Artist's Block, again!

Today I've been suffering from the ancient and annoyingly resurfacing problem of artist's block.... I think in this case I need a change of scenery to get my creative mind ticking over again. I've spent three consecutive days in Enfield, so I guess this could be contributing to the problem. Anyhow, I usually get like this when I've got too much on my mind. I think tommorrow I'll go for a coffee and a think....

I did however make a 'get well soon' card for a friend....

Finished...

Updates...

These are a couple of photo's of the inside of the below photo album. It's drying as I type, which is always a stressful time for me. I tried something a bit different with this album. On the end paper as you open the book is the first illustration. On the other side I've done an 'edition number.' I've also made the flowery paper upside down at the back of the album as well as the edition number, so that it functions from front to back and back to front.

This week, I've been a very disappointed that I am not able to do a evening book binding course at LCC, because of my part time job. I really wanted to take my skills to the next level, so that my practical making skills could match my challenging creative ideas. However, I'm going to see if I can find another course and make a huge effort to get out of the day job. But for now, I guess it was not ment to be and I'll have channel my artistic energy into another area. For the next month, I'll be putting in some more hours at work, so I'm going to have to be much more pro-active with my limited 'days off.'

I'll be 25 in about 6 weeks, and I really think I need to start making some life changing decisions. I want to travel, learn more and dedicate everyday I can to art and creative practices. I just need to figure out how I can practically do this. I have so many ideas and started projects that I wish I could devote more time to, it can be very frustrating. I have been researching opportunities for a while now and I haven't found anything that has really made me want to up-sticks and leave London behind....yet. I just can't but think that if I want to travel or work abroad, then there is no better time to do it, when I don't have any committments or anything holding me back. I guess it's just a matter of time and something will eventually come a long to whisk me away into another way of life.....

.....On a lighter note, the weather in London has been lovely, I hope that it lasts into next week. Also, I'll hopefully being going on holiday to Italy this August, which will be nice as I haven't visited the 'homeland' for three years.

....and by the way,

I'm now officially a member of the Society of Bookbinders...

work in progress....

sketchbook experiments...

....with drawing, stitching and watercolour.

.....detail of stitched moon.

another sketchbook experimentation...

a page from my sketchbook....

'A Rose Tattoo' at the National Theatre....

....My Review:


Last night me and Will went to see 'A Rose Tattoo' at the National Theatre. Although it was a really long production (nearly 3 hours), I really enjoyed it. The staging was simple but effective and seamlessly supported the choreography of the performance. It is always difficult to hold the audience's attention for the duration of such a lengthy play, and I do feel that it could have been edited to make the play as a whole much more punchy and flowing. Some of the scenes in the second act were painfully long, the lengthy dialogues between characters made it difficult on concentrate at times. I also had an issue with some of the accents, especially the daughter, Rosa delle Rose, which sounded neither Italian nor American. It begun to slightly annoy me. Unfortunately, I can not help be critical of the Italian elements of the play, because of being Italian myself! However, I loved the true Italian characters, Serafena (Wannamaker) and Assunta, Alvaro. The constant switches between talking American and Italian were really convincing, Some of the characters even reminded me people in my extended Italian family. Zoe Wannamaker was amazing, she really gave a passionate performance, and I couldn't help but think that she must be knackered when she gets home at night! I think that it is definitely worth watching...

Dominic Cavendish reviews The Rose Tattoo at the National Theatre for The Telegraph
(I think he reviews the play fairly):

"For Serefina delle Rose, the grieving dress-maker widow in Tennessee Williams's 1950 play, however, time comes to a complete standstill: there is no period of mourning long enough to do justice to her deceased husband, a truck driver who was a pillar of the local Sicilian community - sometimes for illicit reasons - and a stallion in the bedroom.

Rhapsodising about the rose tattoo on his chest, Serefina determines that she will never give her heart to another man - and insists that her daughter, Rosa, remains chaste too, practically locking her away for three years. In this gesture of excessive idolisation, Williams raises the spectre, so common in his plays, of a life lived in the spirit of dangerous self-denial and delusion.

With Serefina's fervent declaration "I know what love-making is - I am satisfied just to remember" the scene is set for a slow-gathering rebellion - both by her offspring, and her own repressed passions.

It's a mark of just how great an actress Zoe Wanamaker is that she negotiates the play's uneasy mixture of laughter and tears, absurdity and poignancy without showing the slightest strain - the force-field of her personality holds the contradictions in place.

Witness the way she draws rich comedy from Serefina's growling, gesticulating exchanges with two local female gossips who end up being shooed out of the house for their retaliatory vulgarity and coarse insinuation about her late husband. Yet all the while, Wanamaker's frowns and scowls, the tremble in her voice, expresses the anguish that their loose talk is causing.

Again, later, there's envy and reproach packed into Serefina's contemptuous treatment of the bashful young sailor (Andrew Langtree) who comes courting Rosa (Susannah Fielding) - but, as she sizes up the outsider from behind, Wanamaker packs perfect comic timing into the matriarch's involuntary admiring remark - 'Why do they make these navy pants so tight?'

Wanamaker, moving from confident womanhood, through a passage of ignominy as the local laughing-stock, before finally reviving in the redemptive, hunky presence of Darrell D'Silva's Alvaro, is the imperative reason to see this £10 Travelex production. Most of the other characterisations are broader than the Mississippi, teetering on caricature.

Of the many players contending with insubstantial parts, one’s heart finally goes out most to the black goat that’s dragged across the stage, around the edges of Mark Thompson’s revolving timberframe home, to add a bit of rustic colour. Life’s too short for such transient buffoonery, even for a cloven-hoofed mammal."

Work in Progress

There is nothing like a bit of inner turmoil to get the creative juices flowing.... This evening I've been on creative fire, I hope that it lasts and I can get this new project well under way! I've been doing a lot of research today and sketching some ideas that I can start to build on. I don't want to give away too much at this stage, but here are a few photo's, of my latest big artistic idea.....