Glastonbury Town Hall

I was approached almost a year ago by a member of Glastonbury Town Council to design a mural to camouflage a big wall of soundproofing panels that had been installed in the main hall of the Glastonbury Town Hall and was seriously lacking in visual appeal.

Glastonbury is a very eclectic place and the community holds such a wide spectrum of people that i wasn’t too excited about having to design something that represented the whole town past and future, and would have to be approved by a group of people with vastly different taste.

photo by Vicki Steward of www.normalforglastonbury.co.uk

Fresh from my painting success in NZ where i’d learnt valuable skills in simply not taking on any projects that made me stressed whatsoever, i took the project very lightly and focussed intently on the part of the brief that asked me to match the colours of the curtains, rather than illustrate the spiritual and historical depth of the town and its people.

The curtains were peacock blue..

can you see the peacocks in my repeat design? This is the mock design that made it through 4 council meetings and 1 public vote. none of which i participated in. keeping stress minimum.

So i started on Decemeber 28th and here we are on January 21st “unveiling” the mural. it was spacious and welcoming and warm in the hall and i loved watching how the different parts of the Glastonbury community used the space.

This and all of the cycling and running i’ve been doing outside has absolutely without any doubt got me through this most brutal of British winters.

I feel honoured to have had the chance to do this and i hope this mural lives on and on inside this building, along with my reputation as a solid creative member of the Glastonbury community.

Warm kitchen, warm heart, cold fingers

Recently completed interior commission in a lovely converted farmhouse just outside Glastonbury.

A totally lovely and easy project from start to finish, working for an old college friend of mine who since we went to D+B raves in 2001 has come full-circle as a business man, back to his homeland with his family. Lovely .

The British winter decided to fall like a big grey blanket over the entire countryside on the first day of the painting and so my bike commute was seriously impacted and i definitely didn’t have the right gloves!

Every moment spent inside this kitchen standing on the heated concrete floor was 100% better than any minute of the bike commute across the frozen fog. And the end result, after 5 days of work was suprisingly good as i’m not used to working in these colours and i didnt feel that confident about it to begin with.

Lotus corner

Lovely lotus flower mural completed in Glastonbury town June 2022.

Half private commission and half publicly funded by The Glastonbury Mural Trail, as it is on a public footpath, this project was just such a joy to paint. The 1970’s rough pebbledash didnt break my heart or my brushes i somehow just really felt into the challenge and worked hard to get the mural completed in time to spend as much time on the Glastonbury Festival site as possible. ( before the crowds came).

Thanks so much to the community of Manor House Rd Glastonbury, Adam and Laskshmi for their ideas and support and to Glastonbury Town Council for making projects like this a possibility in our town now!

Tor Cottage renovation.

This is a little trip down mural memory lane. Here is me in a way-too familiar photo taken in July 2009 , painting the original Hibiscus and morning glory flowers on Tor Cottage , Wellhouse lane, Glastonbury.

Here i am below in photo taken in May 2015, in the first re-fix of the mural when some cracks formed in the wall of the house and i was called to repaint the flowers where new render had been applied.

And here we are in 2022, this time with scaffolding!(much safer than that photo taken in 2015 !).

The home owner was repainting the whole of his house, window frames and all, and so was the perfect opportunity for me to give the flowers a fresh coat. This time i used Thorndown paint which is manufactured locally and despite the label stating that it is wood paint, it works fantastically as a masonry paint and even bonded very well with this lime render.

Revisiting past projects, through photos, through memories, or like this through actually re painting something really draws attention to the journey of life. My mural journey has come on gradually and modestly for 12 years now and i’m happy that i’ve found a place where i don’t have to prove to anyone how fast, or clean, or effective my work is by busting my ass on every project, because i know it is. Taking my time with my brushes, taking it easy on myself with an many tea breaks or days off for parenting or exercise as necessary is totally cool and it doesn’t get the jobs done any slower.

Learning technical skills is one thing, learning how to make your skills sustainably relate to your life is another. Super grateful for all of my years of experience.

And super grateful to have been able to repaint this as a touching down project in my old/new life after 2.5 years in NewZealand. What a trip

ART SALE! everything must go.

moving back overseas. gulp. selling off everything and it actualy feels like a really positive thing!

Getting motivated to display and attempt to sell and promote art is so hard as its ALOT of work ontop of making the actual artwork BUT its amazing how motivational a flight is!

