Home again

Well Dungie worked her magic and we're back home feeling refreshed, it's such a shame we have to come home via the M25, all those lorries and so much traffic, after spending a few days in 'the land that time forgot' it's a bit of a shock!



This is what they do best there, we had a wonderful fish supper on Monday, I had pan fried whole plaice at the Pilot pub, amazing!



And this is the relaxing way to do it.



And this is where you could live if you have a spare £250,000, I wish!



And this is what gives light to an otherwise black piece of land once it gets dark.

I don't know why we love it, but it always brings us peace and quiet in a sometimes mad world.

But as with everything else these days, nothing is sacred. There are proposals to remove huge amounts of shingle from the beach to protect the power station, there will be up to 50 lorries a day from October to March for 12 years on this wonderful peaceful place, if the powers that be have their way.

Chilling out

Dungeness, an unlikely place for R&R I suppose but we love it and come here often when in need of a wind down.

Just a few pics while on quick internet connection.





Bit cold and scary up there.



Alas poor fish.

Good to be back

Nice surprise and Dungeness

Today my friend Shirley and I went to the Guildford Institute in Surrey to make the final arrangements for a 3 week exhibition we're having there. When we walked into reception I caught sight of some paperwork behind the desk that had my painting on it. After enquiring why, from the receptionist, she smiled and said "Oh haven't you seen it?" And it turned out to be their Autumn event and course catalogue. I was really pleased as this was a first, but then I looked at the credit inside, only to find my fellow exhibitor's name and misspelled too........ Oh well it still looks nice.

So if any one's in the area do drop in, they do a great lunch there and Guildford's a pretty good town for shopping.



The weekend before last we went to the amazing Dugeness Spit in Kent. To those of you who don't know it, its a shingle area of land that's unique in Europe and is the nearest thing we have to a desert in Britain. It's growing at the amazing rate of 8' per year.

It's definitely one of those places you either love or hate. For us it was love at first sight.

Now this may sound strange when the area is bleak with nothing but huts and ships and fishing paraphernalia as far as the eye can see.



With a power station at the end of the road.



But it's this very bleakness that has drawn people to live here, some of whom have embraced the stark beauty of the place and used it to fuel their artistic imaginations.



The little white hut with the bunting is an amazing studio for displaying this artist's work as is his front garden.



What a great way for beach rubbish to end up.



And this is the artist Derek Jarman's cottage.



And some of his amazing sculptures.



Us on the beach being blown around by 40mph gusty winds.



With all the decaying fishing equipment on the beach there were plenty of wonderful textures to be had.







I have no idea what this is, but it made me want to sketh it.



On the third day of our stay it rained quite hard on and off and the clouds were changing all the time so I stayed put in my cosy mobile studio and tried to capture the bleakness of the place.



We were so impressed with the quiet of the place and the lovely people that live there, so tolerant of visitors poring over their landscape, that we're going back up on our next trip, so hopefully the weather will be kind and we can find some more inspirational ideas for our artwork.