THE TALL SHIPS AND ME

I caught my first glimpse of one of the participating vessels in this year's Tall Ships Race on the gloomy, damp morning of Tuesday 19th June.  The ship was the Dutch gaff-rigged ketch "Urania", and she was at anchor in Gulberwick bay as my brother Peter and I were on our way, through the Black Gaet, to Scalloway.  At our village of destination, we found another participant, the Bremen-registered "Esprit" (another ketch, of more recent build), and a very smart little ship she was. When we returned in the afternoon, she had been joined by the Dutch three-masted schooner "Eendracht".  Meanwhile, in Lerwick, the Norwegian ketches "Auno" and "Wyvern av Aalesund" had arrived, and another couple of small ships had arrived at Cullivoe, Yell.  Shetland's role in the 2011 Tall Ships race had begun to be played, and people were looking anxiously skyward, as well as seaward, to see if the weather was going to be kind.....

It was - briefly.  Next morning dawned bright and fair, with light winds, although there was a bit of cloud cover coming and going.  I sat at my window, enjoying a cup of tea with my sister Mary, who was one of the liaison officers for the Colombian barque "Gloria", watching her ship picking up the pilot off the Bressay Light and making her elegant way in towards the harbour.  Mary went off to perform her diplomatic duties, and I was left to try concentrating on doing a day's work.  Some hope!  I kept stopping to look seaward, as more and more of these beautiful ships approached.  The almost indefinably-rigged "Pelican of London", the Polish barquentine "Pogoria" and the Dutch topsail schooner "Gulden Leeuw" arrived during the morning, followed by the "Lord Nelson", "Dar Mlodziezy" and "Alexander von Humboldt" in the afternoon.  Other smaller, less easily identifiable, ships were also making their appearance.  That was a happy day for me, with my greedy eyes almost getting their fill from what was before them.

The next day, Thursday, was the first of three consecutive ones for which I'd booked a stall to sell my arty wares.  My brother Peter had agreed to help me transport my goods and display units down to the Toll Clock Centre in a car he had hired for his holiday here.  I am very grateful to him for his help, which speeded this process up, as well as saving me a taxi fare.  The wind was freshening from the north, although otherwise the weather was still quite pleasant, dry and bright.  Most of the participating tall ships had arrived by midday, although it was early evening before the Norwegian barque "Statsraad Lehmkuhl" arrived at her allocated berth at Shearer's Pier.  The sound of rock and roll music could be heard  from the stage at Holmsgarth.  Shetland had started to boogie, and my brother caught the ferry south that evening with the sounds of the party ringing in his ears.  The view of the harbour from the ferry would have been spectacular too.

I had arranged to leave my display units at the centre for the next couple of nights (at my own risk, of course), so that I only had my bags of cards and prints to transport back and forth each day.  I was glad of this facility as, with my brother gone, lugging all that stuff up and down my stairs each day would have been a pain - literally.  I had also arranged for my friends Lynne and Malcolm to look after the stall for a few hours on Friday, while I went out to Whiteness to pay my usual visit to my mother and see that she was OK for the weekend.  By evening the wind had risen to near gale force, from a northerly direction, although it was still dry and quite bright, and it bore the sound of the Levellers all over town, from the Holmsgarth stage, that evening.

Saturday dawned dry, and still reasonably bright, but the strong winds were becoming an issue.  With no improvement forecast for Sunday, the decision was made to postpone the departure of the ships (which had been previously scheduled for Sunday) until the following day when winds were expected to ease.  My last day at the Toll Clock Centre was a busy one, and by close of business, I had far exceeded my notional target figure for the three days takings - it had certainly been a worthwhile venture for me.  I had met many old friends, including one with whom I'd done business only online, and made many new ones.  I had added Slovenia to the list of European countries in which my artwork is owned.  As Captian Gabriel Perez of the Colobian barque "Gloria" was presented with one of my prints as a souvenir of his Lerwick visit, my artwork is now in every continent of the world!

I am grateful for the help of Jim Wilson of Allied Taxis in getting my display units and remaining stock of cards and prints back upstairs to my flat after my successful three days at the Toll Clock Centre.  There, on the news, on Saturday evening, I first heard of a shocking event which had taken place near Oslo, Norway, in which a gunman had gone on a killing spree of youngsters at an island camp......

That evening, lying in bed, I was listening to the gale-borne sound of Bjorn Again on the Holmsgarth stage.  This was interrupted, at midnight, by the explosions of the firework display, after which there was a brief pause before the ships' sirens began a symphony of their own.  Lerwick was still in party mode.

