that I have done are small, 5" x 7", and are lovely bursts of wit and colour. If only I didn't have the A Graceful Death to persue (with a passion, it is where my heart is), if only I didn't have to look after the kids and have a life, I could fill exhibition spaces with Mood Angels and Fruit and Vegetable Fairies and drift off into orbit in a gentle swirl of colour and jollity. Another time, perhaps.

Today I am doing 70 pairs of earrings. Here is an example -

I have made an earring board with 70 hooks in it which looks great. 14 Year Old Son wished me luck in making 70 pairs of earrings, and I realised that I had made a very ambitious display board that would mean another dawn to midnight splurge of creativity. I will start with care and precision, matching and loving each bead with the next but by earring 70 I will be wild, furious and obsessive. On the display board then, the story will be thus: earrings one to thirty two will be nice and thoughtful, made with a customer in mind and very professional. Earrings thirty three to fifty seven will show signs of stress and eccentricity, they will be long and made of unmatched beads and baubles. Earrings fifty eight to sixty five will be off the wall and a bit alarming with lots of black and maybe hooks at each end and earrings sixty six to seventy will show meltdown and will have bits of teabag, old banana and paracetamol as part of the design.

A RAFFLE! ON SUNDAY EVENING at the Angels and Fairies and Earrings Weekend

There will be a raffle on Sunday evening, and the prizes are as follows ...I will give you the dream version first and then the real prizes will follow

1. First prize is my son. A nice 14 Year Old to feed and get off to school each day and don't forget his boxing gloves. He comes with another Son and a Daughter but they are self sufficient, living away from home and will only be part time.

2. Second prize is for you to have the honour of cleaning my house, top to bottom and then do my washing.

3. Third prize is for you, lucky winner, to make me tea for a whole year, whenever I want it. And to feed me eggy sandwiches whenever I want them.

OK. The Real Prizes -

1. A beautiful framed print of Jesus on the Tube. Jesus on the Tube is the best known and most popular of my paintings and has a whole website dedicated to it. Even the Archbishop of Canturbury has his own personalised Jesus on the Tube. www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for more information. Photographed by Eileen Rafferty, a superb photographer and print maker

2. A framed oil painting of cyclamen in a spotty bowl. I painted this for the sheer love of it, I love plants and flowers and when I have time, I love to paint them. About 17" x 30".

3. An Angel or Fairy of your choice - I will paint it and send it to you in the post.

4. A custom made pair of earrings, you choose the beads and I will make them up for you.

5. A chocolate biscuit. Digestive. Oh boy.

This weekend of Earrings, Angels, Fairies and Cakes is of course, in aid of raising funds and awareness of the A Graceful Death exhibition and film. There will be opportunites to donate to this very important project, and I will be happy to talk with you about what it all means, what I am doing and where it is all going. And in the meantime, come - buy Fairies, buy Angels, buy Earrings and buy the yummiest cakes to have with your cups of tea (or wine if it all gets too much).

Come anyway, and you are warmly welcome. I look forward to seeing you.

Fairies, Angels and Tonsillitis.

2011-05-09T01:55:00.000-07:00

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for my other website (Jesus being ignored on a tube train. Very good - have a look)
www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for the A Graceful Death exhibition, paintings from the end of life

Fairies, Angels and Tonsillitis

I am delighted to introduce you to some Fairies which I will put into the invite below. These Fairies have been made while my dear 14 Year Old Son has been smitten by the Tonsil Fairy and given Tonsillitis. Poor Son, he is very poorly and can only eat ice cream and feel the pain. It is a very nasty thing, and I am so sorry him. But, I have cancelled everything and have more time to paint fairies. So out of blackness comes light. Out of pain comes paint. Read on...

Angels, Earrings, Fairies and Cakes by

Antonia Rolls

Tomato Fairy. 5" x 7"

You are warmly invited to a weekend sale of Paintings, Prints and Handmade Earrings

Wine and Tea and Cakes

Banana Fairy 5x7" Carrot Fairy 5x7" Daisy Fairy 5x7"

Saturday May 21 10am - 9 pm to

Sunday May 22 10am - 9 pm

127 Worple Road, Wimbledon SW20

Cup Cake Fairy 5 x 7"

Sale in aid of the A Graceful Death projects, the Film and the Exhibition.

www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for more information

***********************************************************************

The A Graceful Death Film Project -

Click on the link below to see our video and to hear more and to donate to this important work.

http://www.wefund.co.uk/project/graceful-death-film

***************************************************************************

14 Year Old Son may be large and hungry but he can be as ill as any of us. Poor kid, he struggles with his hearing, his tinnitus and his balance (sometimes). So now with tonsillitis his ears are giving him extra discomfort and on top of that he has lost his hearing aid again. So, a week in bed for him, lots of medicine and ice cream and all he really wants are Nick Nack crisps. 14 Year Old Son had such a high temperature the other night that he hallucinated and got me up in the early hours because the house was full of unexploded bombs. He propelled me downstairs at 12.30am to find them and it was a little while before I could get him into a tight embrace and tell him to stop. He is about 6' 2" and quite big, and was really not interested in chatting while the bombs were not diffused. I got very tough before making him sit with me and holding him with a vice like Mummy Grip (only desparate mummys can do this) until 2am when I got him back into bed. "Sleep well my Son," I said tenderly while giving him more paracetamol, "let us just recap - we will not explode before dawn, and mummy has got all the mines out from under the sink."

So I have cancelled a few things this week. The house will fill up again though, as on Wednesday my teeny weeny little friend Fatema comes to rest and rethink. She is just under 5' tall, very, very lively and pretty and very good at Kids. And on Thursday my Cousin's Cousin comes to stay. She comes every year, and is also teeny and dainty and beautiful. Both are in their 20s and both are going to sleep on sofas. Why? Because my Burly Pole is staying on a bit and will have the spare room. We like the Burly Pole, and say Horay when we get the chance. Dear Daughter may come home on Saturday and she will have to sleep with me. Except Alan may be coming too so maybe we will have to all sleep in a big jumble like hamsters.

I have been making earrings too. I love making earrings. I love playing with all the beads and selecting colours and shapes and designs and thinking Wow! Someone will look Fab with these. And so they will. I must remember to bring a mirror up to the Fairies and Angels and Earrings fund raising weekend where you will all be dying to try the earrings up to your lovely faces. And don't forget I will be able to make up your own designs in front of you too, so there is no reason at all to do the shopping, visit Aunty, catch up on sleep or go on holiday for that weekend. No reason at all. And you can commission your own Fairy or Angel, that is worth cancelling your trip to Honolulu for.

And now, I am going to do a Long Red Pointy Pepper Fairy. And after her, some Angels. I will do a Kick Ass Angel but I don't know quite how yet. I have had lots of requests to do her, so obviously the Fairies will be nice and veggie, and the Angels tough as old boots. Onwards and upwards. (No there won't be a Tonsillitis Fairy. But there may be a Kick Tonsillitis Ass Angel.)

Just Painted A Tomato Fairy.

2011-05-05T03:48:00.000-07:00

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for the best known of my images, Jesus on the Tube Train being ignored by everyone
www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for the A Graceful Death exhibition, paintings from the end of life

Just Painted A Tomato Fairy.

Angels, Earrings, Fairies and Cakes by

Antonia Rolls

Shopping Angel

You are warmly invited to a weekend sale of Paintings, Prints and Handmade Earrings

Wine and Tea and Cakes

Fairy Cakes and Flowers Fat Ladies Diving

Blue Teapot Fairy

Saturday May 21 10am - 9 pm to

Sunday May 22 10am - 9 pm

127 Worple Road, Wimbledon SW20

New Beginnings Angel

Sale in aid of the A Graceful Death projects, the Film and the Exhibition.

www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for more information

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The A Graceful Death Film Project -

Click on the link below to see our video and to hear more and to donate to this important work.

http://www.wefund.co.uk/project/graceful-death-film

***************************************************************************

I just painted a Tomato Fairy. The Tomato Fairy has been joined by a Banana Fairy, a Cup Cake Fairy and I am now doing a Daisy Fairy. I am going to the fridge this evening to see what other vegetables and fruit I have to made into Fairies. As is the case with doing one little picture of a Fairy, I now see Fairies everywhere. A Garden Gate Fairy! No, what about a Mobile Phone Fairy! Hang on, a Lasagne Fairy (while making Lasagne for 14 Year Old son who is still hungry) and then, when that is done, an Early Night Fairy.

Soon I will get onto the Angels. I am feeling a bit militant about stuff so I may do a Get Knotted Angel, a Stop Cold Calling Me I Don't Want To Buy Anything Angel, an I'm Not Doing The Washing Up Angel. But because I am basically very nice, that won't go on for long. I will end up doing Angels of Love, Angels of Peace, Angels of All The Housework Is Done and so on.

What have I been doing? Why are my blogs so far and few between? Life, is the answer to both of those questions. Life. I have been doing Life (nicely, not in a maximum security jail). I have much less time than before, and I seem to have much less to say. At the moment, I am a bit of a bland getter-of-things-done-whether-it-works-or-not. I have not much humour in me, and I have not much zap. I don't sparkle and I look serious. I wear my glasses and frown with a pursing of my lips. I wear sensible shoes and long skirts made of corduroy, I look like a rather focused librarian. Recently, there has been much organising to do. I have been sitting at the computer drowning under emails, AGD correspondence, making contacts, writing - this is the most draining thing of all because it is not likely to come to anything - writing my Arts Council Application for funding. Each question needs me to write a small book, and there are about a thousand questions. However, I did it and sent it off yesterday. If nothing else, I have gathered my thoughts around where AGD will be going and how to do it. It is all a mystery. Today, I wonder if I can remember any of the crucial points that I made in the application forms. I feel serious, brown and plodding. And not very interesting at all. Plod plod plod.

But Lo! Have I not been a plodding caterpillar before? Have I not emerged time and time again as a butterfly? Then this is what I will expect. Sometime this week, when I am not expecting it, I will find my wings and sit on a flower. Sorted.

My home is filled again. There is a delightful Polish Fellow staying, as there seems to be a tradition of Excellent Poles staying here. The Polish Grandmother who spoke not a word of English was the first. Then there was the Silent Pole - a lovely man we put up now and again, who never said a word nor was seen except as a shadow as he left the house, or disappeared round a corner, or closed his bedroom door. He was very interesting and polite when cornered sometimes on the stairs and made to talk, and I believe he slept on his bed not in it. We love having him to stay, we like to bet on whether he exists or not, or whether he is going to eat anything during his entire stay. Now, the room is occupied by a jolly articulate young fellow, who speaks perfect English and is as polite and jolly as you could wish for. He is staying for just a week, unless he decides to stay longer and since I am very flexible, I am delighted whatever he decides. A young and burly Polish fellow this, he looks like a farmer and is only 23. How he will fit into an arty house where the owner regularly turns into a butterfly and sits on flowers, drinks tea and looks serious in her glasses, is going to be interesting. Of course, 14 Year Old Son is very happy with him. 14 Year Old Son could never catch the Silent Pole for a chat, and there was no use talking to the Polish Grandmother as she only spoke Polish.

This afternoon I go to the local Hospice to start my volunteering work. This is what I want to do, and I have no idea where I am going with it. I think I just want to work with the dying. How, I don't know. It is so important and I do the A Graceful Death work, but I still know nothing. Let us see. The Hospice will be a very good teacher.

Hey Ho, time it marcheth on. It is time to take off my glasses and smile a bit. I don't think the Hospice patients would like a serious brown plodding caterpillar to mingle amongst them. Time to shake off the shackles of being serious and bland and start to hum a merry little tune and check out the most suitable flowers.

