Looking Forward to May and June

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No time to blog I have been taking advantage of early mornings and long evenings and for once - perfect weather - blue skies and scudding clouds. So much to catch up on.

This is the time of year when gardens are open via the National Garden Scheme - the N.G.S - so with the yellow book at hand I set off for Spitchwick Manor - nestled on the undulating edge of Dartmoor in wooded valleys. 

One of my ideas of heaven is a walled garden with greenhouses - Victorian greenhouses. I would happily live in a walled garden.

And at Spitchwick Manor the walled garden is tucked down into the landscape for protection from the elements of winter weather - strong prevailing tree bending winds and slashing, lashing, icy-cold rain. Consequently you will find the orchard is also tucked behind the granite walls - perfectly pruned old apple trees geometrically spaced within their own neat round islands of earth set in lawns of roughly mown, daisy strewn grass.

The walled garden in also a sunken garden on the side where the entrance is. From the outside you find the usual magical wooden door set within the wall and as you push it open are quite surprised to discover that stone steps descend. It makes perfect sense as it embeds itself into the ancient landscape once and for all time. As walled gardens go, this is on a miniature scale. Initially you look over the tops of the apple trees across the top of the walls towards the sea. And then you enter another world.

I love old gardens and all the things that go into the making of them. I don't know if this knife sharpener is still in use as most shears and spades are now stainless steel and as far as I know cannot be  sharpened. I may be wrong. This one is for sharpening plain steel tools, the kind that go rusty when left in the damp night air. All tools ought to be washed, dried, oiled and put in their own place - that is if you have a place to put them.

Storage - essential and also a place for returning swallows to nest. 

More storage - the potting shed - another essential for a well run garden and a place to wile away the hours. Robins also nest here.

I will make a bench like this for 'potting-on' on sunny days. I am planning my next garden, where-ever it may be, composing lists of reminders of details and aspects of things that I love to create. 
Once again a little heaven on earth.

 And Azaleas for perfect beauty and drifting evening fragrance.

Looking Forward and Back

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Some of the photos I have of my older pieces - images that in particular have proved so well liked by the people who buy my work - this is after all how I make my living - that I feel that I want to continue with them.

I used to make only one painting per idea - I am about to increase that to two - one for earrings and one for pendants and brooches. I need more pendants to send with orders to galleries to make their displays even though it is always earrings that seem to out sell everything. Personally I prefer brooches but I know that I am in a minority. That is how I began - making literally a fragment of a painting to wear.

No two pieces of jewellery ever have an identical image as I build up many layers and by doing so leave traces only that emerge or are softened into the background again and again as I add more colours or more shades and hues of one colour. It is a delicate and prolonged process - often 30 layers on a painting + silver, copper and gold leaf - or foils - they work very differently.

This brooch was an interpretation of a blend of impressions - the shifting turquoises of the sea - I am in Capri - and the horizon, a memory of a ceramic bowl of snowdrops from my childhood that evoke different things to different people - as in the universal power of abstract impressionism.

For me I see the silver columns of ancient Roman pillars catching sunlight fleetingly or perhaps moonlight in the present moment and their imprint as soft shadows from the past.

Immediately my mind takes off into a world of imagination. The snowdrops are no longer flowers, they are travellers by sea - Phoenician traders, refugees...

It is also an air of Japanese prints - anyway I love it and I will do a series of re-creations from the past and see where that takes me.

Also some larger wall pieces.

7th March 2019 - also World Book Day and more.

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I'm an Early Bird - I've always woken early. It's a time of day to be enjoyed. Peaceful and quiet down here in Devon. The Dawn Chorus is not yet in full swing so I have added a reminder of what is in store for us. Of course we probably don't have the time to sit and listen to the actual event so it is pretty amazing to have a recording at the click of a computer key. Sometimes I listen to this when I'm working away in my studio. It depends what I'm doing there. Some processes for me require silence, whilst others need something halfway between yet elevating, uplifting. For this a recording of The Dawn Chorus is perfect. I was hoping to add it HERE mmm - this may work. But it also has a post all of its own.
Meanwhile I am gathering together those reminders that all the promise of the future is already here. It's in all the little buds, tightly closed through the winter and now about to open. The future is always with us.

For other processes in my work I can happily listen to Audible where my Digital Library is filled with all sorts of unabridged books - fiction and non-fiction read by excellent readers. Currently reading - as in being read to - Les Miserables - unabridged - a real treat as I know I will probably not find that much time to actually read it myself. My imagination still takes flight and conjures up the set decoration, setting and characters in the books, so all is well.

Off to the Cabin/Summerhouse/Studio now to turn on the heating and take the chill off so that I can settle in to a day of work. Finishing off all my latest work, packing and sending off to my current Galleries. Adding more work to my Etsy Shop and my new website www.hilarybravo.co.uk

7th March - Thinking About The Dawn Chorus

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New Papier-Mâché Jewellery Website

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Wednesday 6th March - We have been working very hard - my lovely daughter has been busy building a new website for my papier-mâché jewellery.

our new website is here 

She has also been helping me to make the jewellery. It has been a wonderful time and I've hardly noticed the winter at all this year. Now the Spring is coming and new beginnings are on their way. We have great plans. She is heading back to London to work on a new film and work-wise the incredible connectivity of 

technology will enable us to continue to work together. 

The actual connectivity of the technology in the little wooden Summer House/Studio is a little iffy. Being on the very edge of the river can mean that it feels very much as if we are at sea in a storm on windy days. Also the wind blows the branches that can intermittently disrupt the internet. Though hey ho it's not really a problem. I like the fact that Mother Nature always has the last word. 