I had hoped to go for a walk around the harbour with my camera next day, but this notion was soon eliminated from my plans by the weather  - driving rain borne on a north-westerly gale.  There would be no point in taking a camera out of its case in such conditions, which only eased late in the day.  Sounds of music, presumably hastily-arranged gigs by local artistes (of whom there are many!) were still to be heard on the wind, as my sister Thelma and I went out to see our mother at Whiteness in the afternoon. She was well, although missing her summer visitors (first my sister Angela and her husband Nigel, then my brother) terribly.

I hate goodbyes too, and multiple departures are hard for me to take.  In the gloom of a leaden-skied Lerwick last Monday, I watched from my window as the first of the tall ships left the harbour, led out by our own "Swan", followed by the Dutch brig "Morgenster".  Over the next few hours, these beautiful vessels put me through the torture of the Parade of Sail.  Some of the ships won't be back - ever.  I understand that the green sails of the "Alexander von Humboldt" have graced their last Tall Ships event, as shortage of funds means that an essential refurbishment cannot take place, and she will have to be either sold or scrapped.

The last farewell was to my friends Lynne and Malcolm, to whom must go my last and most deeply-felt expression of gratitude.  I had a few lagers with them on Monday evening, and they departed on the Tuesday night ferry on the first leg of their journey back to Tyneside.  They had three of my paintings with them, and they had given up some of their own holiday time to look after my stall on the Friday while I attended to other essential matters elsewhere.

Now I look at the empty Lerwick quaysides, and wonder if they will be graced by such lovely ships again in my lifetime.  Who knows?  We Shetlanders certainly know how to organise and enjoy a good party, regardless of prevailing weather conditions.  It must surely happen again.

TALL SHIPS CARDS AND GICLEES!



Take a look at www.tait-gallery.co.uk/Product-Page-1.aspx and you will find there is a new range of four A6 greeting cards featuring my oil paintings of tall ships.  These, and many other products, will be on sale at my stall at the Toll Clock Centre during the Tall Ships visit from 21st July.  There are also a couple of new giclee prints available.

The cards were produced, to the usual high standard, by Digital Colour Services of Crediton, Devon.  I'm sure that David Cole will be grateful for the website plug  http://www.dcs-print.co.uk/.

As usual, I haven't had the best of luck with my choice of subject-matter.  Three of the ships featured on the cards were here for the last Tall Ships visit in 1999, but they aren't coming this year!  These are the Danish full-riggers "Georg Stage" and "Danmark", and the German schooner "Johann Smidt".  C'est la vie, as they say around the Esplanade of Lerwick.

If you happen to be in Lerwick for the nautically-themed fun and frolics from the 21st to the 24th July, please feel free to drop by and take a look at what's currently on offer at the Tait Gallery stall. The Toll Clock Centre is close by the Morrison Dock, where many of the ships will be berthed.  Come on - you know you want to!

SNOW AGAIN!

The white stuff has arrived, as it has been threatening to do since late on Tuesday, but the real drifting, dangerous, road-blocking snow held off until Friday evening. The predicted heavy snowfall hasn't really materialised, at least here in Lerwick, where a couple of inches have settled, but it's still a nuisance, and my sister Mary, who has been out investigating the private road up to our mother's house at Whiteness, tells me that there's about six inches to a foot of it there. Mother returns from her regular fortnight's respite care tomorrow afternoon, and the road will have to be cleared, as it was on two occasions last winter, before Graham Robinson's minibus can climb the "Brugarth Brae". A shovelling squad of sisters, brother-in-law, nephews and nieces has been organised for tomorrow morning, and I'm looking forward to the event, which will be fun.

My second pre-Christmas Toll Clock Centre stall took place on Thursday, after much dithering on my part as to whether I ought to set out for there, in the freezing conditions, with my six holdalls of goodies. In the end, I was glad I did, as I had a highly successful few hours there. Prints, both A3 and A4, packs of greeting cards and postcards were all flying off my table, and there seemed to be quite a bit of interest in my work, which was most gratifying. I also bagged a commission for another painting (a seascape) which I've subsequently begun work on.

I've done a little more work on the two "stock" works, mentioned in previous posts, although bad light and other matters have interfered with my easel time on these. Why is my painting operation like a cricket test match? Because both are often stopped by bad light, of course!