Angels And Earrings And Fairies And Cakes. Fund Raiser At Clarissa's -

2011-04-28T06:22:00.000-07:00

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for the best known of my images, the Jesus on the Tube picture and story
www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for the A Graceful Death exhibition, paintings from the end of life

Angels And Earrings And Fairies And Cake

All coming together at the Glorious Clarissa's to raise funds for and awareness of the A Graceful Death project. This includes both the Film and the Exhibition. Read on -

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Angels, Earrings, Fairies and Cakes by

Antonia Rolls

Shopping Angel

You are warmly invited to a weekend sale of Paintings, Prints and

Handmade Earrings

and

Wine and Tea and Cakes

Fairy Cakes

Saturday May 21 10am - 9 pm

Sunday May 22 10am - 9 pm

127 Worple Road, Wimbledon SW20

Weight Watchers Angel

Sale in aid of the A Graceful Death projects, the Film and the Exhibition.

www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for more information

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As you all know, the A Graceful Death exhibition is about acknowledging the importance of the end of life. It is about what it means to die, and what it means to survive - this means both to survive the process of grief and bereavement and to survive the treatment of cancer or other life threatening illnesses. The A Graceful Death exhibition began with the death of my partner from cancer in November 2007. I painted the last few weeks and days of Steve's life, trying to capture how though his body was ravaged by the cancer, the life, the spirit that made him Steve, lived on in him to the end. The paintings are powerful and raw and full of love. The A Graceful Death exhibition has now evolved to include the stories and images of others at the ends of their lives too. It includes the images and words from those who are undergoing treatment for cancer, and those who have survived well past the five year mark. My colleague Neill Blume and I are now making a film of the exhibition and its effects. Neill will be there at the Angels, Fairies and Earrings Fund Raising Weekend, filming away - so come and be part of it.

A Graceful Death is a not for profit enterprise. All donations directly to the exhibition are gratefully received. I am very fortunate to continue with A Graceful Death through the kindness and love of those who support it both financially, and with time and practical help.

I make earrings with a passion too. Apart from having loads already made, I will have all the beads and baubles in piles for you to select and design your own. I will make them up for you then and there. Your own design and colour scheme. Go for it.

See you all there. A Bar is set up for all those who need more than a cuppa, and there will be cakes and sustenance to help you make your earrings, Angel and Fairy Painting and or print buying decisions.

Heavenly Heavenly All Is Heavenly

2011-04-18T15:01:00.000-07:00

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for my other website
www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for the A Graceful Death exhibition, paintings from the end of life

Heavenly Heavenly All Is Heavenly

What is it about bed that is so Heavenly? Here I am, as ever, in bed and thinking that you all need to know how exquisitely satisfying it is to be here. I have not been here all the time, no, I am not that ill/bad/clever. I get up and get dressed each morning, and have The Day. Having The Day means that going back to bed is even more of a treat than ever. What am I talking about? Let us recap.

I am a busy artist. I am called Artist Extraordinaire by my promotional literature. I am a mother of three extraordinarily tall and frightening children, all of whom are bigger than me, very emotional, opinionated and teen aged. And half Russian. They all have large heads and high cheekbones. Not one of them looks like me but being their Mum I know they are mine. Years ago, at Gatwick Airport, I was stopped from boarding a plane to America with my three blond Slavic children in tow. The youngest was 8 at the time. My children have a different surname to mine plus the most divine Russian first names. "Madam," a nice lady in a uniform said, "can you prove that these are your children?" And she was serious. I saw instantly the downside of having very different looking offspring with foreign sounding names. Of course I don't carry their birth certificates on me, and for some reason the passports didn't convince them. "Obviously made on the kitchen table this morning," they may have muttered into their walkie talkies. " Fancy trying to board a plane with large headed blond Slavic children, foreign names and all, and calling them her kids. And she so dark and swarthy herself. Get the shackles ready, and call social services." More security guards arrived and police and the army and the SAS. What saved me was my little 8 year old, who kept clinging onto me saying conversationally, "Mummy Mummy Mummy what do all these people want Mummy Mummy Mummy?" "Wouldn't do that if he was being kidnapped," said the lead Security Bloke. After a bit of a discussion amongst themselves, we were let off and allowed to travel. The crowds that had gathered around us dispersed, disappointed. They were my kids after all. No punch ups and fisticuffs as they were dragged away from me. No blood tests were needed, no truth serum for me in a darkened room and special games with the kids in controlled circumstances to make them slip up and give away that their real mother was an innocent Russian who had sent her kids to the corner shop one day in Moscow and I knicked them.

Back to Heavenly Bed and why I am here. My children are lovely but need much eyeball to eyeball time and tons and tons of food. We all love food in this house and because they are so large and tall and hungry and used to eating in my home, we can become like a non stop Viking Feast.

I am a very busy Artist. I am making the A Graceful Death exhibition so much bigger and better and more interactive. I am making a film with Neill my film maker colleage. Eileen Rafferty the photographer extraordinaire is creating a book on it. I am promoting the exhibition all round the country and doing absolutely everything myself. That is exhausting and very hands on. There is also my commission work that I will get back to next week (promise) and complete for my clients. (Promise). The A Graceful Death needs much publicity, much sponsorship and much time spent on it to make it work in the community. It is about how it is to die and what it means to face the end of life. I have many paintings to do for it, and I am working with some very inspirational people. For example, tomorrow Neill, Eileen and I are filming an interview and discussion in London, with a very beautiful lady who is mid chemo and radiotherapy treatment for cancer. She is very ill and very wonderful. I am also discussing with her what painting I will be doing of her for the A Graceful Death exhibition next in Birmingham. The word that came to mind when talking with her at first was Goddess. I want to paint her as a goddess. It will work. Eileen will be photographing her for me and for her book. Neill will be filming the whole thing.

I have a large house to run. It is a wonderful house, and it does not hoover itself. Goddamit. The garden is beginning to be the most exciting part of the house - the Cosmic Gardner is full of empathy for it and has made it into just what I want. Next week we go and buy roses. Blimey. He says I can have hollyhocks too and so my life is full. Last week we bought peonies and winter roses and honeysuckle and bleeding hearts (he says they are called bleeding hearts and I utterly believe him) and he planted them while I stood in my painting overalls watching, with a tear in my eye, as if they were teeny fluffy sweet little day old chicks and he was saving them from something and it was all very sentimental. "They're only plants M'Lady" he may have said in some embarrassment. "Oh but they are so sweeeeet" I may have sobbed in reply.

The final reason that I am and have been so tired, is that I am 50. An evening out is exhausting. I used to dance till late, come home, drink tea and sleep for about 4 hours. Up in the morning, kids, housework, bit of painting, lots of chatting, party again in the evening, and it would take ages before I had a melt down. Now, even the thought of having a night on the town and staying up beyond midnight makes me cry. I take my high heels with me in a sensible bag and change into them on the doorstep before ringing the bell. I keep tissues up my sleeve and in my pocket just in case. I have a nice spare pair of flat shoes with me at all times for walking more than 20 yards. I always carry a cardi in case I get chilly. And I simply don't undersand much of what my children say to me because I think they mumble, and they think I am deaf. They shout and still I don't understand. "Annunciate," I say to them clearly, "you are still mumbling." "Mumble mumble mumble", they bellow back and I have to give up. It is safer then to smile and say, "Goodness Me!" as if I had understood and approved of their sweet little ways. Even if they had said to me "Bye Mum I'm off to prison for three years" I would smile and nod and say, "Goodness Me!" and ask one of the other children to write it down for me. Then again there is always the possibility that they are not my children....

I lie here in my bed. My room is full of wonderful things. The large bed that I sit up in, is covered with exotic cushions in wonderful colours and twinkles. My duvet is white with red polka dots on it, and the cushion behind my back is cerise and hairy. Like me after one of those late night parties I hear you say. I jest. I am not cerise and hairy (often). I see the chair opposite the bed and remember that it was bought 22 years ago for me to sit and feed my newborn baby. Each child has sat with me during night feeds in that chair. It is red and slightly frayed (the chair, the chair) and had a Russian shawl over the back of it. My dressing table is a 1930s table, given to me by one of my mother's friends. I love it and I am very grateful to my mother's friend. On the dressing table are candles that smell divine when lit, little clusters of jewellery both inside and out of heart shaped and beaded boxes. A photo of my grand parents on their wedding day, a small red sponge duck that Steve got for me, an Indian pot a dear Indian friend bought me, and then died back in his country before I could show him how it was placed in my home. And littered in an orderly fashion around the floor and upon some lovely wicker hampers that were once Christmas presents from Fortnum and Masons from my dear cousin and his wife in the the USA, I have the fanciest collection of platformed wedge heeled sandles in polka dots, and stripes, and reds, and blues, and blacks. Oh boy.

So sitting here in my perfect bed, the window open to my right, a breeze blowing in and ruffling the glorious curtains of magenta lining material and netting that another wonderful and creative cousin in Michigan made for this room, I feel very satisfied.

Heavenly, heavenly, all is heavenly. Now what is that tall blond child saying to me again?

Jobs For The Day - Wash Hair. The End.

2011-04-15T02:04:00.000-07:00

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for my other website
www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for the A Graceful Death exhibition, paintings from the end of life

Jobs For The Day. 1. Wash Hair 2. Sit Down.

The jobs list today actually starts with hair washing. Oh I hate washing my hair, I can't bear getting my head wet. But I can't be beautiful without doing it so I just have to get on with it.

Having washed my hair, having sat down, I have to get up again and go to my mother's birthday lunch in Petworth. Mother is 81 today and is cooking lunch for me and my three brothers. Mother's will is of iron, and this is what she wants. Lovely, I say. All I have to do is wash my hair, and turn up for lunch - in the scheme of things, not so very bad.

Having had lunch, my hair shining like an advert for L'Oreal, I am pottering round the corner from Mother's house to visit a friend who I grew up with, also visiting her mother (in Petworth. There should be a collective noun for those who have a Mother who Lives In Petworth). This friend has, in the last few years, married and had three children. What! I think of her as still 14. Today I shall meet her three tiny children for the first time, and I know I will go gaga over them. I am stupidly looking forward to meeting them. I had three children once, I shall say to her over my lorgnette. And it was tough. Well, she will reply, it doesn't seem to have affected your hair. It's so shiny and bright.

These days, I am trying to take life slowly. I have written before about my tiredness and extreme lack of energy. This is still true but I am able to rest more as it is Easter Holidays and there is no need to get 14 Year Old Son up for school. How wonderful are mornings off, when you are not used to them? I wake and when I am ready, go downstairs and make tea. I bring it back up to my bed and get back in under the duvet, plump up my cushions and decide then what to do. My options are

Drink tea and stare into space
Wash hair (sometimes)
Listen to radio 4 and get cross with people
Check facebook
Don't drink tea and stare into space
Plan my breakfast

I am very busy. We all know this. To spend mornings in bed thinking about nothing is pure sense. I have overdone things, my health has suffered, and it is time to take drastic measures. Drastic measures for a very busy person who carries on like a whirlygig gathering more and more momentum, not see the wood for the trees, and going nowhere fast, is to simply Stop. Just like that. Very hard to do. My body can stop much more easily than my mind; my mind goes on flapping about, fussing and galloping on into infinity with no hope of a resolution or common sense, which makes me realise how important it is for me to Get A Grip and sit down. Lie down. Go to bed. Rest.

And so, back to the hair washing. It has come to pass that the main problem with today is washing my hair. A while ago, it was The Work. The Fund Raising. The Portrait. The Film. The Book. There must be progress if it has narrowed down to hair washing.

Time is ticking on. The day needs someone to start it. "Oooh oooh oh pick me! pick me!" I say, back to my old self. "Ok", I say to my eager self, " go and wash your hair."

Bognor In Springtime, Artist Still In Bed.

2011-04-12T03:11:00.000-07:00

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for my best known image of Jesus sitting on the tube being ignored
www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for the A Graceful Death exhibition, paintings from the end of life

Bognor Glorious In Springtime, Artist Glorious In Bed

There have not been as many blogs as recently as I have been slowly getting more and more unwell. I believe I am on the mend. I believe I needed to slow down and stop being what they call a Busy Fool, which is someone who just whirls around being busy for the sake of it and not getting much done. There is also the fact that I am now 50, and very old. And then, there is the change in my working plans which have required much thought, preparation and starting at the beginning again.

