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art, artist, arts, brush strokes, canvas, Christian artist, create, east sussex, eye, gallery north, God, Hailsham, inspiration, oil painting, paint, painter, painting, portrait, Tony Blair
It’s been an odd weekend in places and today, it would seem, is no different.
Saturday was the opening of the local Open Exhibition at Gallery North in Hailsham (a little town of the south coast of England, for anyone reading this overseas), and I’d had two paintings selected to be included in the show.
Our boys had gone in first and had hurried from room to room looking for the pictures, while Michelle and I had tried to look more casually around the show. Secretly I guess I was doing exactly what the boys were doing, but trying to be more polite about it. I was itching to find out where they’d hung my pictures! Eventually there came the sound of young boys finding what they’d been looking for, so we politely elbowed past the crowd of folks with the glasses of white wine and tiny crackers and jogged upstairs to where the sound of small boys in a state of excitement (and amusement) was coming from.
There, in a room at the end of the hall facing us as we came up the stairs, was the painting of Tony Hawk, but strangely in a pose like he was worshiping, not pulling a trick upside down on the edge of a half-pipe like he should be. He was upside down. Next to him the other painting called ‘We’re full of stars’ was on it’s side and the little hand in the painting was reaching down to the larger one – it looked like God needed a hand up from a small child, not Him reaching down and out to us across space and time like He should be… that was kind of funny too.
Anyway it took seconds to fix the problem. I only hope that some well meaning person doesn’t think I’ve committed an act of vandalism and puts them back up the wrong way again!
Today was weird in another way. It’s been raining on and off all day today, so between hanging out washing and rapidly getting it back in again, I’ve been painting. That wasn’t that odd, just inconvenient. What was odd was that Tony Blair is apparently trending* on Twitter at the moment. Apparently he’s been giving leadership advice (positively Twilight Zone weird) at a conference and people have been Tweeting his advice and pithy quotes around the globe.
Now if you’re British, and have lived under the Tony Blair government, the idea of Tony giving leadership advice sounds bizarre at best, but to have him quoted globally for his sage-like wisdom is astonishing… here I sit in fact, astonished.
What’s even more bizarre, if that’s possible, is that his advice is really good. Honestly, I’ve read some of it! Which leads me to conclude, that we’re all imperfect and that most of us strive towards being a better person, but being imperfect doesn’t mean we haven’t got a voice.
I believe if we have wisdom, a good idea, something positive to add to society then we should. What we shouldn’t do is hold back because we feel inadequate or that somehow we are unworthy to be heard, or seen! Tony Blair is far from perfect, but that isn’t stopping him from blessing thousands of people (it would seem) with his advice on leadership. It’s good advice, it’s being passed on. People who don’t know him that well will be all the more blessed, those who don’t know him at all might be totally blessed and those of us who do know him might think “well there’s a turn up for the books, Tony Blair is actually a fount of useful advice after all”! Who knew?
So if you’ve got it, flaunt it. Your advice or inspiration may live on in someone else’s life long after you’ve gone, or moved house etc.
Here’s the latest update on the current project. It’s amazing the difference hair makes to a portrait. A couple of brushstrokes and transformation begins!
There’s at least another half to two thirds on the canvas left untouched to left of this image. It’s a kind of portrait in landscape, but the inspiration for the other half eludes me at present.
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter
Updated images. I’ve added some detail:
Here’s the whole canvas, but I’ve painted out the previous blue background ready for over-painting (sorry about the dodgy camera-phone quality).
