Gerhard Mantz

I love the luminosity in these images. His website is great too

My Huger Foote book arrived last week it is fantastic, a real inspiration.

Bill Beckley

Wonderful ethereal images from Bill Beckley, I have found the recent posting on the Miami Basel fair by The Year in Pictures a rich seam to mine

The view from here....York

Views of York, they are a little dark because I went for a walk as the sun rose.

Top left is a lovely tea room on Stonegate, It was originally called Taylor's but is now called Little Betty's after the sister ship at the end of the road. It is much nicer than the main tea shop, it is a jumble of higgeldy piggeldy rooms with open fires and uneven floors. It has a fabulous array of cream cakes and cafetieres of all the coffee it sells down stairs The pots of tea are made with loose teas and come with a tea strainer. All in all a delight, My youngest sister worked here for a few years before deciding to move to London, she tripped up the stairs more than once and she still has the scars to show for it. When I suggested we went to Betty's for breakfast she said she would rather chew her own arm off, so I guess she does not have good memories of the place!

Top right is part of the amazing Scott's the butcher which has unbelievably closed down.

Bottom left is the church where I was married! opposite Betty's

Bottom right, a beautiful little place with such a sad story, it was the house of Margaret Clitherow, read more here. It is now a place of quiet contemplation

York is an unusual city, in that it has grown around the Minster rather than the river. If you look from the bridges the city appears to turn its back on the river which makes riverside walks very difficult, if not impossible in some places. This I suspect is because the river floods A LOT! even so it is a shame because early in the morning it looks lovely

Above are some of the historic buildings, the top left is a detail of the place that housed my parents restaurant for over eight years.

Above are views of Stonegate and The Shambles. All the streets are called Gates, my absolute favourite is Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate a tiny little thoroughfare just off the Shambles

Museum gardens as the sun rose.

Betty's

Betty's windows

York Minster, can be seen from almost everywhere in York, it is an amazingly imposing building, yet manages to look very beautiful from all angles I have been lucky enough to go to midnight mass here more than once, it has it's own choir school so the music is Divine.

The idea was that we would drive up Saturday morning, have a leisurely walk around and then have an early pub meal and a few pints before bed time.
The reality was that mother had suggested we meet up with some relatives from the other side of the Pennines, she then stressed for TWO effing hours because she thought we would be late, just because we stopped for breakfast. Sister 1 took this to mean that she had to drive extra quick and in the end we got to York before they did. Of course now we had to have lunch, not easy on the biggest shopping day of the year. We settled down in a rather impersonal bar and had a long and animated chat. We checked into the hideously expensive hotel. The rooms were tiny and over heated. We then exchanged presents before waving them goodbye. Sister 2 lives in a village just outside York, sadly she lives in such utter squalor she refuses to let anyone visit let alone stay. This means that when we visit we end up paying a fortune, as hotels are obviously expensive in York, but this cuts little ice with her. Because of this I asked if we could just have a bar meal for dinner, but God only knows what went through my mothers head but she decided we should eat here,
My mother does this all the bloody time, she then martyrs herself by insisting she will pay, but when we got the bill I could have wept. It was so bad we had to divide it into four, the food tried too hard, the service was ad hoc, but what I resented the most was the complete lack of ambiance. To cap it all sister 2's daughter was her usual teenage moody self, she sat texting her boyfriend (psycho gun toting teenager from Finland, as found via some dodgy Internet chat room) She then said the food was rubbish and went home before the meal was over, it transpired an hour before we ate, she bought a bag of 12 donuts and ate 11 of them giving one to Daisy and Kitty to share. I was so angry I could not sleep, well that and the heat and the noise in the hotel.
Sunday morning I had an hour to myself and wandered around taking photographs. Daisy and Kitty then took it upon themselves to fleece me for every penny they could before blaming me for all the ills of their upbringing. The cherry on top of my utterly crap weekend was sister 2 sulking because I did not buy her anything for Christmas. In fact I bought her vile daughter vouchers, but because we were tied up for lunch I could not collect them until Sunday, and since she had asked for a present I decided she could go without. how rude..
Tey next time I want to fritter away £300 I am going to Selfridges! at least I get to enjoy it.

