Self Portrait

A THIRD DECADE BEGINS! And in need of some "proper" painting practice, I decided to set my last day of twenty-nine in oil paint. I have painted three self portraits in my life, as well as a few drawings, and mainly do so because I love to paint people and their faces best of all, but have not had any other face than my own that would sit there patiently long enough! I paint from a mirror, and, I have just noticed, always seem to sit at the same angle, probably because I'm right-handed. I leafed through a wonderful tome - 500 Self-Portraits - full of artists' depictions of themselves from antiquity to modernity, and was inspired. Here are a few of my favourites:

(click to enlarge)

1. Vincent van Gogh. 2. L.S. Lowry. 3. Albrecht Dürer (at age 13!). 4. Rembrandt van Rijn. 5. Hans Holbein. 6. Filippino Lippi. 7. Käthe Kollwitz. 8. Vincent van Gogh. 9. Gwen John. 10. Edgar Degas. 11. Giorgio Morandi.

Such beautiful work, that I could only hope to emulate. My recent attempt I am fairly pleased with, and thought it might be interesting to compare it with my earlier self portraits!..

Rima Staines - Self Portrait at age 18.
Oils on board

Rima Staines - Self Portrait at around age 24.
Oils on board

Rima Staines - Self Portrait The Day Before Turning Thirty
In A Garment Of My Own Imagination
Oils on board

This last is painted on a piece of hardboard with no undercoat, and I've purposely left it rather scrubby. I took stage photographs which I thought folks might be interested in seeing..

(click to enlarge)

I wear a "garment of my own imagination" - made from all the faces of characters that fill my world, drawn in pencil..



And here are some close ups..




It is a strange thing stepping into a new decade. In our heads I think we all feel around the age of 21, or thereabouts, the age at which we got to some inner point of knowing ourselves. As I age I find that the age of others has become pretty irrelevant to me, which is quite in contrast to the aeons that seemed to separate me from older children in the class a year above me at school.
It is just another day after all. And a splendid day I had! My mum sent me a home made birthday cake through the post, there were beautiful cards and gifts from friends old and new, and Tui and I took good food and wine and lamps and a blanket down to the woods for a fire, to see in my turning One Score Year And Ten...

A mountain song for my wordless son

I HAVE PAINTED a new painting, four inches tall this time, and containing the most bent of bodies I have yet portrayed: A mountain song for my wordless son. It is made on the slice of wood that lay directly up the branch from the slice on which the blackberry wedding pendant was painted.
I cannot explain what it is about, see in it what you see...


There was a sitting-up-til-midnight to finish all the Telling the Bees artwork, which is now swimming amid the cogs at the printing mill. It is always lovely to make a work for myself after working on a work for somebody else. But I've started to go cross-eyed with these ever diminishing paintings, and get cross with the tiny hairs of the paintbrush that at this minuscule level seem like tree trunks to a beetle. The next painting will be bigger!

*POST SCRIPT* Prints available here.

Acorns and Blackberries

ALL ALONG THE LANES the brambles are fruiting. In between jagged stems burst little black juicy clusters, each day bearing another nearly ready berry. Our long walk to town is slowed by these waylaying roadside treats. Some blackberries are small and still too sour, others fall apart to a sauce in our fingers. Some are crunchy with seeds or beasts. For the perfect king berry, hardest to reach, we must compete with feasting wasps. Some say you shouldn't pick blackberries after Michelmas (29th September) for the devil comes down and wees upon them. Perhaps we should make a blackberry crumble soon.


And I have been painting, a tiny work, wrapped around with blackberries for an approaching autumn. This is a wedding pendant, commissioned by Anna and Justin who we met at a fair. They are to be married this month and wanted a tiny painting for her to wear on the day. It measures about 3 inches in height and will be worn with a forest green dress. On the back I painted their initials and the date of their happy day (All full of nines like my own date of birth!). There's a smoking rural cottage and hills, and in front of it a two handled lovers' cup. I hunted my books on folklore to find a nice image for a wedding, and found that two spoons on a saucer means a marriage approaches.