The new greeting cards arrived on Thursday while I was out at the stall, and they are excellent. I look forward to having some of these on display at next Thursday's effort, and I'll have to get them up on the website too (http://www.tait-gallery.co.uk/).

Almost on the spur of the moment, my sister Mary decided to make a quick trip out to Walls early on Tuesday evening , before the onset of the forecast wintry weather. She offered me the chance to come along, which I readily accepted, and our mother was surprised and pleased to see us walking through the foyer of the Wastview Centre just as she and the other residents were finishing their tea. It was a beautiful evening, and a near-full moon was lighting up the surface of Gruting, Bixter and Weisdale voes as we made our way back to Lerwick.

There were no problems with frost that evening (there was too much wind, for a start), but the council gritting squads are now working flat out to keep the highways open. And the cold spell looks set to continue, possibly until Christmas, although I really hope it doesn't. When I was a youngster, I used to love the snow, but my sledging days on the Houlland Hill at Sandwick are more than half-a-century into the past, and now I see the white stuff only as a menacing, slippery nuisance. It can't go soon enough for me. Enjoy your winter sports this week!

POSTAGE AND PACKING

The best news of the past two weeks came on Monday 4th October, when my client rang to tell me that he was pleased with the large seascape (at my second presentation) and that his cheque would be in the post later that week. I told him, when I had come down to earth again, that I would let the work dry for a few days, then get it in the post to him at the beginning of another week.

Here's where my family and my artwork come together, as the painting, at 47" x 39" x 2" deep, is too big for one person to safely handle in the wrapping process. My brother was up on holiday this week, and he agreed to help me with this delicate operation, which took place this last Tuesday afternoon. The packaging involved a couple of layers of bubble-wrap, outside of which were two sheets of 1" polystyrene sheeting (one each side), outside of which were another two layers of bubble-wrap. Then the cardboard outer protection went on, secured by copious quantities of parcel tape. I plastered "Fragile" stickers liberally over it, and attached my previously-prepared "Documents Enclosed" adhesive envelope. My brother reckoned the package was now well-nigh impregnable. I wasn't so sure, but it was difficult to tell how we could have reinforced it any more, so that's the way it went next morning. The post office counter assistant assured me that it would take 48 hours from Wednesday morning, but this turned out to be over-optimistic, as it took until Monday to arrive.

Work has been steady but slow on the commissioned painting of the Helford river in Cornwall. Calm water is always tricky to portray, and I won't be satisfied with the work until you feel you can dive into it for a swim! I've hardly touched the "stock" work of Gourdon harbour, but I'll be able to make better progress on it, and other works, now that the big job has finally been completed and despatched.

On the printing side. more greeting cards are on the way, and I've been replenishing my stock of giclee prints for my forthcoming stalls at the Toll Clock Centre. More of this in about a month's time. Very soon I'll have to turn my attention to decision-making about which magazines and newspapers I'm going to advertise in, in order to catch the eager eyes of the online Christmas shoppers. One tragic sales scenario which has yet to befall me is running out of stock - I'd sooner print too much than too little.

Here I am, preparing for another Christmas sales campaign, and it seems such a short time since the last one. According to the Met Office, the weather is to take on a rather Christmassy feel over the next few days. My sister Mary managed to get a flight out of strike-ridden France yesterday, after a few days holiday there. She was at Birmingham when I phoned her this morning, and she hopes to be back in Shetland on Tuesday morning. I fancy she'll find it a bit chilly after the Basque country. Winter draws on, I guess! Have a good week!

GREETING CARDS!

The latest product from the Tait Gallery is A5 (when folded ) greeting cards featuring my artwork. The cards are blank on the inside, making them like larger-than-usual notelets. They carry a short description on the back, and are available at £2.00 each, plus 50p postage, or £7.00 + £1.00 p & p per set of four.

They will be available through the website (http://www.tait-gallery.co.uk/) from Monday 6th September), or just drop me an email with your contact details (jim@tait-gallery.co.uk). I look forward to hearing from you!

PAIN, PAINT AND A SPECIAL PARTY

My lower back trouble returned with a vengeance this week, and this has had a predictably adverse effect on my enjoyment of life. My bed has ben transformed from a source of peace, rest and surrealist dreams into a symbol of fear, dread and discomfort. I hope the pain and stiffness goes as quickly as it appeared last Monday when I was picking some of the bumper crop of blackcurrants at Whiteness.