Would you like to know my symptoms? Thought so. When I tell you, you will all say," But that is us too! We are all ill with you!" And I will say," Come, get into my bed with me and we will drink tea and recover together." I have been increasingly tired. The tiredness was not cured by going to bed, nor sleeping, and was more akin to total exhaustion from having run a marathon. I have run a marathon, in 2004, so I know what that feels like. The exhaustion became so intense that I felt that I could only talk in small sentences, and could not think at all. I lost my vocabulary, I couldn't remember how to speak, I breathed in great sighs when I had to speak, or move from one room to another, because I just could not find enough breath to breathe. I began to get headaches and pains in my limbs which were uncomfortable, but not enough to shout Ow! Sleep seemed to make no impact on this tiredness, and I began to dread having to meet and talk to people. One of the most alarming things was that I went off tea, and the last time that kind of thing happened, I was pregnant. It certainly wasn't that though it felt like a 50 year old upside down version of pregnancy, a kind of addled parody of it. Menopause, I hear you say. Well possibly, I am Of That Age. And I want to add here that I am so glad that I will not be having babies any more, so so glad because it is and was bad for my health - I got fat, I got prematurely middle aged and blobby, labour hurts so much I think I will never find the words to describe it, I couldn't find ten consecutive minutes to sleep with tiny babies needing Stuff, and plenty more. So this possible menopausal parody of pregnancy serves to make me glad it won't actually end in labour and fifteen years of hard work (and the rest). My babies though, were and are wonderful. They were and are always a miracle, it is just that I felt so rotten with tiredness etc while they were young. I was a single mum too, so that made it a bit relentless. Good side to being a single mum was I could eat crisps and mountains of toast in bed in the early hours of the morning, and leave crispy, toasty crumbs and honey all over the mattress and not have to explain myself. I could sleep smugly on it all and simply brush myself down in the morning and carry on as normal.

The tiredness, the aches and the slowing down of Antonia Rolls made me think that this was serious. I have, I said to myself in my exhaustion, Leprosy. Aids. Cancer. I began to see the world as grey and difficult to deal with. There was and is too, a change of direction in my work. I do not spend much time painting these days, I spend all my time writing and promoting and asking for money to make the A Graceful Death exhibition and project pay its way. I spend so much time making proposals, doing research, following leads, asking for things - my studio has a painting in it of Rev Rachel Mann that I long to get back to. And, I have decided to write a book which is a bit exciting and quite a lot barmy. I have visions of being on top of all the Other Stuff and entering my studio to find it suffused with golden light, with the sound of distant angels singing, as I pause in my big paint-splattered boiler suit at the door. I find the exhaustion, the Not Pregnant But Maybe Weird Menopause syndrome, the Aids, the Leprosy, the Cancer all fall away from me as I pause open mouthed at the door. I say with passion ,"Yes," and step into the light. And lo, there on the table, is a tray of tea, made by Angels in my biggest spotty teapot. And all is right with the world, the proposals are successful, the money is pouring in, the book is writing itself, the world is saying Come To Me I Am Ready. I smile and say coyly, "OK then. If you insist," and the angels singing in the distance bring out the trumpets and kettle drums and thus, life moves up a notch.

Back to today and reality. I am not there yet. I am in bed as I write this, taking my extreme weariness seriously. I have cancelled many of my appointments this week and I will ride this out. There is a big check up at the doctors coming up, so there will be a sensible, fully trained scientific grown up looking at me. And, I have begun to tell everyone that I am not at the top of my tree at the moment. I am hanging on like a sleeping sloth three quarters of the way down. Hoping of course to stop being a sleeping sloth soon and become whatever it is that charges fully energised to the top of the tree and bangs its chest and roars with passion and wonder and excitement. Sounds a bit like a happy gorilla. Not sure I want to be a gorilla, but I do want to be back in charge, and well again.

The Cosmic Gardener has just arrived downstairs. I have arranged to go with him to buy plants for the garden, so I must leave this wonderful bed of mine, and slowly get dressed and interact with People. At least we know that I am on track to being a happy gorilla. More soon. Now I can do my writing from bed, I will let you all know how I get on. A rather Shakespearean happy gorilla, at the top of the tree painting away, with a heavenly chorus of angels singing, playing trumpets and banging kettle drums. Blimey. Better get well then.

Tea At Gertrude Stein's Is On Hold. A Bognor Update Instead.

2011-04-06T01:56:00.000-07:00

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for the Jesus on the Tube website and story
www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for the A Graceful Death exhibition, paintings from the end of life

Tea With Gertrude Has Been Postponed. In The Meantime -

Gertude phoned and asked if we could come another time, when she has more time. Her message went something like this

"There is not enough time and time is not being here; the being of time here is that there is not enough of it and there is not enough time."

I said OK Gertrude.

In the meantime a very quick update on Art and Life in Bognor. I am busy and have found that much of my time is spent not painting. I have paintings to do and I have an invitation to design but I am so very full of creating and furthering the A Graceful Death exhibition and projects that I am compelled to do that instead. Monday was set aside to paint, last week. It was very difficult to do because I had to force myself to re-enter the world of making the art. My head is full of words and connections and ideas, there is not much space for painting and for images. I had to tear myself away from the computer and make myself focus my eyes on paint, easel, drawing. I lit a scented candle and made some tea. I put the heating on in the studio an hour before I went in to paint and I wore my old painting boiler suit. I did not turn on the computer in the office through which I have to pass to get to the studio. I am a painter, and it was hard to get back into that space.

I put this Monday aside too for painting. It was lovely, and I am aware that I must find a way to lay all the AGD stuff down and get back to these portraits. Once they are done, I will paint my new AGD portraits. I am very fortunate to work with a new sitter for AGD and she will be painted as a Goddess; she has survived two operations for cancer and is mid chemo treatment, and is present and living, she will be a beautiful portrait for the exhibition. I cannot wait to start painting her.

So what has been happening here? All the usual stuff - the house needs cleaning the food needs cooking. The children need beating and the car needs petrol. What has been occupying me has been my exhaustion. It is constant and it seems to come from my very bones. I don't like it, and it makes me feel that all my plans are slipping further from my grasp. I do have such plans. There was a time that I felt that I had energy but no real plans - this is a right old turnaround to have plans at last and no goddamn energy. I think that what is happening is that I have too much to do and cannot manage all of it to the level that I would like to achieve. So some if it gets done and some of it gets half done and some of it remains in my head, going round and round and not coming to any conclusion. I have found that it takes such a long time to make the next stage in any given project successful. And even then it may not be successful, but the time has to be spent and the risk taken, because if it is not, then nothing will happen. It would be so satisfying to have the idea and set aside a day to make it work, to spend that day putting everything in place with ease. By the evening it is all done and the project is up and running, everyone loves it, all the support is there and so, on to the next one.

Today, I am going to London again. I will see an old friend and then I will go to a book launch. Tomorrow I pick up 14 Year Old Son's new hearing aid, he managed to smash his first and now can't hear me say anything that isn't food related. He breaks up from school too tomorrow. Friday I go to an Elvis night, Saturday I go to a 50th dinner party in London and Sunday I gather my energies so that Monday, I paint. And stay put. Time to go back to the creative stuff. Time to finish Rocking Rev Rachel Mann's portrait. Tuesday I go with the Cosmic Gardner to buy plants for the garden, and Wednesday I paint. And Thursday and Friday. And until the portrait is finished I wear my boiler suit and stick a paintbrush behind my ear, so that no one (myself included) can mistake me for anything but a painter.

And tea with Gertrude Stein is still on the cards. This week I am the embodiment of tired and overwhelmed Artist, I am the living example of how exhausting doing something like painting, creating a loving but controversial exhibition, writing, having a large family (in that the kids are huge not that there are hundreds of them) and trying to be nice, is.

You may like to know that as I write this, I am in bed. 14 Year Old Visigoth Son suggested I not get up this morning, that he will get himself up and fed and off to school. And what is more, he will run a hot bath and leave it to get cool so that when I wake, it will be ready for me. How about that. And he did. What a wonder boy. And for Mothers Day he got his whole year to sign his card, so that I looked famous. Oh wow. I got hugs and kisses from 14 year old lads who I have never met nor know of, and they all have been checking with Son as to whether I liked the card or not. I do like it! It has cheered me up no end.

Oh well. Back to today. Once I get to London it will be fine. It is a two hour journey there, and a two hour journey back. Oh if only I had a private helicopter. If only I could feel less tired. If only everything I did worked the first time I did it, and everything was easy and straightforward. Perhaps it all is, I just need to change my thinking. Monday. Monday I will be back to my roots so to speak. Painting large oil portraits and loving it. Hiding from the world in the studio, and breathing again.

Bognor Artists Have Been Reading This Week

2011-03-30T07:21:00.000-07:00

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for the Jesus on the Tube image and story
www.agracefuldeath.blogpsot.com for the A Graceful Death exhibition, paintings from the end of life.

http://www.wefund.co.uk/project/graceful-death-film Go to this link to donate and find out about the A Graceful Death, the Film. See our video explaining what we are doing, and be part of the team help us to raise the funds to make the film brilliant.

Bognor Artists Have Been Reading This Week

We have been resting lately, we Artists in Bognor. I say "Artists" and mean this loosely. If I was being specific, I would say "Artist". There is, as far as I know, only me in any of these movements. I have named some associates, but they don't know about it. They are not aware that they have been linked to the Bognor Art Revolutions as they happen from week to week. For example, the Artist Friend in Middleton. Well, she is a very good artist indeed and doesn't suffer fools gladly. So far, she suffers me happily, but I dont want to alarm her and tell her she has been linked with - as I recall - Bognor Impressionists. I may become a Fool and she will Stop Suffering Me At All. The maths tutor in Barnham, who has been standing in for the maths side of things in the Bognor Renaissance, has no idea that I am even an artist. It is best that he remains in his world of Algebra and Equations as he may not like the idea of representing the whole of Maths for an entire movement that he probably has no time for. (The Bognor Renaissance). He is very nice and it is in my interests that he represents our Bognor Renaissance without his knowledge. We never found an architect, come to think about it. There are lots of Barrett homes being built in Bognor at the moment, so maybe that can represent architecture in a rather vague way. I am sure they are very intelligent and can tell us about Architraves and Doric Columns if we asked them.

As for Angst and Surrealism, Bognor doesn't need me to start an Art Movement to introduce them. There are plenty of Angst ridden folk around here. The word, if you remember, means Fear and Anxiety in Dutch, Danish, Norwegian and German. And Bognor. There is much deep seated spiritual fear and insecurity in the free human being along the high street here, and sometimes along the seafront too. Very evident at closing time. Which brings me to the Bognor Fishermen who have been representing, quite without their knowledge, the idea of Pre Raphaelite Bognor. I did say that they ranged, in our paintings, in the pubs along the Bognor Seafront, from Sentimental Fishermen to Maudlin Fishermen to Pie Eyed Fishermen. There is the wonderful idea of painting a Pre Raff masterpiece of real life along the shores of Biblical Galilee using the Bognor Pier and any number of Fishing Folk from the Bars alongside it. There will be a moral in the painting, we will have to decide what it is. Victorians liked morals, and this Bognor Pre Raff movement needs to decide whether we have moved on from that kind of stuff or not.

Surrealism was great fun. We needed to sleep a lot to get our ideas. I am still working on that.

Our Dada movement was singular in that we had a Supreme Leader. My old friend Gair Dunlop was given the job, and at least was informed that that was his role. Whether he wanted it or not was not considered necessary. Gair, if you recall, was a member of that profound movement, the Aberdeen Dadaists, in about 1980ish in Aberdeen. It was formed of three people, and only two of them knew what it was about. Gair was one, Eddie Fisher was the other and I was the third. I was the one who didn't know what it was about, but liked Gair and Eddie very much and went along for the ride. It lasted about two weeks.

On to the Fauves. My idea was to let the Wild Animal in us (me) loose, and recreate Bognor as a Fauve painting. Fauve means Wild Animal, and we (I) liked the thought that we (I) could let the inner wild beast out and go mad with wild and passionate brush strokes in reds, and oranges and yellows. I thought that Bognor would suit a Fauve Overhaul. The idea was to get the local council to fund the overhaul and to make Bognor into a Matisse or Derain painting. That was very stirring stuff.

I forgot to mention that within this group of Artists that don't know they belong to any of these Bognor Art Movements, is a philosopher and author. She wouldn't mind a bit, if she knew. And if she did know, if she remembered. She would intellectualise it all with panache and talk it over with her husband. Between them, they would be witty and amusing and very insightful and then forget about it.