Blackberries are not the only fruits in my work of late. There are acorns in the album artwork for the second Telling The Bees album which I have been working away on busily with my 0.3mm pencil. Most of the main drawings are done, but I still have all the smaller work for the interior to do as well as knotting it all together with words and layout.
For those of you who haven't seen it before, you can see my work for the band's debut album here. We were delighted to finally meet Bees' songwriter Andy and his missus Nomi last week as they travelled past our Dartmoor field with bagpipes and mandolin, and tea and biscuits and talk were enjoyed.
This time the artwork includes a sort of wayfaring musician, coming out of the forest, who is at the same time some old oaky symbol of England. He carries a barrel organ / cabinet of curiosities, that displays an object for each song. I shall leave those discoveries until the day when you hear the songs. They are delightful. On the CD circle leap those three hares again.


I found this oak berry and leaf in the grass here the other day. Though the trees are still green, the morning airs feel different. We are remembering the time of year when we used to light fires before breakfast, and can smell the leaves thinking about browning. I always find the turn of this new season hits me like a memory of all past autumns in my life. Soon I will turn thirty which is a bizarre thing indeed...

Vagabond Villages & Transient Towns,

I HAVE BEEN THINKING about moving villages: Towns that assemble and disperse and then reassemble. Gatherings of people that are not always in the same one place, or indeed are not always the same collection of people.
As we travel we meet so so many different people. We visit festivals where we set up camp with many other wheeled and canvas houses, and for a week or so that field becomes our neighbourhood. We smile to meet folk we've met before and cross paths with new people who we'll meet again. Our house is admired by many and we sell pictures in between.
These weeks we spend at festivals are like colourful knots of noise and bustle, of many faces and too much hoo-haa. A hermit-like pair we are, as I have said before, though there is something we love about these gatherings too. We always find that we drive away with a nostalgia, and a bagful of lovely memories.


From our delightful perch in Dartmoor, we moved just a couple of miles to another field where farmer Will kindly welcomed us. This locality is such a warm haven of interesting and artistic people. We have met so many folk, often walking into town and being called by name. On our travels through places this is rare indeed, and it is lovely.
The walk to town is now not so steep, but takes us about half an hour through wonderful woodland and along the side of a river, where we took our tin bath and bagful of laundry the other day to wash. This is the kind of place we hope to come back to. A road life with a perfect place to return to seems like the ideal balance right now.

Anyway, we left this lovely place for a week to attend the Off Grid Festival, a new event in Somerset, dedicated to all things powered by the sun and the wind and to the idea of transition.
Transition towns are emerging all over the world, and are examples of new (in fact old) and exciting ways to look at community, and all the many things that come together to create and sustain it. These include a drive to self-sufficiency, in food, energy and money. Transition towns have begun introducing localised currencies, such as the Lewes Pound (an idea that was experimented with at the Off Grid Festival too, though with a little hesitancy amongst those new to it, us included). You can read in much more eloquent detail about the transition idea here, but it ties in with my thoughts on community, though my thinkings have been leaning rather more towards transient towns, than transition towns.

Just along from where we pitched our house-display, the day before the festival started, a whole tin village was being constructed, with a wooden structure and corrugated iron roofs and walls. In here, they held talks and films on permaculture and other things, as well as building a clay wood-fired oven for making bread and pizzas. A garden emerged out front too, complete with tiny ponds and potted pear trees. And a week later this was all gone, and the ground returned to grass.



Further off we spied another lovely Bedford TK, complete with old time coconut shy and hand made carousel. Inside the truck was a warren of a house, where Ruth and Simon lived whilst travelling, and stored their entire set up too! It was wood-stove warm and ramshackle-nooky in there and a tray of fresh baked buns emerged from the oven (held shut with an axe) before my eyes. They had painted their mini fairground my sort of old-time colours, and the hand-made childrens' carousel vehicles were protected by a barrier made from old nuns' bedposts! It is always lovely to see others doing interesing things from Bedfords!