Work has gone on as usual, however. My client in Arbroath is delighted with his miniature of the SS "Clermiston", and his cheque arrived in the post, as promised. I have almost finished the eagle's eye view of the cruise ship, and the large seascape is nearing completion on the easel in the back room. I have resumed work on the painting of the ferry "St. Clair" (IV) off Girdleness lighthouse, a commission which has a November deadline, so I shelved it while the more urgent jobs got done.

I've ordered my first batch of greeting cards! I chose a firm, based in Devon, called DCS, who quoted me a very reasonable price for the job. I'll report on the quality thereof when I receive the cards, which are coming, complete with cellophane wrapping and envelopes, sometime soon - I hope.

Talking of greeting cards, my mother received a lot of these on Friday, when she reached the grand old age of 94. As many of her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren as could attend, did so at Brugarth early in the evening, to be fed with bannocks and sandwiches with various fillings, jam tarts, chocolate crispies, melting moments and a "Happy Birthday" sponge which my sister Thelma had baked and skilfully decorated for the occasion. My mother sat happily in the midst of the eating, tea-drinking and merry-making which always attend our bashes, and no doubt everyone was thinking the same thing that was going through my mind, which was that it was so good to have her still around. The place where she lives is so beautiful too, and I hate to think of a time, which will come all too soon, when Brugarth will no longer be the venue for such parties, and someone else will be living there. Mother's age and mobility issues will cause all this to happen in the not-too-distant future, and I'm torn between keeping this in my mind as a kind of defence, or dismissing the thought completely.

Enough! The present is enough to cope with! Have a good week.

RETAIL THERAPY

I have more clothes than will ever be on my back (or other bits), so, when I go on one of my occasional shopping sprees, with the associated emetic effect on my bank accounts, it is usually for non-sartorial items. The binge, in which I indulged my democratic right as a consumer (don't start me on the consumer society!), earlier this week, included the purchase of medical remedies, paper bags, maps, books on social media marketing and ink cartridges for my printer (rather an expensive item!).

The maps are utter self-indulgence for me - I just love browsing through them. I'm an artist, producing paintings, prints and all sorts of lovely things, but the only things that adorn the walls of my studio are maps, a calendar and a year planner (rather bare of events this year). The medical remedy is a supply of Jointease tablets, probably a palliative, but my joints always seem to feel stronger when I'm taking the stuff than when I'm not.

The other items are connected to the business. The ink cartridges are self-explanatory. The books on social media marketing are for study with regard to making my blog, website and artistic efforts more visible to the online public. The paper bags are for issuing to the public with their greeting card and postcard purchases from my stall at the Toll Clock Centre. In a way, this reflects my over-cautious mentality. Whenever I am confronted with a situation which I am uncertain how to deal with, I prowl around the outside of the problem for some time, before I take the plunge, metaphorically speaking, and tackle it, frequently with more disastrous results than if I'd just waded in as soon as I was aware of the issue! So it is for me with the greeting cards - I have the customer presentation issues all sorted before I've even designed a single card. It's odd - I know!

This frequently happens halfway through a job too, and it's true of the large painting which is progressing nicely on the easel in the back room, despite the fact that practically everything else seems more attractive, as a work option, than working on IT. Whenever I need to put in a painting session on the monster work, all of a sudden dish-washing, filing, cooking, cleaning and computer work seem to be things that I'd rather do!

This commitment aversion and over-cautiousness also explains the ridiculously low scoring rate with the opposite sex during the latter half of my life. I've lost all my IMPULSIVENESS! It is a true saying that faint heart never won fair lady, and, at some point during the 1980s my get-up-and-go got up and went, taking all my bollard-pulling power with it. Now, in my encroaching twilight years, I am left with only memories which are fast fading to sepia......

Enough of this morbid reflection, and back to the present - quick!

This week I finished the smallest commission I have undertaken to date - a tiny painting of the SS "Clermiston". I was able to get it into a large mail-lite envelope, along with its extra bubble-wrap and 1-inch polystyrene sheet as backing. I'll be posting it tomorrow morning, before I head out to Whiteness to prepare for my mother's homecoming from her latest two-week spell of respite care at the Wastview Centre in Walls. She'll be 94 on Friday, and my sisters are planning a family get-together for the occasion. I know that nothing pleases her more than having her family round her. However, I'm very happy to leave the planning to my siblings.

All the best to you and yours!