P.S Did not get the job, feeling even more pissed off.

The view from here

photo from here

I am snowed under, Two weeks ago I was twiddling my thumbs and so thought I might paint. I opened my box of watercolours only to see they were rather depleted. I ordered some more which arrived last week at about the same time as 150 folders of students work needed assessing. At the same time 45 students sat their mock exam. Now just to add the cherry to my iced cup cake of a work load I have an interview. Which normally would not trouble me, I have folios of my work and students work. I can rustle up a power point in a couple of hours, but no oh lucky, lucky me I have to teach a lesson to 17 year 9 students. Simple topic? No, I was told that the students had studied cubist portraits and they were now about to move towards a sculpture project looking at the work of Naum Gabo.

Oh easy peasy lemon squeezy then. I love the work of Naum Gabo especially his mono prints, I recently saw a lovely sculpture of his at Kettles Yard. But no, I will have to take a walk out of my comfort zone and try to get the students to make small card maquette's. This very moment I have 20 students doing a trial run at the project, it is being slowly butchered and I hold out little hope for a successful outcome but we shall see.

Why do I humiliate myself like this?

To make matters worse the interview is on a Monday so it will ruin my weekend which I am spending in York. The sprinkles on top of my cherry, on top of my iced cup cake!

Oh and I have nothing to wear, seriously no suit, nothing.

Huger Foote

Huger Foote has always had a big influence on my photography, I can only find examples of his work on The Hamiltons Gallery website

The image top right is a particular favourite, I love the saturation of colour, and the rather surreal view point. I found one of his images whilst sorting the files that fell off the shelves last week. This has been one of the benefits of last weeks trauma, raking through piles of old resources and having a really good clear out.

So finally I have ordered the book from Amazon.

If you have a spare hour and a half watch this on BBCi player, the cinematography is just stunning, particularly the parts filmed through glass. And as for lifestyle envy, have you ever seen such an amazing police station, almost worth getting arrested just to look at the artwork!

I also watched Waitress on DVD at the weekend, what a depressing film, I know it is like a fairy tale but it left me with a very heavy heart.

The view from here

Ivanov was brilliant, I thought it would be a bit 'dry' but Tom Stoppard has worked a miracle, plus the cast were so good. We were very high up which I love as I am so long sighted, but the draw back is you tend not to see the expressions on their faces. Our seats were not seats more doll sized upholstered benches. They were in opposite corners of the balcony so although we were not sat together, we both loved sitting in rather splendid isolation!

We will be back,

I have not been to the theatre for years, funnily enough it was at tThe Wyndhams to see a performance of Art. Emin is not a big fan, but as Daisy got a taste for it during her GCSE and now she is studying it at A Level I have decided to go and see more. I had mistakenly assumed tickets would be prohibitively expensive and for many theatres they are but The Donmar Wyndhams as well as The National Theater all have cheap seats for around £10, which if Fridays experience is to go by is a bargain.

The draw back is unlike the cinema, you cannot wait for the reviews as most seats have sold by then, instead you have to take pot luck and hope it is good. So I have now bought tickets for The Dolls House in May! which does not sit easily with my rather impulsive nature but it makes for a more varied social life.

I am currently totally in love with the BBC production of Little Dorrit which you can see in bite sized chunks on You Tube or via BBCi player. In particular the sound track is the best I have heard since The Piano.

Butter would not melt

So it is 7am Sunday morning, Emin has already woken me up, I am obsessive about my sleep as I have to get up so early in the week, a couple of extra hours in bed at the weekend is all I ask but I never ever get it.
So I tried to go back to sleep, only for spawn of the devil to reek havoc, in the end I give up and get up. Unbeknownst to me she has been snapping away with my camera.



As I load up the images today I find this little self portrait. Do not be deceived she was WIDE AWAKE when she took this, both she and Kitty just love nothing better than to snap away at themselves for hours on end, both of them are quite the little actresses as this just proves.