These were not the only intriguing goings on there. One chap was operating a printing press from the back of a pink milk float. Pancakes were being cooked in tipis. Another man tried to sell us psychedelic toad poison! We met a fellow called Gary who photographed our truck before we were even parked. It seems he goes from festival to festival photographing and then drawing all manner of live-in vehicles and then printing them to sell in little booklets. We bought three editions of this unusual publication "Tax Exempt", in which our own truck house will probably feature one day. I was particularly impressed by the excellent standard of drawing. Feastival art can so often be a bit gaudy and badly done, but Gary's pen and ink drawings were detailed and expertly executed. (As an interesting aside.. if you would like to browse a comprehensive photographic museum of live-in vehicles, Traveller Homes is a great place, even we're there, in the Bedford Truck section. :)


In meeting so many different folk, I have begun to develop a distinct and worrying forgetfulness. I have always had a vagueness about me and an unusual concept of time passing, but having so many faces pass in front of my eyes seems to have done something odd to my brain. People I have met the previous day seem new and never-seen the next. Tui has to nudge me as they approach. "We've met them" he mutters through his teeth. It's embarrassing. I feel so awful when they say "Hello again" and I look at them somewhat blankly. I do try so very hard, and then get all in a fluster when meeting and greeting several people at once, and the panic must disable that memory trigger in my brain. I did once hear of a man who had lost this ability entirely so that when shopping in a supermarket with his wife, she had to wear a special red coat for him to recognise her amongst all the others.
It's not as bad as that for me, it doesn't happen with everyone, and certain folk who I have met a few times or know well have migrated to the other side of my memory bank! But let me say here to anyone who I have looked vacant at - I am dreadfully sorry! I wonder whether my shortsightedness might contribute to this, my blurry visual information of folk far-off being less comprehensive than it should be!



Since you last heard from me, our house has changed a little more too. We sawed our back door in half! And now we can lean over the top like contemplative horses, another 'window' added to our vista. It makes such an excellent difference. There's a brand new cup shelf too, just by the sofa, made by Tui from a lovely slice of wood. He has been transforming the new stable door with latches and ledges and hooks and escutcheons and he's made a wonderful new bench from found wood for sitting outside, the legs have toes. There's even a bracket above the back window on which a lantern dangles. And I sat there admiring it from the hammock we strung between truck and magnificent tree. These trees are our neighbours now. We are back in farmer Will's field, admiring the view and sharing the grass with the sheep (who have taken to sleeping under the truck at night!), the trees towering above us.

We are part of a new village now. Our neighbours were neighbours before, were not for a while and now are neighbours again. The village we made part of in Somerset has dispersed. Our friends Hannah and Daniel and the twins were parked by us there again. They have headed off east to join another gathering. We'll see them again somewhere sooner or later. We'll see others too, familiar and unfamiliar. It's a strange experience of life, crossing paths with others, a unique experience for each person, and yet shared in some aspects. It is the net that links us all, the strands are gossamer-thin and steel-strong, and each path-crossing vibrates them.
No wonder I'm so overwhelmed!

We'll spend a while under these trees, getting on with our works painterly and musical, and I leave you for now with a quote from Rumi that I found and liked in a lovely clothes shop Haruka whilst treating myself to garments after successful festival picture sales.

Let the beauty that you love be what you do.

There are many ways to kneel and kiss the earth.

The mists between horses and hares

AND SO WE TRAVELLED OFF from Wales towards the Big Green Gathering, overnighting on this spot along the A466 - a picturesque stretch of road that runs down beside the Offa's Dyke path for a while. We don't often see our truck home from above, but there we could walk into the conifer forest above and look down on ourselves as the mists rolled in. We thought we'd outrun the rain as the sun tempted us back towards England. But it caught us up. And low clouds skidded over us dropping their downpours and rushing on. We even saw a cloud outside our back door, hovering over the river valley. A gruff man pulled up while we were parked here and asked if we were selling our truck. He told us he'd owned it once, but we didn't believe him.
And then we drove on, down winding roads that lost us a wing mirror at one point due to a wide-wandering Hymer.


All the way to Cheddar we drove and gathered with others ready for the festival. But it was not to be. A police injunction stopped the event from going ahead, and so over the next few days many sad people chugged away from the muddy field through the ceaseless rain and back to where they'd come from. We were due to be joining the permaculture area there, with our truck dwelling friends Hannah and Daniel. Eventually another field was rustled up for those who would have been our permaculture neighbours, to have a mini gathering on the edge of Dartmoor.

