Summer Magic

Summer rolls on here and on the art front July and August have been a bit of a roller coaster –days or even weeks with no bids and little interest on line and then lots of sales. Last week was especially good– with two big paintings selling on Artfinder.com to a lovely new home, and then one of my collectors coming to pick up two paintings she’d bought on line and buying another two for wedding presents as well. And I have three commissions which I confess will stretch me! It’s wonderful to be asked but concentrates my mind – as well as mustering all my painting skills - to try to empathise with what they have in mind. I can and will only do my best of course and experience has taught me that it usually works out well when I let the paint take over . . .

This lovely flurry of activity means that I don’t have as many paintings available as I usually do but this week I finished three and there are more in progress so if you are watching as you wait to choose one please stay with me – there will be more – the paint is flowing . . .

It’s a vision of perfect Summer in the garden outside my window as I write. Because it’s been quite a wet one the trees and grass are still a vibrant pageant of green. A young greater spotted woodpecker takes a chosen morsel from the feeder and carries it to the wooden frame of the swing chair where he wedges it in a crack and eats it at his leisure. There are also blue tits, sparrows, coal and great tits and chaffinches. The siskins have gone – they came late this year and stayed longer than usual though. The ponies’ summer fields are still green too, albeit the still growing grass is very short. As my neighbour’s flying sheep keep coming in to join them it’s just as well there’s plenty. Tiptoe has become an ace sheepdog when we get around to moving them back. As always a great relief when we get a chance to make hay. We’ve thankfully at last had three dry days and the mowed grass in the hay meadows will be turned twice more today before baling later in the afternoon. Owen and the team work in harmony through all the stages in a kind of glorious pastoral summer ballet. Great – before they wrap them I’ll go out with my camera and take lots of pics for lots of hay bale painting sessions to remind me of this lovely time through into the winter. I expect some of you are saying I shouldn’t count my hay bales until they’re wrapped – yes I know. Please keep your fingers and toes crossed too that the weather forecasts are right and it truly is set fair for the day!

Oh and last night I stayed up ‘til 1am watching the tennis at the Olympics and Andy Murray won Gold and the crowd was brilliantly good-natured, applauding both players as the superb players they are. More Summer magic . . .

All can be well with the world when everyone plays and works together in good heart.

love and light

Jenny