So now. This reading that we have been doing. We are creative here, in Bognor. We can turn our hands to many different methods of expression; for example the other day I customised a teacosy for the Glorious Clarissa, writing "Teatime for Clarissa with Love" on it in red thread, and adding some gingham bows. The Cosmic Gardner writes poetry. The 14 Year Old Visigoth that is my youngest son has found and been inspired by the poem "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe - we are sensitive, feeling types and we take our expressiveness seriously. We have been reading books that are not on your average Bognor Bookshelf - we have been reading Gertrude Stein and Edith Sitwell.

And now, because of that, we in the Multiple Bognor Art Movements have had an invitation to tea with Gertrude Stein herself. The Bognor Art Movement is going for afternoon tea with Gertrude Stein, and that is that. I will write of our adventure in the next blog. Edith may well want to meet us too, but so far she has not said anything.

Tea is tea is tea.

(A Bognorisation of "A rose is a rose is a rose." One of Gertrude's more intelligable quotes.)

Sleep Is A Reconciling, A Rest That Peace Begets

2011-03-24T15:25:00.000-07:00

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for the most travelled of my images, Jesus sitting on a tube train being ignored
www.agracefuldeath,blogspot.com for the A Graceful Death exhibition, paintings from the end of life

http://www.wefund.co.uk/project/graceful-death-film Go to this link to donate and find out about the A Graceful Death, the Film. See our video explaining what we are doing, and be part of the team help us to raise the funds to make the film brilliant.

Look How The Sun Doth Rise When Fair At Even He Sets

I am quoting from an Elizabethan poem that I have not read since 1981, and may well have got it all wrong. It is a lovely poem about not crying anymore, and I have skipped that bit to only quote the sleeping bit. The sleeping bit is what I want to talk to you about today. Wake up now, and take notes.

I have been feeling dreadfully lacklustre lately. I have woken each morning feeling unrefreshed and still tired, and have longed for a different kind of life where everything is easy and straightforward. Once up, I have felt better, and though feeling cheerier for being vertical, I have not looked very pretty. "Nonsense!" I hear you all cry, but I do have to tell you that it is true, I haven't been looking my best. "My," the Cosmic Gardener said to me recently, "you look done in." My children have commented that I am not fetching and delivering to them with the same speed as before, and suggest with regret that I am getting old. I have not wanted to get up from my chair once seated, not even to find a nice book to read; not even when I have finished my task at the computer, to put the kettle on. Not even, when my glasses slide off my nose, to push them back on again.

I have much to do, and as always, I take on far more than is necessary. I think, "I know, I'll make a film!" and then think "Gordon Bennett. How??" I think, "I know! I will paint a huge portrait!" and then think, "however will I do this?" I think "Hurrah! I will raise money for my projects and it will all be easy because I'm good and everyone will know that", only to remember that there is a recession on and people are trying to Not Respond To Projects, even though the projects are absolutely fabulous and everyone does know it. The children are growing up and are forever needing Something, the house is lovely but large and gets a little out of hand with the steady flow of folk coming and going, some staying, some not - and always me, happy but getting slower and slower and more and more comatose, in the middle of it, trying to make sure it all works as well as can be expected, just like I always have.

But recently it has been different. I have thought along the lines of Stuff The Washing, and I Don't Need To Paint (oh let me rest). I have thought I Only Want To Wear Grey Clothes And Lie Down A Lot, and every time I sat in front of my computer in my busy and paper strewn office, I have thought, "Well, I am sure I came in here for something, goodness I can't even remember what my name is and ooooh! Pretty flowers!" as I look out of the window at nodding daffodils in the garden and forget utterly where I am. At the same time, there have been long journeys to London and back, perhaps the most significant one being when I went up to Teddington to collect the birthday cake from Dear Old Dad who had bought it for Dear Old Daughter for her 21st, and then didn't know how to get it to Brighton. "It's my Duty" I said and whizzed up to London to solve the problem. A last minute request for money from the Furiously Independent Son In Kingston saw me parked illegally in Kingston and waiting to hand over enough to pay for his History Trip the next day. But when Son eventually appeared, he was so ill that I chucked him into the car and took him back to Bognor within seconds of seeing him.

So back to Sleep being a Reconciling and so on. Darling Dublin Friend called and asked how I was. And so I told her. "I am," I said in a low voice, "struggling. I turned 50 last August and am going to be 70 this coming one." "Oh," said DDF. "I am, " I continued in a near whisper, "on my way out." With no fuss, DDF asked if I was getting enough sleep. Proper sleep. " I don't need sleep! I haven't time! I am fine do you hear me I have far too much to do blah blah justify justify etc." "Hmmmmm," DDF said, "I bet you wake in the morning feeling unrested and anxious." That is true, I told her with astonishment. What is this voodoo that you are doing? If she doesn't get enough sleep, DDF said simply, she wakes fuzzled and muzzled for the whole of the next day. " I really need my sleep," she said without shame. Go to bed she suggested, at a good time. 10.15 is a good time, not 10.16, and don't take a cup of tea to bed. Take hot milk and try it.

Readers, I did try it. I got to bed that night at 8 and put my laptop in a cupboard downstairs. I took hot milk to bed and I lay in my pyjamas and feeling a little self conscious, I put out my had to turn the radio on to hear some reassuringly furious radio 4 discussions on war and morals and tenseness, only to find it was morning. I had fallen asleep. I had slept from 8.02 till 6.30 and it was time to get up and start the day. I was so impressed with DDF. "She knows," I said to myself as I got up. And my mood was lighter that day. By 9pm that night I was in bed again and by 9.04 I was asleep. A week later and I look nice again. "You have," said a passer by recently, "a ruddy bloom." I like the day times again. The Cosmic Gardner had not offered me sympathy this week, my children have been dealt with with a new and brutal efficiency ("No I can't do that, cook you dinner, fetch your birthday cake, mend your trousers, paint your room - I'm going to bed") And what is more, I cannot wait for bedtime. With this new regime, I have found that I have jettisoned care and worry at the bedroom door. I lie in my bed and giggle. It is so simple, and DDF knows it. Now I know it. Eileen Rafferty, Photographer Extraordinaire, knows it too. She has always told me I need to sleep more. And I remember now seeing a small You Tube clip where the writer and socialite Arianna Huffington told us ladies that we should literally sleep to the top. We don't get enough sleep, she says, and we are malfunctioning. We get brownie points for not sleeping much, if at all, and to sleep is weak. Well hell no. We think we get brownie points but what we get is Madness. Yes. Madness.

So this blog is dedicated to DDF, Darling Dublin Friend, who has a deep and scary insight into how simple it is to make life shine again. "Sleep is a reconciling, a rest that peace begets, look how the sun doth rise when fair at even he sets." I think she wrote that and pretended to be an Elizabethan poet.

Just had a message from DDF and she said to me and I quote

"Delicious sleep thout pervadest me and hath made a nagging cranky bisom of me. Come to me this night and lie with me - forsooth!"

I say speak for yourself. Kiss kiss.

I Don't Got Nothing To Say. Except This...

2011-03-19T08:51:00.000-07:00

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for the best known of my images, Jesus on the Tube
www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for the A Graceful Death exhibition, paintings from the end of life

http://www.wefund.co.uk/project/graceful-death-film Go to this link to donate and find out about the A Graceful Death, the Film. See our video explaining what we are doing, and be part of the team help us to raise the funds to make the film brilliant.

Ain't Got Nothing To Say. Except This.

Today is the absolute pinacle of achievement. There are many types of achievement and the one I have got to is probably the best. I woke as usual, thinking Lordy Lordy who wants feeding? Plodding downstairs in my dressing gown, eyes dark with lack of discipline about going to bed at a reasonable time, I felt overawed by the dreadful state the house was in. After providing a sumptuous breakfast for those staying with me this weekend, a sudden blinding light and a thunder clap heralded the Angel of the Lord who said, "Stop oh you who need a bath and should really have employed a cleaner! Stand up straight and watch this..." and with the trumpets sounding of all of the angels who deal with Artists and Housework, and with a semi clad celestial figure banging a huge angelic gong, I was shown a vision of what today could be. This is the vision I beheld:

Lo, and the Heavens parted and showed unto me, a house with clean floors and not a dustball in sight. My eyes were dazzled in this vision as the Angel of the Lord turned my head to show me the bin was emptied and fresh bin bags in place where only seconds before, there had been left overs and potato peelings and teabag stains down the wall. Hark! said a fierce voice, All this will come to pass if you get the hoover out and squirt some Mr Sheen. I was led in my vision to the bathroom where all the hair left over from Furious Son With A Life To Live had shaved his head and beard, had gone and in its place, gleaming surfaces and beams of blinding sunlight bouncing off the whiter than white bath. The soap, the flannels and the shampoos were placed exactly to cover the burn marks both boys had made as they individually and for different reasons, at different times, had set fire to the bath in their younger days. Angel! I cried, can all this be? How clever to hide the evidence of bonfires in the bath in this way! And then the vision changed and the Angel showed me myself sitting in glory in the bright yellow sunlight as it shone through the sparkly butterflies hanging in the window of my fragrant and miraculously uncluttered sitting room. I was lying shining with the light of Splendid Housewifery, amongst exotic and sumptuous cushions on my sofa, smelling of a Fenjal Bath and wearing clean clothes and eating healthy food. And in my vision I knew, by the spirit of the Guiding Angel unfolding this vision of the future, that there was a toffee sponge pudding in the oven for later.

So I cleaned the house, wearing only my old dressing gown. I stopped first to have a frugal breakfast after my guests had had theirs, and spurred on by the knowledge given to me by my vision, I washed my house. All of it. And did the bin bags. Yuck.

By the time I had had my Fenjal bath (and lo, it came to pass etc), put on clean clothes, made some healthy food, it was 2 o'clock and the sun was at its zenith, streaming through the twinkly butterflies that hang from my window (a 50th birthday present) in a kind of Art Installation of colour and sparkles and hope.

So here I lie in my sofa. Working up an appetite for tea and planning to text Daughter watching "16 and Pregnant" on telly all day next door in her pyjamas, to go and make it. I am utterly content. I have achieved the impossible and despite feeling allergic to and defeated by housework today, I have made my home a glorious haven, conducive to a restful, peaceful and spiritually uplifting day. I long for many things in a wider sense, such as Artistic Success with Ease. Such as Wise and Self Sufficient Children. Such as Finding Life a Bit Easier and not least, Not Wanting To Eat Bread And Butter All The Time. But now, for as long as the sun streams into my soul through the butterflies in the window, for as long as the house is zinging with lemon fresh cleaning materials, and for as long as I don't have to do anything till tomorrow morning, then I have succeeded. I don't got nothing to say, except this. Thank You Angel of Artists and Housework. You Was Right.

"That's OK Matey. The Lord has just asked me to tell you the sticky toffee pudding is done."

That Old Fauve Moment Again, Bognor Goes Wild

2011-03-15T09:13:00.000-07:00

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website of paintings
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for the story and examples of the best known of my images, Jesus on the Tube
www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for the A Graceful Death exhibition, paintings from the end of life

That Old Fauve Moment Again

Today we are going to celebrate our release from the Intellectual, the Political and the Furious. With a passionate Hurraah!we are revelling in colour and more colour, and doing so with a jolly but Beastly look in our eye.

Well. These Fauves then. A rather brief movement, from about 1904 to 1908; a loose knit bunch of artists moved on from the painting style of the Impressionists who worked from life exactly as it was, and en plien air (when we were Bognor Impressionists we loved the en plien air idea and were often found gathered behind post boxes in force ten gales out by our Bognor sea, trying to work from nature and muttering to ourselves "Must capture the moment, Must capture the moment."), and became interested in vibrant colour, wild brush stokes and a degree of abstraction and simplification of the subjects. As with all these movements, Fauvism kind of happened, with the two artists who are credited with being the Chief Fauves, putting on an exhibition without any idea that they were a movement, let alone a Fauve one. Henri Matisse was one of these artists, and Andre Derain the other. "I say, Henri," Andre did not say as they painted together one summer before exhibiting with a group of artists in 1905 at the Salon d'Autumne in Paris, "you're a bit of a beast, you know." "Fancy," Henri did not say in reply, " I thought you were a bit of a Wild 'Un too!" This refers to the name "Fauve" which means "wild beast". As you can imagine, the Fauves did not name themselves as such, a deeply unimpressed critic did that in an effort to cut them to the quick with scorn and derision. Instead, he named a movement and everyone could breathe again and concentrate on following it. This is how it happened. In the Salon exhibition of 1905, the critic Louis Vauxcelles said of the collection of wildly, brightly, madly colourfully, seemingly over the top paintings as they hung in the same room as a Renaissance type sculpture, ""Donatello au milieu des fauves!" ("Donatello among the wild beasts"). There is that word. Explained. Fauve. These artists were Fauves. Wild Beasts.

