Hairy Christmas from No Man Land…

May the Advent Light Always Shine on You

There is hardly a feast which has some emotional importance to me, except Christmas and Advent. I do love Christmas, even if I have been forced many times to spend it in a way which did not match my dreams… but well, these times are past now, and I am looking forward to Christmas this year with the impatience of a child… although, to be honest, we both are far too impatient to wait until the right moment to discover our mutual gifts. This is a huge mistake, it tales a little bit away the charm of the Christmas gifts unwrapping, but on the other side, it allows us to enjoy these gifts a longer time… my rational excuse to my impatience! What we have got this year is something very special, something which massively increases the life quality of our “Palace of Pleasure” how we now call our home…. I might show you at some point!

I was really confronted with the Advent time first when I went to live in Germany, and I loved it a lot! Spending 4 weeks actively waiting for Christmas, with all kind of nice things like Advent Calendars, Advent Kranz. etc is simply the right way to lead to the Christmas climax. I especially love the tradition of lightening a new candle on each Advent Sunday, starting 4 weeks before Christmas.I have lightened the first candle today, unfortunately alone, as Kevin is away,  gigging in Belgium

So here we are, today is the first Advent and here is my piece for you.

(as always available to send for free as ecard from my ecard gallery at the 123Greetings Studio)

Happy Thanksgiving

I have heard that some people in the world are celebrating Thanksgiving today. Well, to be honest, I have no connection to this feast, but being friend with Susan and Bob Cornelis in the USA, and having worked on some ecards designs, it brought this event a little bit closer to me. Anyway, I have heard that Thanksgiving involves some turkey in the oven…

This card is especially dedicated to golfers… only they might understand the wit?

And now a thanksgiving card for the bullfight lovers… here we come to a most delicate part of my recent life. All my funny bullfight ecards -and it was quite a lot!- have been banned from the ecards company for which I create designs, because a particular organisation in Europe called Irish Council Against Blood Sports has complained to the cgretings cards company for promoting BullFighting cards since its a cruelty against animals. They have expressed their displeasure that this blood sport is used to convey feelings of Christmas and Thanksgiving etc …

In their own website, they have described my art as “entirely inappropriate and utterly distasteful”

This was yesterday. I must admit that I am very upset and went into some deeper thinking state to find out how I want to proceed now. If I can find the time, I might write a post explaining my feelings, but at the end, the fight against the fanatic anti bullfight crusaders has become very boring for me and I am not sure that I want to waste any further second of my life with them. we shall see.

Anyway, here is my “utterly distasteful” thanksgiving piece for bullfight fans, and yes: they still exist, and there are many of them around the world!

 

Hibernating

Sorry if I am not very active here at the moment, but I am kind of hibernating,,,

A Round with Me

I think I mentioned it before in my blog, I have been quite busy lately stretching my pens and my imagination to create card designs for the 123 Greetings Studio. Golf being one of my passions, I have developed a whole series of funny golf cards for some of the annual events like Halloween, Christmas, New Year, etc… I will do some more later on this year, but for the moment, I am done with golf, and here is a little video featuring most of these cards.

The Unreasonable Man

Last spring I was suddenly involved in a poetry book illustration project… and here is the result:I am proud to announce today the publication of this book, called

“The Unreasonable Man”

and written by the Australian poet

Tariq Segal.

In his own words

“Well…  I’m thrilled to announce, the release of my book, my thoughts about life, through the years that this took.
Glad that it’s finished, and glad that I spent, time penning my thoughts, letting emotions vent…”

The book is designed as a coffee table poetry book. It contains 60 of Tariq’s favourite poems with each poem accompanied by either an illustration or photograph.

Tariq says:

“.. I think the artwork alone is worth owning a copy, and being able to review my thoughts as well can only but confirm your own sanity…”

Well I must confess,, most of these illustrations, about 50 I guess, are my paintings.

And here is what I have written in the preface of the book:

“Having myself been an „unreasonable“ person from the very beginning of my life, my encounter with The Unreasonable Man could not fail. As I started reading his poetry, I felt at once a deep connection to his wild world of thoughts, passion and revolt, and agreed at once to become with my art, a part of it.

I was amazed to see how many of my paintings seemed to have been created exactly for his poems,  illustrating in vibrant colours, lines, forms and structures what the poet is saying in words and the empty spaces in between.

But not each of his poems found its rightful painting.. We both collaborated in a weird process of  re-creation, by which  the characters featured in some of my paintings started to assume a life of their own, moving and wandering around, invading Tariq’s universe of poetry, in search of their own particular place among his words. Sometimes they even ended up taking possession of other paintings, either chasing the original occupants away or, more peacefully, finding their place at their side. You will understand what I mean when you look at the original works through my websites!

Anyway, to work on the illustration of „The Unreasonable Man“ was a totally new and very exciting experience in dealing with my own art, seeing me naturally „forcing“ them to interact and fit to the words.

I want to thank Tariq for this wonderful experience and his wise and creative advice in the choice of the paintings.“

For those of you interested in the musings of this troubled mind the book can be purchased online from the US  at:
1.       Amazon.com : http://www.amazon.com/dp/098052380X
2.       Createspace.com : https://www.createspace.com/3354416

The books are also available through Tariq Segal himself, above all for those of you who are in Australia. If you are interested please contact Tariq at

tariq@segal.com.au

Halloween drives me crazy!

Here are some of my latest cards creations for the 123 Greetings Studio, for which I was working quite intensively these week, having started there a new project with the team. Many of my actual works are based on my golf paintings, because part of the pnew project is to create a collection of golf greeting cards, and I want to concentrate on it right now.

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There are muhc more cards in my 123 Studio, so, if you want to see them, and send some today for Halloween, feel free to visit my cards gallery here.

