I fear God

Experimental, cut out of gold paper. Quite nice, and reasonably happy with this.

kings & queens

I have been wanting to do this 'poem' for a long time, and finally got round to it. I guess it would have been better with a bit more empty space all round, but I wanted to utilize a good piece of paper which was quite small.

You are free to choose

black & white

Not a lot to say about this one really. I'm moderately satisfied with it.

pen

I was interested in experimenting with cut out paper again. I didn't want the word PEN to be immediately recognizable, but on the other hand I wanted people to be able to work out what it says. Its ok.

The isle is full of noises

I am fairly pleased with this one. (The quote was used at the opening/closing of the Olympics, so it was 'in the air'!) The background was an ink wash with clingfilm dropped on while wet. The lettering was done in silver gouache, which I agree does not stand out very well, except for when you catch it in the right light - THEN it shouts at you! Exactly the effect I was aiming for.

the isle

This is a notverynice picture frame which I felt obliged to utilize. You see this kind of thing in the background of room settings in the Ikea catalogue.

Ethiopian proverb

This is a collaboration between me and my (then) three-year-old grandson. I thought it fitted the bill. The shapes of the letters were inspired by some of Margaret Morgan's work.

Housemoving card

An Englishman's home is his castle, isn't it?

Brummie

Lettering on teeshirt. Some of my students have been doing lettering on fabrics and I used this to demonstrate the use of a freezer paper stencil with fabric paint.
[For readers of my earlier posting where I wrote with white gloss paint on a black teeshirt, to see what happened, it didn't work. The colour has sunk into the fibres and none remains on the surface. I am left with an unpleasantly-paint-smelling teeshirt with no lettering. So that answers that!]

Comenius

28 x 20.5 A fairly pedestrian piece, with not a lot to recommend it. (Must do better!)

Martha Graham

24 x 21 What a wonderful lady Martha Graham must have been. Great words. This is certainly not my finest work - I will probably re-visit it at some point. It deserves it.

My haiku

22 x 9.2 I absolutely love this! Small, but (in my eyes) perfectly formed. My words. Mixed media. Nuf sed.

Boethius

25.3 x 21.2 Photocopied crinkled background. Would probably have worked better with better paper.

Only

25.6 x 12 Mixed media

The evil that men do

32.1 x 13.8 One of my first goes at doing the scrunched cling-film background.

Cricket

22.2 x 23.5 My Dad was always a cricket fan, and although I don't know the first thing about the game I remember as a child listening to the droning tones of John Arlott on the 'wireless' on hot summer afternoons. Although I hadn't the first clue as to what they were on about, I found the commentary strangely comforting and reassuring and didn't mind at all listening to it.

Cardinal Newman

20.9 x 29.7 This is one of my all-time favourite quotes, which all calligraphers everywhere should take to heart. We, as artists, are always super-self-critical about our work. If someone, somewhere, thinks what we are doing is rubbish there is going to be someone, somewhere else, who thinks its wonderful. You can't please all of the people all of the time. The most important person to please is YOU! When you have just completed a piece of work you should put it away out of sight and forget about it. Several months later, when you have forgotten all about it, it turns up amongst your stuff, you will be able to evaluate it dispassionately. Sometimes you will think, "What a duff piece of work" and chuck it. Other times you will think, "This is quite nice - did I do that?" Go with your gut feeling.