One of the highlights of my year is the Dumfries & Galloway artist’s open studio event, Spring Fling. It’s huge (86 studios this year) and covers a large geographical area, so they divide it into routes; we do a different route each year and this time chose the Green.
We saw a marvellous potter in Moniaive, missed one studio I particularly wanted to see (it closed early), and generally just enjoyed the odyssey. But we luxuriated most in Max Nowell’s garden:
it was a joy: wandering semi-aimlessly amongst flowers and trees, finding sculptures as we went. The header image is of one of his pieces hanging in the small woodland part of the garden, (can you imagine having a small woodland?!), if I had a few hundred quid, and a tree, I’d have bought it
We also saw a painter who rendered light beautifully, but my favourite was this note pinned to a noticeboard above her desk:
And, just to make the weekend even better, I popped into the polytunnel to water and found:
and we’ve had two whole weeks of sun!
Today we took my exhibition down – I can’t believe a month has passed! – and it’s now in boxes in the kitchen waiting for me to decide what to do with it. Nothing sold, but two comments in the visitor’s book made it (even more) worthwhile:
one read: Her interpretation of her world! Unusual, through the eyes of an artist!
The other: Love this! So many stories…
Apart from the usual shite (bickering factions), this has been a good week, and looks set to get even better as we are going on holiday, first with the children for a few days, then to the Outer Hebrides by ourselves. I have some kind of idea to post a daily holiday diary – but don’t hold your breath.
Eryl Gasper-Dick, still curious 
I like the artist’s note as well, it does read like poetry. And I’m pleased you got some lovely comments about your work…. now it’s time to think about the next exhibition.
Enjoy your holiday… it’d be nice to read your holiday journal, I bet you find lots of interesting things to photograph.
Sx
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It does read like poetry, I particularly like, ‘green is not green’ very Steinean.
Oh man, the next exhibition!
I probably won’t need to try hard to find lots of interesting things to photograph, so even if I’m too lazy to write anything I should be able to post a photo of the day or something like that. x
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But but – I hold my breath !
Travel safe, return well.
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Breathe! Dear Mago, suspire!
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Open studio tours are the best. You can see how the sausage gets made. I always feel like I’m intruding where I don’t belong but if they’re going to allow public access, I’m going to take advantage.
I Googled Outer Hebrides. You are very lucky.
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Yes, it’s the comments on work that are sometimes the most valuable. I can still remember the odd things that someone said about my “artistic” cavorting from years ago. And it’s often just a few words or one sentence. It doesn’t need an essay.
Well, I’ve read in reverse chronological order so now I know why you went to the Outer Hebrides. For one moment, from the title of the post, I thought you were going to tell us about one last infidelity before you got hitched 🙂
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Yes, comments are always worth taking note of, even when they are odd.
Hope you weren’t too disappointed!
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