Andre Derain. Wonderful light and atmosphere, and you can see how the splashes of colour and shape must have been hard to take for the general public, after the pain of coming to terms with Impressionist images. "Will it ever end?" they must have murmured to each other. "No." Derain may have replied, his brushes loaded with daglo yellow and crimson, "and now for another Landscape."

I love the Fauves. As the sole conscious member of each Bognor Movement, I am thrilled to be expressing myself this week in vibrant colours in a rather abstracted way. " Flowers?" I growl to my friends as they sit around my kitchen table, "they bring the Animal out in me. Let me at 'em," and I paint huge canvases of greens, vermilion, yellows and oranges and if you look carefully and squint your eyes, you can see, if I tell you, that they could be a vase of flowers. "Roar!" I say.

Matisse painted this picture of me at Aberdeen University. All my friends are just out of sight in this particular work, and as you can see, I am very at home here.

When I was at university in Aberdeen, I and my dearest circle of friends were very inspired by Fauve paintings. We loved the warmth and exaggerated colour of Matisse his figures, his interiors and landscapes - we loved the pictures of views from out of a highly patterned and decorative room through the open windows to the streets below. The gloriously bold and colourful Kees Van Dongen, the wonderful Maurice de Vlaminck and of course, Andre Derain. Somehow, in Aberdeen, we lived in an atmosphere of unconsciously recreated Fauve pictures. We looked like the bold, bright and simplified figures. Our rooms were identical to the images of highly patterned and ornate interiors that we saw and identified with. We felt that these Fauve artists had painted us, and painted our fantastically eccentric digs, and we fitted in perfectly to the whole vision of it all. The had painted our souls.

Madame Matisse by Matisse. Note the green line down the middle of her face to suggest shadow. How fantastic is that? How bold and brave. Note her blue hair. Or maybe Mrs Matisse did have a green line down her face and blue hair. Henri just created the Fauve movement to make her feel better.

Bognor is becoming a wild and abandoned place for artists to be this week. Our Fauvism has forced us to paint green lines down each others faces because we still need to loosen up a little and can't quite paint what we don't see. Paint the green line on, say, my dear friend Eileen Rafferty (the photographer extraordinaire)'s face, then paint her onto the canvas from life, till we get used to seeing such wild and extreme colours. Instinctively. Fauves were also influenced by African art and African masks that were doing the rounds in Paris. Many artists were affected by them, not least the Fauves. We have no African art here, but we have loads of Polish people - with Polish shops - and probably Polish art. We can be strangely drawn to that. We Bognor Fauves need to paint fabulous views from our windows, onto the shopping centres below, in madly loose and free strokes of lime green and blue, wild and energetic sweeps of red and purple, and splashes of lemon yellow. We have no axe to grind at the moment, all our anti-art, all our symbolism and deep seated insecurity about the human condition, all our horror of the bourgeoisie and our fixation on the unconscious, all seem to come to naught, as we leap into action and paint everything red, and wild, and abstract. Our souls glory in the painterliness of it all. Especially me, since I used to think I lived in a Fauve painting with my friends (none of whom are artists and all of whom do not know what I am on about, I expect). In a passionate fit of Fauve, I will arrange the rooms in my house to look like a Matisse painting. Bognor could do with a spot of colour. Maybe the council will give me a grant to make the rest of Bognor into a Matisse painting. That would be good for business, until of course, Bognor moves on and becomes intellectual and anxious again.

This is a view of Bognor Regis Harbour after the council grant has enabled me to make it into a Matisse painting

And here is Bognor High Street, based on the Vlaminck painting that looks very like this. Those figures are shoppers in Wilkinsons, but Wilkinsons has disappeared into colour and abstraction leaving the shoppers wild and confused.

This Artist Is Taking A Back Seat

2011-03-11T13:21:00.000-08:00

www.antonairolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for the best known image, of Jesus being ignored on a tube train
www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for the A Graceful Death exhibition, paintings from the end of life
http://www.wefund.co.uk/project/graceful-death-film for the We Fund page for the A Graceful Death, the Film project

This Artist, Me, Takes A Back Seat.

I could spend all my time writing about which Art Movement Bognor is doing at any given moment. I love doing it, and am terribly inspired by how busy Bognor can be when doing a new Art Thing. But, I need to take it a bit easy. I have other things to do, and they won't go away until I attend to them. Portraits will not paint themselves, houses do not clean themselves, and the Cosmic Gardner does need some kind of response when talking about taking ideas from my paintings into the garden design...Excellent, I say, excellent. That is what I want you to do, whatever you said, that is great. What? The 14 Year Old Son of a Balrog has just been suspended again from school this week. Oh you Fool I said to him. Yeah, Well, Whatever he replied. He was home then, just when dear Older Son Who Is Not Amused By Anything I Say Or Do arranged to meet me in London only to collapse with a fever into my arms. I put him into the car then and there, and drove him home fast, where he is recovering from tonsillitis and being very poorly indeed. He is thin at the best of times, but now he is a Wraith, and needs his sheets changed every day he has sweated so much into them. Never mind, I say. I am here. He was scared of being alone the first night, before we got to the doctors in the morning. It was like having the little boy version of him back, but with a beard and hairy chest. At that same moment - the Son of a Balrog being excluded again and the Unamused Bearded Wraith falling into my arms with a temperature, my darling daughter celebrated her 21st birthday. "I'm Coming Home!" she cried, "meet me from the train and let's Party!" "OK", I sighed, "hooray." We did party, a bit, with sick son on one side of her and disgraced son on the other, and a very thoughtful visit from 80 Year Old Grandma who arrived like the cavalry with dinner nicely laid out in pretty containers in three wicker baskets. So I didn't have to cook at all, but I did have to clean up and be fierce to Balrog Boy, concerned to Wraith Boy, and jolly to Birthday Girl all at the same time at the table.

I have been to London and back to see my elderly father who had bought the Birthday Girl a cake. Once bought, he couldn't see how it would get to her in Brighton or Bognor, from London, so I said Let Me Come And Collect It, It Will Only Take A Day. Lucky I did so, as I was able to scoop Wraith Boy off the street in Kingston and get him home and into bed before he became but a whisp of smoke. My father is terribly generous, but having had a couple of strokes, doesn't always remember things, and can get into a bit of a muddle. Going up to collect the cake was a pleasure, spending time with him is always good news. He is terribly witty, and always makes me laugh. Possibly, I need to go up and see him more often.

And what else? I am designing some Invitations to Olivia's new book launch. Oh wow. I am fundraising for the A Graceful Death film, and I am going to a school in Yorkshire next week to take one hundred Year 9s on a Jesus on the Tube workshop day. Bear in mind my innocent little Balrog Boy is Year 9. "You won't survive," he says helpfully. Well if I get the real Jesus along, that will keep them amused. Actually, Wraith Boy is very tall and bearded and other worldly at the moment. Maybe I can get him to drift about a bit outside the window and look enigmatic. There is a chance, I will say then to the Year 9s, that Jesus is with us as we speak. And when they all point mutely and with awe to the figure meandering outside the window in his beard and sandals, I will say But I See No-One. That will make them behave. I must remember to tell Wraith Boy not to light up when being Mysterious and Divine, as the Year 9s will smell a rat. "He's not Jesus, Miss!" they will all cry with vigour, "he's just a bloke with tonsillitis and a fag." And so as not to lose face, I will have to pretend I still can't see him.

I am extremely tired at the moment. I want to sleep all day and all night, and eat bread and butter, and be a blob. I find it hard to stir myself, and so people have been telling me I look older these days. However, I had a haircut this morning, and now I look beautiful again and everyone will tell me so. If I prompt them. With a pointed stick.

Bognor is going to be Fauve. It will explode into colour and passion and I will tell you all about it in the next blog. Goodnight.

Bognor Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors Even. Read On ...

2011-03-05T14:51:00.000-08:00

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for my best known image of Jesus sitting on a tube train being ignored
www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for the A Graceful Death exhibition, paintings from the end of life

Bognor Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors Even. Do Not Despair - We Have Gone Dada

Bognor is in the middle of a revolution of Anti Art. We think the Bourgeois are to blame for everything. We think that the reason and logic of the capitalist society is to be utterly ridiculed - not as in 1916 for leading the world blindly and ignorantly into World War 1, as that has already been done. We are doing it because we like the idea that the capitalist bourgeois are to blame for things. And that's what Dada is about. And so we are doing it.

"The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors Even" by Marcel Duchamp 1915 - 1923. This is the rallying cry for the Bognor Dadaists, because it begins with a B in the title and we can put Bognor there and feel like we belong.

We have been traumatised here in Bognor Regis by having decided, in our last Movement last week, to become Pre-Raphaelites. This meant that we had to reject our other Art Movements because the the Pre-Raff Brotherhood thought all art post Raphael was no good. That would have been from about 1550 onwards, and we Bognor Regis Artists had been dabbling with just that. We had done the Left Bank, we had toyed with Angst. We had been boldly painting en plien air like true Impressionists and we had been sleeping for days for dreams for our Surrealist phase. The only Movement that we could still identify with was the Bognor Renaissance, which we liked very much and thought we were good at. Plenty of scope, we said to each other, very right on as we get to include scientists and mathematicians and astrologers and so on. And we were all set to go out and find some in neighbouring villages, like in Westergate or in Barnham (where I know of a maths tutor who we were going to ask to fill in for us as a Brunelleschi type - think architect of Florence Cathedral - unless of course, he was busy teaching).

So now we have become disorientated and unhinged and have become Dadaists.

The Dada Movement began as a furious and energetic movement just before the first world war, in response to the madness and blind foolishness of the culture and societies that created and perpetrated such a war. Dada was about anarchy, about ridiculing the meaninglessness of the modern world, and was anti bougeois. It was rabidly anti-war, and rejected the prevailing standards of art at that time. Oh they were a mad lot. They produced manifestoes, public demonstrations, they produced visual arts, poetry, art theory, journals and theatre in places such as Zurich, Paris, New York, Berlin, the Netherlands, Georgia (Yes! Georgia) and Yugolsavia as it was then. Dada was vehemently anti art. Everything that art stood for, Dada rejected. It rejected traditional aesthetics, and where art was meant to appeal to sensibilities, Dada intended to offend. Dada wanted to destroy traditional culture and aesthetics, they considered the status quo as having been utterly and horribly responsible for producing World War I. Well our Dada Movement extends from Bognor Regis through to Chichester, East Dean, Arundel and Aldwick. We are full of fury and are offending sensibilities by popping out of shops and shouting "Knickers" at people and then handing them a manifesto. "We embrace chaos and irrationality," it says, "and what is more we don't care. Boom boom. Fried Potatoes. " We have based this very loosely on the second Dada manifesto of 1918 by the Dadaist Tristan Tzara, a long and rambling piece from which the following is a teeny extract -

"The system of quickly looking at the other side of a thing in order to impose your opinion indirectly is called dialectics, in other words, haggling over the spirit of fried potatoes while dancing method around it. If I cry out: Ideal, ideal, ideal,

Knowledge, knowledge, knowledge,
Boomboom, boomboom, boomboom,"

To get to the Art, the Marcel Duchamp piece that begins this blog is a great example. It is considered by Duchamp as a "hilarious piece." We agree, though we haven't done anything quite as funny ourselves yet.

Famous artists such as Max Ernst

Max Ernst "Trophy Hypertrophied" 1919. This is not considered Hilarious, but we think it worth a Chuckle

and George Grosz are synonymous with the term Dada. They took it very seriously, and produced some magnificent work that must have paralysed those who encountered it; can you imagine being faced with this kind of thing in 1919? There was still Picasso, and had been Cubism, and Impressionism, but this work was incomprehensible by its nature. It was not mathematical and dedicated to producing new kinds of Art (Cubism), it was meant to shock and disorientate you and shake you out of your capitalist bourgoise war mongering. Goddamit.