There we spent a week with other lovely people. We sat around fires and sold some pictures, we walked and we sat, we met hedgehogs and gypsies, we learned stove making, we watched films in yurts and chased children. Here we all are attempting to assemble a geodesic dome with the two truck houses in the background and a twin or two in the foreground.


There were moments of despair as we realised our coffers were nigh-on empty and the rain did nothing to cheer us. But people bought pictures and the sun came out.. and life went on.


And then we wandered on. Further north into Dartmoor we went, taking care to use the main roads. Then as we approached our hilltop destination we found ourselves in first gear on hair-raisingly narrow steep bends, but we made it. And now we are here, in what might possibly be our favourite place in England so far.


Parked on the top of a hill we can see for miles over the moors when the clouds clear. Such an amazing landscape I have not come across before. There are those most English of gnarly oak trees gripping the stony lane-sides, there are delightful villages, delightful people, and the views are just incredible. We've met the ponies on the hill, and I even lay down next to some afternoon-snoozing foals. Out of our round bedroom window we've watched the clouds skud across the full moon amid the most beautiful of skies and the quietest of airs.





And most delightful of all I seem to have walked into the land of mythic artists. How pleased I was to meet Terri Windling and her wonderful work in the flesh. In fact it is she we have to thank for field hunting for us. I feel just a little starry-eyed to have a writer and artist whose work I have long admired come to tea, and humble to have her admire my work in turn. I can see why these artists who dwell inside tales have chosen this corner of England for their homes. There is something 'other' about the land, but it is absolutely not describable in words. It is for me a little like the warm memory of a deeply enjoyed book. Meeting this land is like meeting a love. It is wild yet familiar, and I think I should paint in it.


Before all of these latest journeyings, my friend Poppy sent me a wonderful piece of stitchery that she spent weeks working on. It contains words from the Havamal and old blackwork patterns. I shall be framing it and hanging it in our sleeping quarters soon, I think it describes things for travellers well.


While we are here, in between visiting lovely people and exploring the moors, I am working away on the next album cover for Oxfordshire folk band Telling The Bees. Amongst many folkloric symbols woven into their music, which I am to illustrate, is a strange symbol, the so-called Tinner's Hares, a triple hare icon, where three hares share just three ears, yet appear to have two each. Oddly I have seen this symbol here where we are, on shop fronts and posters. It seems that there are more triple-hares in Dartmoor than anywhere else. It is an old symbol, which like the Green Man appers often on medieval church bosses and the like. But no-one knows quite what it means...

Wet Welsh Weddings

SINCE YOU LAST SAW US parked in East Anglia, our house has made its longest leap so far (apart from the initial flight south from Scotland). We wended our way west across the country a couple of weeks ago now, taking a few days about it and stopping with friends en route. In Cambridge we loitered to see the Folk Museum and a lovely Swedish film, as well as desperately seeking out some Chinese Medicine for a nasty neck-crick of mine which wouldn't go away. Then onwards we drove, noticing the landscape changing subtly. Into Bedfordshire we took our Bedford, and stayed a happy couple of nights in the orchard of friends where their two year old twins ran about clothless in the withering heatwave, and we helped add an undercoat of paint to their house-lorry in the making. They took us to an Emmaus Centre for cake and second-hand rifling, where we found a bike for £20 that now resides on the roofrack, has since been painted olive green with matte emulsion and can take us from parkups to towns that are just a little too far away to walk to. Overnighting by a lake (above), we drove the next day via Ikea to restock our picture frame reserves, and onward into Oxfordshire. Each county we have noticed is just a little different from the last. You cannot always put your finger on the reason, they are all most definitely England, but also unique in their county character. From the flats of East Anglia we were gradually encountering hillier roads, the further westward we drove. The maximum speed of our truck-house hovers around 50mph, and this plummets to about 30mph if there's a slight incline. So on motorways we are hooted as impatient drivers zoom around us and even slow moving vehicles have to overtake. We prefer to wiggle down medium sized roads, at our own pace, and so that the old engine is not screeching so loud that we can't converse. As the map reader I take us on occasion down a road that looks small and picturesque on the map only to find that we are squeezing the hulking house down a single track road with low hanging branches swiping at our chimney and no idea of what claustrophobic peril might be round the corner.