When you are there, please browse the pages around, the Halloween cards might be at the end, as they are the most recent ones.

By the way, if you want me to create some personal cards, or if you have some ideas of cards for all the important events, and would like me to create them and publish them in the Studio, just email me…

HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYBODY!

Golf in Portugal: the Portugal Masters

Last weekend the Portugal Masters took place in Vilamoura, in the Algarve. Apart from my pleasure in watching golf, it was also very touching to see again the Algarve, where we went last year. I would have loved to attend the Masters there this year, but we had no chance to organise a trip so quickly… next year maybe.

Anyway, I did my weekly work of trying to feature some scenes and players from this week tournament. There were many motifs which inspired me, but unfortunately, I had not much time , as the thing with the ecards  for Halloween and All Saints’ Day (see last post in this blog) came in between.

I saw with pleasure that my favourite player, the 20 year-old  Irishman Rory McIlroy (he has a magnificent golf swing!), was playing there this week, and I decided to make a portrait of him, quite sure that he would be among the best, as he has always been since I started watching golf regularly some weeks ago. Unfortunately, he didn’t play that well this week (which is why he looks quite fed-up in the portrait     )… but anyway, he is worth a portrait! I am not sure he would be happy with that one, I am not sure if I am happy myself with the results, it was a difficult one… but I am sure that one day I will make another portrait of him, as I have decided to feature the winners of each tournament. (Well, as long as I don’t get bored!)

The winner this year was the Englishman Lee Westwood, whom I also like very much, and often saw ‘live’ in the past. Here he is, looking at himself, making the final putt for victory, on the 18th green.

The following painting is in fact featuring another hero of mine, Colin Montgomery, in a delicate situation… but I changed his silhouette a little bit, making him wearing clothes which, for my taste, fit better to the painting… If I’m honest, I don’t believe he would wear a pink shirt… perhaps I changed his body too, I don’t remember. Anyway, this is not meant to be a portrait of him, but just a golf painting…

And to finish, a painting to show just how romantic golf really is…

Highdays and Holidays

Some months ago you might remember, I had started working for an ecard company, Studio 123 – and enjoyed creating e cards for all kinds of events which nobody knows about,  like turtle day, ice-cream day, hug me day, internet flirting and suchlike. The challenge for me was to create paintings and designs etc. to illustrate these events, and I don’t care really what then happens with them, if many people look at them, or even send them as e cards. Anyway, my activity with the Studio was then reduced to nil, as we went on holiday, and I had so much work to do as we came back, both professionally and personally. Last week, I was thinking that I should start again creating e cards after finishing my series of Portugal sketches, but before I could act, I received a mail from a manager there, telling me off, how I had been a lazy girl  after the initial fireworks of creations  

This was of course a good occasion to start again. A glance at the events calendar made me realise that it is Halloween soon, and All Saints day. Here are some of the cards I have created over the last few days for these events:

I know, this card is quite naughty, and I am not sure they will publish it, but I couldn’t resist…

One of my older paintings, from the series ‘Impressions”….

Another Impression… the original painting was called “La Dame en Noir” and it’s sold somewhere in France…

You see, I can be a lovely girl too…

Digital painting based on a photo from a cemetery in England, at St. Giles’ Church in Matlock, Derbyshire, where Kevins grandparents are buried…

Golf in Spain: The Madrid Masters

Sergio Garcia and his caddie in Madrid 2009

The European PGA Golfers  came to play in Spain this week, in Madrid., and I especially enjoyed to follow the tournament these last 4 days. I had the big pleasure and sadness (I’ll explain why) to see the Spaniard  Sergio Garcia, one of the 10 best  Golf players of the World… I saw him life many years ago in Barcelona, if I remember well it was his last apparition as an amateur and I knew a big golf career stood ahead of him. Unfortunately, like most of or young best players, he went to play to America… I kind of never forgave him what I consider as a “betrayal”. Of course sometimes he comes back to Europe to play, especially when the tournaments take place in his native land Spain.

I have a very sad story indirectly related to him… About 10 years ago I was on a  golf trip with my Belgian friend Rita, in the region of Castellon. We wanted to play El Club del Campo del Mediterraneo,  partly famous because Sergios’ mother was (still is?) running the Proshop there. In the evening before we wanted to play, I was sitting with Rita in a restaurant, having some wonderful Spanish food (jamon iberico I suppose!) and some red wine, as I got a phone call from Germany on my mobile. At that time I lived in Germany and spent soem konths the year in Spain). I was told by a friend that mt best freind in Germany had just comitted suicide…. it was a terrible choc, of course… I had met him about 2 weeks before on a golf course in Alsace, with his wife, both golfers, and we had made together all kind od of plans for the next summer, like to rent a narrow boat in England and to navigate on the channels there from golf course to golf course… anyway… the wife having said that there won’t be any funeral, as he had wished his ashes to be thrown into the sea, there was no reason for me to go back to Germany. So I got hammered that night, with a lot of red wine, and as I still could not sleep in the night, Rita gave me a lot of sleeping tablets. The next morning i went to the golf course in a dreadful state, certainly closer to unconsciousness than anyhting else. The strange thing is that I played a great score,,, and then, as always when I am totally depressed, i went to Sergio’s mother’s golf shop and spent there a huge amount of money… but of course, this didn;t help wither and we decided to interrupt the trip, I couldn’t any more….

Sorry for that sad story, but i can’t see Sergio Garcia without mourning, again and again!

And here is the unexpected winner of teh Madrd Masters 2009, not Sergio garcia, but Ross MacGowan, from England! I haven’t worked especially on the likeness, I just wanted to make a golfer portrait ans I liked his attitude on the golf course…

I have done some other paintings from the Madrid Masters… who is interested can see them in my galleries online…