Gorge Grosz "Republican Automatons" 1920. We get the flag thing, and we get the bowler hat. We like the clockwork stuff and we are doing one of our own like this. I am standing by Bognor Morrisons shop with a wooden arm, not leg, and my cycling hat on. I will be waving a flag of sorts, but it may just be a flag with my name and phone number on for a bit of self publicity.

Now. We are full of this anarchy lark. We are into Anti Art, and feel that until this madness ends, we will put on strange public displays and hope to get arrested. Our problem is that we don't really have much of an aim - there is a war on, but our little West Sussex Dada movement would not make much difference to that. We are not very politically aware here, we tend to react to things in our own little sphere, and don't hold out much hope that Libya will settle down thanks to our anti art. No, things that we are doing our anti art for are possibly that Sainsburys is opening here at some point and a few people are cross about it. Fine, we say, we'll do a bit of anti art for you. It comes to our notice that the Bognor Youth like to drink themselves silly on cider and beer on the beach of an evening. " Ho!" We cry, "that is Anarchy but not as we like it. Here, read this poem and mend your ways. Join us for a spot of ridiculing the meaninglessness of the modern world, but sober up first. Boom boom! Fried Potatoes."

I have mentioned in an earlier blog that I was an Aberdeen Dadaist once in the early 1980s. My friend Eddie Fisher and I stood for election to the student union as such, and I hadn't a clue what it was all about. I had, I recall, my Dada hat which I wore with pride and ignorance, enjoying but not quite understanding the attention that I was getting. Eddie knew all about Dada, he was a real intellectual, but I was just happy with my hat. I met there one Gair Dunlop who joined the Aberdeen Dadaists, and like Eddie, being an intellectual, understood the whole thing. Gair has been a close friend ever since then, and is now a well known and successful digital artist, film maker and university lecturer in Scotland. It is to him that I dedicate our Bognor Regis Dada Movement. It helps to have someone who knows what Dada is about, to keep us on track. Except that he is very busy and lives in Scotland and probably doesn't have the time. We may just have to make him into our Leader and not tell him, which would be very Dada and when he eventually finds out, we will be long past our Dada stage and be doing Turner somewhere near Petworth (where Petworth House has a huge collection of his paintings). So any advice he may give us will be, hooray for anarchy, useless. Hoooray. Sorry Gair. Boomboom Fried Potatoes.

Bognor Regis Is Pre Raphaelite Now (PRB = Pre Raphaelite Bognor)

2011-02-28T07:49:00.000-08:00

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for the Jesus on the Tube story and images
www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for the A Graceful Death exhibition, paintings from the end of life. Just finished in Manchester

We Are Coming To Terms With Our Pre Raphaelite Status

The Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood of 1848 has inspired Bognor to new heights. We have become Pre Raphaelite Bognor. This includes our Sisters as well as our Brothers, and we feel very satisfied that our Movement this week keeps the original PRB tag intact, while including not only the ever evolving town of Bognor Regis, but Ladies as well as Men. The Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood signed their names on their paintings as usual, adding the then mysterious letters PRB. We can do that. I will sign Rocking Rev Rachel Mann's portrait Antonia Rolls PRB when it is finished; it will be a new milestone in our crazy town full of Artists and Artistic Endeavour.

In 1848 a group of young artists and poets decided that they couldn't bear the corrupting influence that the Mannerist artists had on art after Michaelangelo and Raphael. They felt deeply miffed that painting after Raphael was wrong - elegant compositions, classical poses, dark dark colours and contrived sloppy painting. It gave them, they all agreed, a headache. Let Us, they all said, Go Back To The Wonder Of Fourteenth Century Italian And Flemish Art. Within that art, they said with conviction, there is extraordinary detail, strong bright colour and sophisticated composition. That, they all continued, is what we want.

And so they formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the PRB, and history was made. The founders of this movement were Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. Outside they went, with their paints and folding stools, and painted every detail from life. No doing-it-later nonsense. Right there, right now, and what is more, the attention to detail- so vital to their RB ideals - was so very realistic that it made the public go cross-eyed and very angry. What is more, to capture the brilliant colours which are so very bright in their art, they painted directly onto a white canvas. Shocking.

We Pre-Raphealite Bognor artists understand the need to go out and paint directly from Nature. We had a bit of practice when we were Impressionists a few weeks ago. But what we have found more difficult to grasp is the love of the Medieval that the original Pre-Raffs found so vital. Bognor isn't very Medieval, and we don't have much to go on, but we do have Roman architectural remains in Chichester, so we use that and hope it won't cause too much of a fuss. The idea of painting everything directly from life gives us such a thrill, we paint pictures and then realise we need some chocolate in them, and some cream buns, so we have to go and find them. Then we say to each other, "In order to make this as real as possible, the character who is eating the cakes and chocolate has to actually eat them. And as it is my painting and only I know how it should look, you, my dear Artist companion, will have to paint me eating them and do it again and again till I say it is right."

Much of the Pre-Raff subjects were from poetry and literature, like the Shakespearian subject of Ophelia drowning. And Mariana, from Tennyson's poem of the same name. There were religious subjects painted with staggering detail. And lots of the legends of King Arthur. And some socially aware morality stuff.

Well. Bognor has some socially aware morality stuff. And a good few churches - Methodist, Catholic, C of E, and a nice Quakers Meeting House. Our Pre-Raff Bognor Artists need some obliging Quakers to pose in chain mail by the sea shore, while Bognor Locals see the Light (Religiously) and have some Epiphanies. We would paint that with Gusto, and get quite a lot of the Pre-Raff requirements in at one go. And to make it really amazing, someone dressed as Ophelia could drift by in the waves.

To our sophisticated modern eye, the original Pre-Raffs were indescribably sentimental. They were posey and naff. But gloriously well painted and clever, and I think they are wonderful. We have quite a few naff, sentimental models at our disposal in the pubs along the famous Bognor Promanade. They are a wonder to us modern Pre-Raffs. We can paint Sentimental Fishermen all the way through Maudlin Fishermen, stopping at last at Pie-Eyed Fishermen, all of which can be models for the grand painting one of us may do of Real Life along the shores of Biblical Galilee (Bognor).

Ophelia by John Everett Millais. Painted from life 1851-52. Let me explain. No models were drowned in the making of this.

The Shakepearian subject of the mad Ophelia drowning herself was pretty avant guard in 1851. Others went on to paint it, but Millais was the first. The abundant detail of the water and vegetation was painted in the Summer of 1851, and the very pretty pre Reff "stunner" and model Lizzie Siddal posed in a bath kept warm by lit lamps underneath it, in an antique dress over the winter of 1851-2. Apparantly Lizzie got pneumonia. These days, if we need someone to pose in the bath, we look in the Health and Safety Handbook, check with the Unions, and fly them out to Barbados to do it. But isn't this beautiful? For our grand Pre-Raff Bognor painting mentioned above, maybe we could get someone to float by a few times in a wetsuit, in the Summer when the sea is more inviting. We will see.

Sir John Everett Millais, knighted for his Art and thus made even more Medieval (as a Knight), and "Christ in the House of His Parents", 1850.

Oh Lord, said the Public. How common. What is with all these ghastly rough and ready folk, posing for the figures of Christ and his parents? We loath it for its ugliness and the insult to the Holy Family. What is more, Mary here is so ugly that she cannot be real. And so is Christ. Yuk. Foulness and Dreadfulness.

The nearest we could get as Bognor Re-Raffs to painting this theme, is to put our well known street busker and his life hardened pals into Robert Dyas and painting them all as the Holy Family there. But no one would really mind, nowadays. Yeah, the public would say, Whatever.

William Holman Hunt's "The Awakening Conscience" from 1853. Yes, you are right. She has the awakening conscience, he either hasn't got one, or it doesn't apply to men.

Oh I love this. I always have. Here, the long aubern-haired beauty is suddenly struck by how wrong she is. She, a kept woman, rises from her lover's knee and feels Remorse. He is unaware, and goes on playing. Remorse, he was probably told, is unmanly, and is mostly for the fairer sex, the silly billies. The detail of the room is fantastic, and I am sure that much of it is symbolic, like the cat under the table and the clock on the piano. She is reflected in the mirror, and that too may be symbolic of what is real and what is not. The thing I find amazing about all of Holman Hunt's paintings are the tiny teeth of the people he paints. Look at this man, look - no wonder she has remorse. Her teeth aren't so bad, but they are still small. This is a morality painting. The silly bissom (so the painting tells us) has been struck by how empty and awful she is, how she is wrong and shouldn't be canoodling with a tiny toothed man, no matter how rich he is. There is obviously some how's-your-father-going on too, which is utterly forbidden. And still, the tiny-tooth-man plays on, because he is not to blame and anyway, he has got probably fifteen other mistresses and is very busy.

Pre-Raphaelite Bognor has one large hurdle to overcome. In order to be fully Pre-Raff, we need to dispise and dissasociate with all our previous Bognor movements to date, except the Bognor Renaissance. The movement we are exploring this week considers everything from Raphael onwards (painting in earnest about 1550) to be tosh, which means that our foray into the Left Bank, Surrealism, Angst and Impressionism cannot be tolerated and we need to throw them over board with a resounding splash, into the sea of disdain. The Renaissance had peaked and was winding down by the time Raphael came on the scene, so that can stay. But all the others - Pah! So now, out to the seafront with our easles and our fascination with bright colour and detail. And we will dress all our Bognor Fishermen and Souvenir Shop ladies in Medieval costumes and paint fabulous morality paintings which will wow everyone. And for some reason, all the characters in the paintings will have big teeth. How mysterious.

The Artist Is Also A Person. Extraordinary Revelation

2011-02-25T01:58:00.000-08:00

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for a look at some of my paintings
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for a look at the best known of my images, Jesus on the Tube
www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for the A Graceful Death exhibition, paintings from the end of life

A Graceful Death exhibition

ends today Friday 25 February

St Nicholas Church, Burnage, Manchester, M19 1PL

Closing Night Party 7-9pm

You are all very welcome

The Artist Is Also A Person. And Therefore Rather Mundane Most Of The Time

I am sitting in between the exhibition starting in Manchester, and the exhibition closing in Manchester, and wondering that if I am not very busy, a) do I exist and b) am I worth anything?

After I paint something, I don't quite know what to do next. So I put on an exhibition, get really busy, feel alive, and have all the usual panic about Will The Public Understand Me. Then the Opening Night begins, and someone somewhere usually likes something; I get my fancy clothes on and apply the makeup (which I love. Got some fabulous twinkly green eyeshadow) and make sure I have my heels on so I am over 6' tall, and play the part. I love meeting people at these openings. It is a tough way to get feedback, because people will tell me what they think. However, if I sit alone in my studio with my paintings then I can fool myself that they are fine and that I don't need to worry about silly things like progress.

If the painting goes to a client then I send a photo of the finished work first via email to check if it is OK. Most of the time it is, and sometimes it is not. By the time it gets delivered to the person who commissioned it, it has been tweaked into perfection. Or thereabouts.

Developing and adding to the A Graceful Death exhibition takes much time and energy. Painting commissions, portraits or angels or still lifes or whatever it is that I am asked to do, takes time. Organising talks to schools and other bodies takes time and so you can see, the Artist is a Busy Bee. There is also the family side of life, which is like running a whole separate business alongside the art, except that it takes priority. I have three large independant kiddies who need lots of attention and time, whose lives are frantically busy and worthwhile and immediate and falling apart and very exciting and they need whatever they need now or they will die...and can they have some money please because they are impoverished and only have enough to buy more beer and go to the cinema and night club and it's important. I also have a nice house that needs some vague attentions from time to time (washing, shopping, tidying, hoovering, doors putting back on) so I am on the go and happy most of the time, and much of the time longing for a day off.

Well blow me down if I don't have a day off right now.