Obviously i’m going to miss this place, this yard, the beach, the weather. come over and say goodbye on Sat 19th Feb!! xxx

chorus box.

Here in New Zealand. The leading power provider Chorus, regularly support artists, via their local councils to enhance the look of these boxes. which their must be thousands of across the country!

https://www.chorus.co.nz/blog/cabinet-art-gallery

Via a competition hosted by the kind people at Creative Bay Of Plenty ( CBOP) i won the chance to get paid to paint a power box that was pretty much in the best spot ever. Directly across the road form the Mount Hot Pools and directly underneath Mt Maunganui itself. A tourist hotspot. Yes i was going to have to paint in the most public of places again. It felt like it had been a while. !

During the 2nd NZ wide lockdown , Aug-september 2021, i didn’t cope very well with being stuck with my whole family all of the time . This may sound harsh but hey, i’m not afriad to admit that i need my personal space. I need brain space, i need space to move without interruption on my yoga mat and i need space, after i’ve had all of that other space.. to actually get some work done in. So yeah my personal needs in terms of time and space are pretty high. Also this time around, unlike when we were pretty fresh in the country and had nothing to be locked down away from.. i had a fully functioning small business , all -wheels constantly turning to maintain a small amount of income type thing. Thats the thing with self employment is that if you take your foot off the gas now, in terms of promotion or paperwork or getting involved with potential projects in whatever way neccesary, then you find youself out of work in a few months time. This lockdown didnt seem to be too threatening, it felt like it was going to be brief, so i had no choice but to keep slogging away on this here computer applying for stuff, submitting designs, despite the fact that i had NO SPACE and my child was literally jumping on my head the entire time. Luckily it all came through and this design follwing the CBOP brief “Birds of Aoteraroa” , my interpretation of the colours of the Kereru or NZ Wood Pigeon has been brought to life!

This painting project was great, amazing, perfectly sized and timed to fit around the part-time job that i’d managed to aquire during lockdown too ( desperate to get away from family yes that’s me)

Jess Lowcher the photographer from CBOP came and took some shots of me whilst i was working and they worked a treat on social media i had people from all walks of my life here commenting on the projcect which was a really great feeling.

Keep New Zealand Beautiful. The Ebb and Flow

I was informed of this mural contest by a friend and was lucky enough to be in the right mental space at the right time to enter.. and get chosen!

So using a bunch of shapes that were current in my work at the time, and a gradient design that i have wanted to have a go at for a while now, i made this design that reflects how i feel about living so close to the ocean, but at the same time in a very commercial world where people generally don’t seem that connected to nature.

This wall is owned by some neighbours of mine who had already granted me permission to paint it. i was waiting for another lockdown to have something local and fun to do.. but as it seemed like that wasn’t on the cards ( famous last words!). i took my permission and presented it to Resene along with my design entitled “Circalunar Rhythym”. As a result i got paid to paint a cool new experimental design, on a smooth medium sized wall 50m from my front door. Life is good!

Here are some media articles published about the competition, and my mural.

https://www.knzb.org.nz/programmes/paint-new-zealand-beautiful/resene-nature-murals-competition/

https://www.habitatbyresene.co.nz/news-articles/growing-with-paint-first-nature-mural-unveiled/

https://sunlive.co.nz/news/274723-awardwinning-mural-unveiled-tauranga.html

I did choose to paint this late july/ august which in this end of the world is mid-winter.

While other mural artists were sitting tight untill october for warmer temperatures i went straight in on the dry days, which were still around 15 degrees. (i checked for humidity/ damp according to the reccommendations set by Resene.). Proving a good personal point that there really isn’t winter in Tauranga!

The blended shapes intop of the blended background were certainly a challenge and kept me up for a few nights . but that’s not an unusual part of the murallng process. i’ve been painting consistently enough over the past few years to really understand my process. Its a rollercoaster of emotions each and every time i’m painting a wall and so all i have to do is prepare for the rollercoaster as best as i can between projects.

Mainly this means not agreeing to more than 1 project a month. Knowing my limits is the most usefull step in being able to create solid boundaries around what to expect from myself.

I’m very grateful for companies like Resene who could choose to remain entirely industrial in their marketing but choose to actively support artists and openly accept that their products are also being used to enhance private and personal spaces and bring joy to all sorts of communities all over NZ.