In Oxfordshire we were surprised by a rare sight on the roadside verge as we whizzed past - another Bedford TK house! Parked with a tipi beside, and a man reclining in a deck chair, talking on the phone! We honked and waved but he did not look up.
And then, since we were passing right by her neck of the woods, we pulled into a layby for a cup of tea with my friend Gretel (who many of you may know already in blogland through her brilliant illustration and felt toy sculpture work). Braving the dreadful heat, Gretel and Andy zoomed out on their motorbike to find us. It was a delightful visit, which Gretel told of here.


We were keen to make it to Wales the next day so we plodded on and made it as far as just past Ross-on-Wye where we drove around a fair bit, at the tired end of the day, remembering that frustrating feeling trying to find a suitable place to park overnight that wouldn't be too near the traffic (it's noisy and large passing vehicles rock the truck in their wind-wakes), or bother anyone else living nearby. Eventually we hunkered down at Winter's Cross, knowing we only had a short last leg to go the next day.

We were loving seeing Welsh hills from our windows and following bilingual road signs. The house was even slower up and down the hills, and the air was thankfully cooling.
Do you remember back when we were parked by the sea in Kent? And kind Maria who brought us food and flowers and offered us her sister's address in Wales? Well that is where we are now, parked on the land of kind Mo, sister of kind Maria, next to her rather unusual gypsyish wagon. We overlook a river where we have spent happy hours, and are surrounded by the misty Brecon Beacons.

Not that we have had any chance to go up into them, because since we arrived it has rained every day. Westerly wild weather. Wet winds, weather that reminds us of those endless rainy days in Scotland. Tui has been fighting an ongoing battle with leaks. Armed with his silicone sealant gun, he is daily clambering about on the roof and walls to find and fill the sneaky little cracks that seem to let torrents in. The beauty of an old wooden house vehicle has the downside that the wood moves and swells and shrinks with the heat and damp and even a tiny chink beside a screw can let enough correctly angled rain in to soak through my entire clothes cupboard.
The river below us has been a delight, we have pottered about in it and I even swam an invigorating swim amongst the rocks and green slime in the icy icy water. One night we left our mats in a rushing bit, weighed down by river rocks til the morning, where we found them washed (fairly) clean and harbouring little clinging pincered things.



Another night we had a fire on the flat rock beside the water, which was lovely. Woodsmoke drifted along with the water to wherever it was in such a hurry to go. Out to sea?
There are horses all around us here. This group we met in the field beyond the river, and friendlier horses I've not met. One black fellow with the softest of wrinkly noses became my friend for an hour, and the horses all stood in a kind of horse-trance, gazing into the mid-distance, one hind leg cocked slightly, thinking maybe thoughts of hay and who-knows-what.

The next day we heard shouting from the field which we think was the farmer cajoling the horses into transport for market. We never saw them again.

Tui did manage to get just inches from one horse's eye, since they were so comfortable with us there, and took this exquisite photograph.

And inbetween all the Welsh raindrops I have been busily painting a clock to celebrate the marriage of my younger-yet-6'4"-tall brother Jan to his lovely lady Maria. We travelled by train to the wedding, to see the dear pair make their vows, which were sincere and moving. A beautiful couple they are and right now off in the Pacifics on honeymoon...

The clock is them but not a portrait, riding a tandem of two clocks, one that moves forwards, and one in reverse. They carry a basket each containing things they love to do. Jan is a wizard of mechanical trickery and could easily build a real-life bike powered clock if he wished. Maria is a keen finder of antique things and a crafter of wool and wonder. May they be ever happy on their tandem.

Here too is another thing I gave them, a little cardboard heart box painted by me with treeish things, the day of they marriage and words: Of Leaf And Tree May Your Love Be. Inside was berries from the hornbeam trees in the road where we grew up.

If you look closely at the clock painting, you'll see that the happy cycling couple have mouse tails poking beneath their garments, just to add an edge of Rima-oddness!
We're off tomorrow to the Big Green Gathering and so we had to return from London to wet Wales. We came back to find all in order, the truck having been well watched over by Mo. Though in the food cupboard, the cheese and the chocolate had dear little rodent tooth marks in the corners. Who could have been sneaking up through the clutch pedal holes I wonder?...