I have gone away into hiding from Monday night till Friday morning. I am at a secret address and though most people who need to know, know where I am, I have the feeling that I am truly Not Available, and it is good. I have slept, I have bathed. I have eaten and I have texted people. I have gazed into space and I have tried to read my book on Plato only to find that I can't really be bothered. This is the kind of thing I tell my busy friends to do if they are overwhelmed, and now I am doing it. It is not that easy, I arrived here and immediately wanted to check my emails, and phone people and write things up and plan extraordinary projects, which was all rather useless because I needed to stop. And I was becoming rather inefficient anyway, due to tiredness.

Now it is Friday morning. I am like the rest of the human race. I needed time off and had to be forced to have it. I was in danger of wittering myself into a silly number of ridiculous projects all of my own making, simply to keep busy. Not being busy had become a problem that meant that I probably didn't exist. Well tosh to all that. I am grateful to have been allowed this down time in someone elses house, in someone elses space. I am just as brilliant as I was before I arrived, only now I am clean and fresh and rested and normal. And I will be very busy again soon, but I can charge at all my Stuff that I am doing, with a fresh gleam in my eye and a louder and more sane cry of The Hills Are Alive With The Sound Of Artists (aaaahhh-ha -ha-aaaah).

I am just about to drive back up to Manchester to Rev Rachel Mann's, for the last day of the A Graceful Death exhibition. We have the Closing Night Party tonight, from 7-9pm and I need to be present and sane and normal. Which I am now. Dribble.

So what I say now is Bring It On. I am rested and ready. Life is too short to drive oneself into the ground being tired and madly busy with no real plans anymore except to keep going in case you fizzle out in a little puddle of nothingness. I have had my tea, I have had my sandwich, I have much to do. In a careful, measured and efficient way. I have a long drive to Manchester now, and a long drive back with all the paintings tomorrow. Via Oxford where I collect the 14 Year Old Son who is staying with cousins there. Someone told me that one of his cousins has given him a Mohecan haircut. Oh. Glad I am rested so I can say the right things when I see it.

Art Has Temporarily Left Bognor. It Will Return Next Week.

2011-02-22T03:34:00.000-08:00

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for the Jesus on the Tube website, a very well known image
www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for the A Graceful Death exhibition, paintings from the end of life

The A Graceful Death Exhibition is now showing at St Nicholas Church in Burnage, Manchester. Please go to the www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com link for details, and an account of setting up and the Opening Night.

Art Has Got In A Car And Gone To Do Other Things Until Next Week

I, who seem to think that I am Bognor Regis Art, have gone away for ten days. I am proudly and nervously showing the A Graceful Death exhibition in Burnage in Manchester, and am giving that all my attention. I say Nervously, because the exhibition is so important, and it has all my heart in it. I want it to be received well. My friend the Rev Rachel Mann has offered her church in which to show the exhibition, and it is so important that her generosity and faith is rewarded. We have had the opening night, and we have hung the paintings so beautifully in Rachel's church, it is now up to you, the public to come and make of it what you will. The A Graceful Death exhibition has two smaller complimentary exhibitions running alongside it; I show a selection of Every Day Angels and a small Jesus on the Tube display. This is a good foil to the emotions that can be quite powerful when looking at the AGD paintings.

So I have got into a car and left the hub of Artistic Excellence that is Bognor Regis. All our Artistic Movements will have to run concurrently alongside each other without me. I wonder if we will have Surrealists clawing at the air with Angst, painting hat stands with flowery aprons, in open fields, with broad brushstrokes and living short hedonistic lives. That more or less covers all our Art Movements (Surrealism, Impressionism, Angst, the Left Bank) except the Bognor Regis Renaissance. That is too intellectual to worry itself about a ten day absence of its leader. I am not worried about coming back to Bognor and finding that all the Movements have merged and lost their focus. That is progress, a new Movement shall rise, if this is the case, from the ashes and we shall toddle along as we were before, being intense and a bit lazy and having a half day on Wednesday.

Being away from my studio has made me see how much I do get done. I am piling up the Angels commissions, (the little £65 6"x 4" angels painted to order to give love, strength, hope and so on to their owner) and I still have the glorious Rachel Mann's portrait to complete. I could not see her properly in my studio with the photos and drawings I have of her, and she is someone who needs to be seen properly, so Eileen Rafferty, photographer extraordinaire, has done a series of photos of her over the weekend for me. Eileen is photographing the A Graceful Death exhibition for a book she is writing on it. Her photos are very sensitive and perceptive. She is so empathetic that I never have to say why I want a particular painting or person photographed, Eileen just knows and always gets it just right. I will continue Rachel's portrait with excitement when I get back next week. To remind you, Rachel is being painted as the Rock Chick Angel of the North because that is what she is. A Rocking Musical Heavy Metal Vicar, and an Angel and living and working in the North. Absolutely.

Before I left for the long journey from Bognor to Burnage, I had to pack up for the 10 days and sort out the 14 Year Old Son. It is half term, which made it a bit easier. My stalwart, ever helpful, selfless and perfect cousins Maddy and Jules are having the darling gangly ravenous Boxing Boy for the half term. Maddy has three large ravenous gangly kiddies of her own, so Boxing Boy will gangle with them. Jules has the most exquisite little 6 year old daughter who so knows her mind that we are there simply to worship and do her bidding. Boxing Boy, like the rest of us, consider this an honour. The two days before the half term started, were covered by extremely busy Nursing Daughter Alexia, who studies by day at Brighton University, and works by night and over the weekend on the wards. I thought she may have a few moments unaccounted for during those two vital school days that I was in Manchester and The Boy had to go to school, so I gave her her brother to look after. He had to go from Brighton to Chichester to school and back, and stay in her teeny tiny weeny little fairy grotto with her. He is 6'2" and full of energy. He likes to kick footballs around while talking, he likes to box doors and throw cushions into the air and catch them with his feet, so not sure how it worked out, but both are still alive and I take comfort from that.

My team, the present A Graceful Death team for the Manchester exhibition are the following - the camera man, film maker and director Neill Blume and his camera man colleague Graham. Eileen Rafferty the Photographer, Costya my son who turned out to be a whizz flower arranger, and Alan who came to support and help and be magnificent on the opening night taking people around the exhibition. And Rachel, who gave us her church in which to exhibit and let all six of us stay in her home for three days while everyone was setting it up and sorting out the extraordinary amount of admin that this exhibition engenders. Rachel also gave us her time and showed endless patience and kindness to all of us as we raced around being busy, we are so busy we can't see the wood for the trees. Rachel is busy too, but graciously helped us whenever she could.

I did two interviews on BBC Radio Manchester that I will suggest you listen to to understand a bit more of what I am doing. The links are below

This is the Heather Stott interview below, I am 1 hour 4 minutes into it.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/p00drdj1/Heather_Stott_Whitworth_Art_Gallery_and_royal_wedding_souvenirs

This below is the Mike Shaft interview from 20.2.2011. I am 1 hour 10 minutes into it.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p001d7dq

So now I am having a bit of a quiet few days before the Closing Night Party on Friday 25 February 7-9pm. Then, as before, I will become Artist Extraordinaire, and Do My Stuff. On the Saturday, I will pack up the three exhibitions - A Graceful Death, the Every Day Angels and the Jesus on the Tube, and fit them somehow into my car with my dear son Costya who is coming back up to help. Then, having made the church as it was before I arrived, I will go. On the way home I will stop off in Oxford to pick up the 14 Year Old Gangly Boy from Jules, stay the night with them and on Sunday morning drive back to Bognor where I will get the Gangly One ready for school again the next morning. I, Antonia Rolls, will then go back to bed and stay there until further notice.

A Confessional Blog. What I Think About Music.

2011-02-14T16:52:00.000-08:00

Confession. Music Is A Bit Too Much For Me.

This is a confessional bog. I expect that how I feel about Music is OK and Normal though probably a bit Odd.

Music. A wonderful thing, a language that needs no words, a way to reach the soul. How can it be that we humans can manipulate sound so splendidly so as to create Music? People go potty about music. There are different kinds of music, like pebbles on the seashore, or snow flakes, each one is unique and magical. Some music is of course, ghastly, and that is a matter of personal opinion. This business of finding comradeship, understanding and harmony within a music is truly a wonder. Singing together brings people together. And we really bond with those who share the same tastes in music as us. We are astonished at how clever and sophisticated they are.

All cultures have music. All peoples sing and have rhythm. All nations dance. Music is an indicator of how appropriate you are in a certain group. If you like opera and you go on an outing with Hell's Angels you are going to find the going a bit tough. If you are a shy Bob Dylan fan with two left feet and dandruff, you are going to be able to pass a reasonable hour or two with a gloriously extrovert chief executive who speaks four languages and wears Saville Row and adores Bob Dylan above all others.

I don't really like to listen to music.

I get scared of music. I need to prepare myself to deal with it. This is my guilty secret. I find music very hard to cope with. I do not dislike music, I have favourite types and artists but I need to be sure of the music I listen to in case it upsets me. Maybe that is the problem. I am afraid to listen to music in case it upsets me. It moves me to feel unsafe and full of emotions that I am unable to control. I am afraid then, of the power in it to move me beyond what I am comfortable with. Is this all then? No, there is more. Let me think.

I do not suffer from depression, and I am an optimist. I am chatty and sociable and like everything to be tickety boo. I like jolly colours and fun patterns. I love wit and admire those who can make me laugh, more than words can say. I love food, light, lovely smells and fresh air. Flowers, fun, happiness and satisfaction. And quite possibly I am afraid of anything that tilts this Doris Day world of mine into a different position. Moves it, then, from a major to a minor key. And music can and does do this. I feel, when a piece of music is played in my hearing by Daughter, or friend, or passer by, as if I have no control over how I will feel and what it will do to me. I can be uplifted by new music too, and that is fine. I am so relieved and grateful to it for making me feel OK that it becomes my new favourite, and all is well. But what if I am listening to some music and I can't turn it off or leave the room? And it is making me feel strangely maudlin? My shoulders start to droop, my eyes start to gaze with a sad longing into the middle distance and I sigh. "What happened to the jolly creature that was talking so elegantly about the price of eggs a minute ago?" say those to whom I was talking. "Why, she has become a fey whisp of a Sad Thing. Let us abandon her and find another to entertain us." And I watch them go, sunk into a reverie that cannot break until someone takes the music off and puts on the Jolly Boys singing a Calypso.

It is well known amongst my family and friends and anyone that comes into my kitchen, that I love reggae. An upbeat beat, so to speak, where any sorrowful words wouldn't get to me at all amidst the fun rhythms. At most, I would feel a bit sympathetic, but no more. And the music in reggae doesn't make me feel suddenly awash with unfamiliar feelings of wistfulness, gloom, longing, the pain of the human condition and so on.

I have favourites that I can listen to - if I want to and the point is, I most often don't want to; I have favourites to sing along to, dance to, and feel safe with. Funnily enough, Verdi's Requiem and Carl Orff's Carmina Burana are two of them. Fancy finding them a bit of a sing along. And I adore Jussi Bjeorling but never listen to his tapes I have somewhere in the house. I like African music possibly because it can't make me sad, and I like the theme tune to The Third Man. All these and more are safe for me. I know them, there are no surprises. New music unnerves me. I don't know what to do with it, I am going into unfamilar territory and I am not prepared.

So what I do listen to is the Human Voice speaking on Radio 4, or Silence. I like Silence. I can fill the silence with all the thoughts in my head, and it feels like Relief. Today I sat in my studio, the window open and the sun shining and found that I was listening to the birds singing. It was lovely. I felt very wise and elderly and felt an affinity with all those old folks I used to think were so stuuu-pid for being so predictable and liking boring little birdies singing. Yawn. But today I was one of those old folk, and it felt good. At last, time had passed and I was on my way to being elderly and liking the birdies singing in the garden and I think now those youngsters who don't like listening to birdies singing in the garden are stuuu-pid themselves.

So, to sumarise. I do like music, but I am not very interested in it. I like the pieces I already know, because I am a scardey cat and don't like feeling vulerable with new stuff that may and mostly does, make me feel too emotional to continue. I listen to new stuff when I have nothing to worry about, and I am strong and it won't bite me. I prefer, as I have confessed, silence or the spoken word on Radio 4.