My son very generously moved all of my plants from my previous little courtyard garden to the river garden for which I am eternally grateful and now they are beginning to show new growth so soon the New Studio will be covered in Jasmine, Honeysuckle and Roses this summer.  The Agapanthus that we first found at Chelsea Flower Show and that spent three years on a roof garden in Camberwell has now found its natural home by the estuary. 

2019

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My own fascination with looking within and at details and fragments, seems to have naturally led to a  concentration on jewellery as a means of expression - a form that for the owner is then very personal and also portable, that invites and expresses perceptions and personality. 

I make little assemblages from found objects in various ways - more often as brooches as a more personal hobby but for my livelihood I paint - wherever I go and then I develop some images into work that I intend to cut up into my own fragments - to make into jewellery. 

Working this way, has always been a vehicle for imagination, a deeper look into other worlds, most importantly in regard to colour. It is about the relationships, the conversations if you like that occur as different colours, tones, shades, hues etc meet each other on the surface of the painting. There is music in the rhythms, they are the eternal rhythms of our lives. The older I become, the more interesting everything becomes and the more beautiful.

Above is a detail from a Monet painting - highlighted to I imagine somewhere between pigments and desire as they may have been.

I have not posted anything for the past year so now I'm attempting to catch up a bit.

This is the view from the top of Monte Solaro in Capri where high cliffs, wild flower, butterflies and bees meet the distant sea, clouds and sky.

This image also marked the start of a new collection of papier-mache jewellery that I am currently making with my daughter. We were thinking of stopping that range, however it is so very popular and has been for 30 years that we are going to continue with it. I love papier-mache - it has a wonderful history and I am delighted to be a part of it.

We are also developing a range of perspex jewellery - an original concept of ours and one about which we are very excited.

This is real life and all sorts of events insert themselves into our would be life so this is taking longer than we anticipated. We have researched and developed throughout the winter months and have solved all problems so far. We had thought that Easter 2019 would be the start date whereas now we are looking at the Summertime.

I have a new home and a new studio. Still in Topsham on the River Exe in South Devon U.K and still in amongst the Conservation Area where history is protected as I feel I am too. So I am happy to share little snippets of life on the river's edge.

November Onwards - 2017/18

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Through the Long Cold Lonely Winter

I am writing this in April, trying to recall moments of inspiration through the last few months. Not so easy as I am mostly looking ahead to the return of the swallows which should be any day now. British winters are not fun. We make the best of them by hibernating. It is no use - I prefer colour -

May - October

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What can I say? I have travelled through Spring and Summer and now Autumn is coming closer every day.

There has been the most beautiful full moon, during which time I seem to have little need of sleep. I wake very early and catch the world whilst it is sleeping.

I feel constantly peaceful and have little need of other people. Is this a good thing? It seems so to me. I have so many characters inside my imagination from the stories I write, I am never lonely.

I have seen many clear blue skies, listened to innumerable  dawn choruses, sat amongst the sand dunes and watched bees buzzing from flower to flower.

I have taken the colours from around my home this year and painted and made jewellery as is my way.

This year is all about my work.

I have watched the ebb and flow of the tides every day and taken photographs of the changing colours across the river.

I continue to take photographs, though now on my iphone - so much more exciting than my first Box Brownie camera.

I take my images over to RedBubble and make prints on acrylic blocks and canvases and wrap them around very boring white ceramic mugs. This one of compressed cardboard boxes that once contained fruit looks particularly good. I also make cushions there and cards.

Bella was very ill during the summer - she is now 12 and we thought that she was just slowing down as her age increased but no - she had a pyometra - and had 1 and a half kilos of puss and blood removed along with her womb. She was initially misdiagnosed as having arthritis and being excessively fat by the first vet who examined her. The second vet came to her rescue.

She is now like a 5 year old - ready for everything that live has to offer.

Whilst looking after Bella - I found my comfort zone with Jane Austin and Pride and Prejudice.

Sometimes the most inspiring of things show up when walking.

I was asked to make a 3 foot diameter papier mache tray. Traditional methods and hours of work.

 I love my cave of a kitchen.

 And my studio that overlooks the every-day opera of life on the street.

THE GARDEN

I have to take you to a garden.
It is essential that you tell our friends.

I have one lifetime only here.

There is a void and then a vision.
The summer rain is felt as music.

The water and the wind whisper through Eternity, a language that we dream of.

Above the mist, behind the storm, beneath the rain.
Together in a thousand moments.
A delicate symphony of light, like diamonds shine and play.

Shadows fall away. Beauty would be these and death sweet, not sad.

All an elaborate chain of life.
All an elaborate chain of love.

January, February and March - April 2017

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Where does all the time go? Spring is on her way and my resident Blackbird is singing as evening falls at the end of another very productive day.
But what happened in the dark days of Winter? For me a sort of semi-hibernation - at least lots of sleep, something I hardly ever do but it has been so beneficial. I kept thinking of all those bears tucked up for the duration. I think it does us a lot of good as we get older. I see it as giving time to the processes of renewal and rebuilding and to dreams, of course. Recently my dreams have been almost as good as seeing a great film, coherent and adventurous.

Workwise I have been adding a new venture - porcelain jewellery. I think I mentioned in another post that I discovered a wonderful group of people - mainly women, who love to pot. It just gets better as we get to know one another. I have been making two trays - slab built to hold my pieces in the kiln and hundreds of beads, earring, pendants, bracelets and brooches. These will be a limited edition as we say.

New Work

I have been working on a range of Silver jewellery with fragments of my paintings set under resin.

New Work

At the end of last summer I went down to the South of France with my daughter, to explore favourite haunts and to discover new ones. I took a lot of photographs and made quite a few paintings plus revised aspects of a story I am writing that is set along that coast. These are some pieces of jewellery that emerged from my time there. They really do echo the colours and movement of so many aspects of nature and culture.