A New Place

ON THE ROAD OF MY NAME, a motley band of travelling misfits vagabond their way to Another Place...

And thus you enter my new website! I have kept a rather dusty web-place for some years now, which although pleasingly rooty and interesting, was not at all easy to update and lost in the grand job that internet housekeeping has become, it has not been tidied for years! So I decided to take action, and build myself a new one - this time, super-simple, no faffery or frippery, just a good online portfolio collection of all my creations, where I can easily slot in new works as they are created. This website should work smoothly on all the varying whatsits that people might choose to use to look through the veil, and be a good window to all that I do. It will grow over time, but for now, please go and visit it, pass on the link to your friends and let me know what you think of it! 

 www.rimastaines.com 

In fact, there's a whole basket of new things to tell you about - the website being the first. I'm also beginning a little newsletter - a ether-pamphlet of sorts in which I will send you occasional tidings of news and happenings. This blog will remain the place for long tales, unfolding paintings and rambles on the moor, but should you wish to be kept informed of exhibitions, events and other such ephemera, please sign up here:

Subscribe to The Hermitage Pamphlet by email

Those of you who have stepped into my etsy shop lately will know that there are many wonderful new things in there. Not least, a selection of fantastic prints on delicious heavyweight (320gsm) cream-straw recycled card. 

I've wanted for a long time to get away from the glaring white background, and have finally managed to do it, with these tactile and lovely prints, which have a feathery hint of inclusions in the paper, giving each one an earthy feel. 

On the reverse of each print are details about the painting. 

There are prints large and small, and a slightly smaller selection of works than before. As part of the spring clean of my online work I have decided to stop selling my much older illustrations, which I feel I have artistically outgrown.

You will, however, notice a few new ones which you'll not have seen before!

So perhaps I'll tell you their tales...

This one I painted last month to take to the Weird & Wonderful Wood Fayre. A green-and-anchor-clad woman crouches in her small boat, setting sail towards I-know-not-what, propelled by paddle & sail, and led by a strange figurehead. 

The image is painted on an old wooden paddle that I found in a junk shop some years back, but I am not entirely sure what it was - a butter pat? a tiny oar? Any thoughts welcome! This original painting is for sale here if you love it. Or you can buy a print!

By Paddle & Sail ~ oils on wood ~ © Rima Staines 2014

From venturing to homing, the other new painting you'll find in my shop is in fact not very newly painted. It was made in 2011 for my brother Jan and his wife Maria's 2nd anniversary at Jan's request - a humourous pondering of what Maria (a frequenter of jumble and car boot sales and a collector of many beautiful old items) might be like one far-off day when she's living alone without Jan to maintain the house (as he does brilliantly) and only her hoarded and squirreled artifacts to hold up the crumbling dwelling! 

I had great fun detailing many little items and stuffing them into the cottagey corners of this chunky piece of Yew, which had a convenient branch-sprout for the range's chimney.

As always, I drew the image in first, particularly important with something as finnickety and detailed as this one.

This old woman ended up with a Turkish kilim-carpet and boots and shawl-decoration inspired by the Tales of the Amur -  Gennady Pavlishin's beautifully illustrated depiction of the stories and beliefs of the Nanais people of far Eastern Siberia on the great Amur river.

There are old bottles, tilley lamps, top hats, broken perambulators, parasols, books, cameras, clocks, trunks, typewriters, wheels, wool (even holding the window together - knitting needles between the panes, and knitted curtains too); there are tin baths, rolling pins, jars, spoons, fiddles, cups, clogs, spools, tongs, teapots, pepper mills, chamber pots, bellows, baskets... all holding together this home, in which the old woman sits serenely drinking tea.

And there we have it - a little view into the nest of a happy crone, whose journeys (perhaps by paddle or sail or foot or wheel or wind-horse) have brought her to this place, cocooned by all these mementos of those adventures, and the age-old wisdom there is to be found in a pot of tea.

Brickabracks & Mortar ~ oils on wood ~ © Rima Staines 2014
prints available here