Finally, I am surrounded by family who are consumed by music. I watch and listen to them and marvel. My daughter thinks by sitting at the piano and just playing. Beautifully, and for hours. One of my sons, like all youngsters, can't live without his ipod and the other is able to teach himself all manner of pieces by ear from You Tube tutorial videos. My brothers are musical, my nephews and niece play endlessly, and me - I used to play the piano but stopped. It petered out. The passion they seem to have, the pleasure and inspiration they get, from music is truly wonderful. I think I get that level of passion from the visual world, from colour, painting, and shape. Maybe I can only do one passionate art form, and have no space for others. I know many artists, many writers, I know poets and thinkers - but I don't know any musicians. How amazing.

Perhaps I will end by saying that I love music, but I am not so interested in it. By choice, I would not pass the time with it. But when I do hear music I like I am thrilled, and then want to turn it off. But colour - wow. Rembrandt - double wow. Canaletto, Degas, Renaissance paintings, all those give me a constant thrill. Gosh. Though I did find a passionate love for the Jolly Boys and went up to see them sing. And I would love to set my A Graceful Death exhibition to Verdi's Requiem.

And funilly enough, I have inspired a love of reggae in my children. Amazing. Shhhh. Silence now.

Bognor Regis is Impressionist And Wistful

2011-02-10T07:06:00.000-08:00

Bognor Regis Is Impressionist And Sighing Deep Sighs

Its the wrong weather for Bognor Regis to be truly Impressionist, it is raining outside and is grey and low key. We Bognor Impressionists don't feel like going out and painting in the Open Air. Our Impressionist tendencies are waiting for better weather.

In Paris in the mid nineteenth century, a small group of Artists formed a sort-of association, thinking more or less the same things. Their main thought was that they did not want to follow the old established rules of painting and produce what was sociably acceptable. No no no. But they didn't go at it hammer and tongs and produce a cow in formaldehyde, they did something that was really outrageous. They painted out of doors. (Nooooo). Academy Art, the established stuff, was painted in a studio and generally showed figurative historic scenes in tightly, smoothly applied paint with rather dull colours. In short, it was conservative, uncontroversial, satisfactory, safe, dull and rather yawn inducing to our young Impressionists. The compositions of the Established Stuff were carefully planned so that you didn't get any nasty surprises (a table that jutted out of the corner of the painting at an angle, someone strolling into the scene at the top of the painting which meant that they were not paying attention and mucking it all up). Nudes were modest and in context (classical Greek mythology, demure studies with no real girly bits or if there were men, no real boy bits). The paintings also tended to be very grand and large.

This is where we in Bognor have something in common with the Impressionists. There isn't much classical art here, and we don't like the idea of Nudes with No Bits. We don't want to spend ages on following the rules of composition and content. We like a bit of slap dash. We also, when it is not raining, quite like a jaunt outside to paint a tree or a field or a passing cow. But wait, there is more.

This group of rather daring youngsters could not get the Academie des Beaux-Arts in Paris to accept any of their works. The Academie des Beaux-Arts was the place to exhibit. It held yearly shows where reputations were established, commissions procurred and a sigh of relief heaved deep in the bosom of the accepted Artist. The answer to this lack of success for our outdoor painting, free brush stroke using, pure colour selecting mavericks, was to establish a Salon des Refuses and let the public decide what they thought. 1874 saw, eventually, the first official Impressionist exhibition which was held in the studio of the photographer Felix Nadar. This painting following -

Impression (NOTE THAT WORD - ARE YOU SEEING WHERE THIS IS GOING?) Soleil Levant (Impression sunrise) by Claude Monet 1872

this painting above, caused a critic to write a casutic review of the exhibition with a curl of his lip and a single raised eyebrow, and call them Impressionists! That'll teach them, he chortled. Ha! Let them try and live a normal life now, the dirty blackguards. Pah!

Are we so dynamic? Yes we are. My dear Artist Friend in Middleton - Anne Winterbotham - doesn't give a fig for convention. She does her own thing and is out there, painting in lay byes and fields, in her garden or up a tree, capturing her own vision of nature. Anne has been a very fine illustrator and knows the ropes, but tends to do her own thing in her own way now, and would probably be quite short with the Bognor Academie des Beaux-Arts if they annoyed her.

Impressionist paintings were gloriously freely painted. The paint was applied swiftly and thickly, capturing movement, a moment in time, and the feeling we get as we look at a scene. They didn't like to use black or grey, and painted the shadows on a hot Summer day in deep dark blues, making the feeling of the painting so real. They painted landscape (not a popular subject) and still life (not popular either) and painted people walking in and out of the composition as it really was. Oh marvellous. Look again at the Monet above. Look at the blues and the greens and the oranges. Look how the paint swirls in free and confident lines, and how the impression of the sun rising over the water, with the boats, the harbour and the reflections in the water all strike at our feelings and we know what the artist is seeing. We can almost hear the spash of the water and we know a new day is beginning on the water front as the sun is rising.

L'Absinthe by Edgar Dagas

Degas despised the term Impressionist. I love how artists despise things they don't like. I despise creme caramel and jaffa cakes. I despise untidy bedrooms. But Degas was loyal to the group of artists called the Impressionists and is considered a sort of one, though don't call him one it to his face because he hates, loathes and despises the term and may hit you. Here, in the painting above, a drab actress, living a bit on the wild side, sits slumped in a tavern with a man to her left who doesn't look like an Academie des Beaux-Arts gentleman, and she has her feet splayed. Dreadful hussy. What is she drinking? Absinthe? Oh lordy lordy the woman is crack head. And most absurd - what are those goddamn tables doing poking about all jumbled up in the bottom left of the painting? This is considered a wonderful painting now, full of character and real life. We love how the tables are placed, it feels as if we have just walked in through the door and this is what we see. A snapshot. It was considered scandalous to the conventional artistic community. (Degas? Dreadful compositions. Bit of a Lout)

Well, on this rainy Bognor February afternoon, we Bognor Impressionists mean well. We want to get out there and paint in the open, we want to use wide sweeping brush strokes to paint the Chavs in the Chip Shop (all of whom we know and are our best friends). We long to paint Bognor Seaside with the sun reflecting in bright yellow and blue daubs of paint, and the Bognor Bird Man flying off the end of the pier like Icarus, painted in the far left of the picture. We want to sit on little fold up seats on the A259 and wave at the cars flying by as we capture them in wonderful careless paintstrokes of red and blue. But it is raining. Instead we will have to paint wistful impressions of the raindrops falling down our windows, and still lifes of the PG Tips boxes that litter our kitchens. We really want to be Impressionists but perhaps this Movement is too much for Bognor Regis in February.

Woman with a Parasole by Claude Monet

I suspect this is not a very likely Bognor scene, even in the height of the Summer. This is so beautiful. It has the blue shadows reflecting the blue of the sky, and the blue in the lady's dress. We know that she is wearing white but it is painted in blue - we get the impression of her standing in the long grass, the sun beating down and lo - is that my little 14 Year Old Boxing Boy walking casually towards her? Is this lady Me then? Oh I like to think so. What lovely Impressionistic clouds they are, in the hot blue sky. So here I am in my Bognor field somewhere, twirling my parasole and feeling very tall as the artist lies sneezing, low in the grass, in order to get me at this angle, and my 14 Year Old Son, resplendant in his new white fashionable sun hat, saunters up to me to ask what I have done with his boxing gloves and can he have a Macdonalds.

This Bognor Regis Impressionist Movement is a wistful one this week. It can't happen. It is only a dream. We will all just have to continue to paint huge religious, mythical and dull paintings in browns and dark blues and continue to fight against the Establishment in the Bognor Regis Academie des Beaux-Arts. When the sun starts shining, we can rebel with a Whoop into the fields with our paint boxes and absinthe, and paint Real Life as it presents itself to us. Meanwhile the Bognor Establishment, unlike the Parisian Artistic Establishment, will all give up being so stuffy, and join us in the chip shops for double fry ups and Life As It Really Is.

Surrealism And Bognor. Same Thing Really

2011-02-07T10:14:00.000-08:00

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for the most well known of my images of Jesus sitting being ignored on the tube train
www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for the A Graceful Death exhibition, paintings from the end of life

Bognor. (Surreal.)

Today we have recovered from our Angst. We are in a happier place, and it is possible that the Angst has pushed us ever so slightly over the edge, so that now we are living in an artistic world that revels in the strange juxtaposition of unrelated things and objects. Are we potty? Quite. We are doing Bognor Surrealism, which may explain a lot.

Surrealism was founded after the first world war by one Andre Breton. It was a philosophical movement dedicated to the expression of the unconscious through dreams, and inspired not only the visual arts but writing, film, music, thought and drama. Surrealism came out of and from the Dada Movement, an utterly splendid and furious nonsense reaction to the first world war. Too much rational thought and bourgeois values had caused the war, the Dadaists said, and so they produced Anti Art to make their point and to challenge the status quo. The Dadaist Artist, Marcel Duchamp, presented his work entitled "Fountain" in 1917 to the Society of Independent Artists and had it Rejected. Why? Because it was a urinal inscribed with the words"R. Mutt". Duchamp's most enigmatic and well known piece is a large glass Thing which he called "The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Batchelors, Even" which probably meant an awful lot to Dadaists. I could never work it out - but I did once stand for Student Union elections in about 1980 as a Dadaist with my friend Eddie Fisher. He got loads more votes than I did because I didn't know what Dada was, and he did, but I had a wonderful hat called the Dada Hat which made me feel very memorable indeed. It was probably the Hat everyone (both of them) voted for. I was completely useless. All very Dada really.

So here we are in Bognor, being Surreal. During our Surrealist phase, we wake up every morning having dreamed strange and powerful things (like last night I dreamed the Seven Times Table was a real entity and was sitting at my kitchen table) and we put it all down on paper, canvas, chip it out of stone or make it into an unintelligible song, frowning with concentration as we do so, refusing to let any convention, reason or conscious control hamper our masterpieces. We phone each other up and say, "Just made a fish with a pineapple for a head." "Whassit mean?" comes the reply. "Dunno. Got no conscious thoughts. Could be anything. Bye."

Here in Bognor we are always free of the conscious control of convention and reason. We have the Bognor Birdman competition - a Dada inspired Surrealist piece of Performance Art if ever there was one. Every year men (and sometimes women) dress as birds or hamburgers or something, and prepare to fly from the end of Bognor Pier. There is a prize for the one who manages to fly - in their flying machines that they spend the whole year making, or without - the furthest. Mostly, everyone just falls, with a shriek and an explosion of feathers, glue and plastic, off the end of the pier into the water below; but it goes on for two whole days and the Japanese love it. They come to film it every year.

Sigmund Freud's work on the subconscious, dreams and their meanings were central to the Surrealist Movement. Think Salvador Dali - he is the most famous example.

Salvador Dali, Persistence of Memory from 1931. Floppy clocks, eh?

No-one had ever made a science and a study of the subconscious or dreams before, and it was quite literally, revolutionary. And those of us who are now Bognor Surrealists, we do not need to just paint our uninhibited interpretation of our dreams. We can Automatic Write too. Surrealists were encouraged to not only put unrelated things, ideas and thoughts together to create new meanings, they were told that Automatic Writing was even better. Cover the page with a stream of consciousness, and boy - you are a Surrealist! That is what us Bognor Folk do of an evening when we are between the End of Work and the Start of Supper. "Oy, Chantelle, write me a Surrealist poem will you, while I cook the sausages? Mind you keep it free of any control exercised by reason, and for God's sake keep it outside all of that aesthetic and moral preoccupation stuff." "Righto. Done a stream of conscious shopping list, will that do?"

I am very, very tired at the moment. I suspect the whole reason behind the current Bognor Regis Surrealism Movement is for me to go to bed a lot and stay there. "Don't bother me!" I cry to my poor hungry and lonely children, "I'm doing research." And as long as they can hear deep, healthy, dream laden snores coming from the darkened room, they will know that Mummy truly is an Artist.

I have always loved this one. Rene Magritte's "Ceci n'est pas une pipe." from the Treachery (or Treason) of Images 1928-9. It isn't a pipe, it's an image of a pipe. Ha ha ha.

"Ceci n'est pas une loony" Maddy Pook, my darling cousin, Christmas day 2010. It's an image of a loony.