CARDS AND COPYRIGHTS

Two or three weeks ago, I mentioned my plan to produce greeting cards, featuring my artwork, to sell in the run-up to Christmas this year. I've taken this a couple of tentative stages further now, having saved a few images into a "cards" folder, using Photofiltre, which is an ideal package for this purpose. It has the advantage, over such sophisticated applications as Paint Shop Pro, that it's free, and it does all the clever things that I need it to, such as size reduction, cropping and adjustment of colour and brightness. I've searched the large number of paintings in my Tait Gallery folder, and cropped out parts of some of these images to use as card designs. I'm also hoping to have these cards available in the Products Database of the new all-singing, all-dancing website upgrade (which is still in the making), and I've emailed my web designer on that subject today.

Progress has been steady (how often have I said that in these posts!) on the painting commissions, and I've just about finished the smallest of these, the tiny picture of the SS "Clermiston", on which my client's grandfather served as crewman. I probably won't display it here, or in the website gallery, simply because of its diminutive size and odd shape.

The subject of the big canvas, taking shape quite nicely on the easel in the "back studio", will regrettably not feature on website or blog either when it is finished, for a different reason entirely. It is because I am closely following a painting by another artist (who lived about 200 years ago), in this work, and I fear reprisals in the form of nasty letters from copyright lawyers. In fact the same could apply to the third commissioned work, which is an eagle's eye view of a certain cruise ship. The photograph, on which I am relying for my details, could only have been taken from an eagle or an aircraft (probably the latter!), and could well form part of the cruise ship operator's advertising copy.

You can't be too careful these days. Have a nice week!

P.S. My web designer thinks the cards are an excellent idea for an item for sale on the website, both singly and in sets. Now all I've got to do is produce them!

DONNER UND BLITZEN!

Early this morning, I awoke to the sound of thunder and torrential rain. My first thought was one of satisfaction that the plug plants, which I had set into my mother's front border last week, wouldn't need watering for a few days. Two weeks ago, any such horticultural thoughts would never have entered my head. By the time I had come out of my bath at about seven o'clock, the sun was attempting to break through the low cloud, and the kerbstones on the street outside were beginning to dry up.

I had decided on a walk to the Co-op again this morning, to take the air, stretch the legs and lay in a few of life's essentials. I was passing the nearby Morrison Dock, when I was amused to see the German flag flying from the foremast of one of the local whitefish trawlers, no doubt in response to the English one draped from one of the windows of the "Bibby Blockofbedsits" at the other side of the dock. Nothing like a good wind-up, eh? At the Co-op, several people asked me if I'd be watching the match this afternoon, to which I responded, in each case, in the negative. My lack of interest in the "beautiful game" must be the cause of great disappointment to so many people for whom it appears to be so important. In fact, the only World Cup fitba' I have seen has been on the pub tellies on the three occasions when I have been in such establishments since the tournament started. One of these visits was on Wednesday, in response to a phone call from an old friend who had come up for the Hamefarin. I had more than my usual quota of lager on that occasion, and I wasn't feeling too clever on Thursday morning.

It's been an odd couple of weeks really. I have had a power cut (while my computer and tumble dryer were both in operation - fortunately with no visibly adverse effects), a leaky boiler (which had to be replaced), a few raised glasses, and a few art sales too. And, on Tuesday, my sister Thelma took me on a tour of the south mainland of Shetland, an area of my native islands with which I am only partly familiar. I was at the Voe, Quendale Mill and the now ruinous Quendale farmhouse, Garths Ness (where the "Braer" was lost in 1993), Vanlop and Ireland (sic!), where I was up at a chapel I didn't know existed until a couple of weeks ago. I had never been to any of these places before, and there were many others that I had not been to for many a long year. One of these was the Sumburgh Hotel, where we had an excellent bar lunch and met a few more old Hamefarin friends. I had a lot of photographs to save onto my hard drive that evening.

And the artwork? It's been progressing steadily throughout. I have a new commission of a cruise ship, I'm in negotiations about another fishing boat painting, and work has continued apace on the others. I now feel the need to make more haste with the large 50 x 40 inch sailing ship work, as I promised to have this completed by early August, although I lost three weeks at the start of this project to a canvas supply problem, and I know my client would rather wait a little longer than have the quality of the work compromised.

I have been considering, since last Christmas, getting greeting cards printed, and I have spent a bit of recent time looking into possibilities with regard to this. My two new cardboard display units for these arrived this week. Guess what? - they're self-assembly, something at which I do NOT excel. At least I've got until November to get them finished!

Have a happy and successful week!