Yes, yes - late again. I am officially giving up on keeping a set schedule for Substack for the time being. I’ll be back in the States next week, so, maybe then. In the meantime, there’s lots to report. At top of this post is the finished Whip-poor-will I mentioned in my last post, proof that the painting continues. Mostly what we’ve been doing is the important task of building our nest together and running around. Yesterday, an off-hand remark of mine about the rickety old table in the back garden led to a full-on repair job involving two of Paul’s toolboxes, the sawing of wood and a can of undercoat. I did the dog’s body fetching and finding the perfect screws and such while he did the heavy lifting. 

This was after we spent several hours discussing and resolving an unexpected warp on one side of stretcher that only became obvious once I painted the dark background color on the Work In Progress above. The piece is an experiment to see how I adapt to a larger sized canvas and is coming along nicely. At 90x90cm (which is just short of 36x36”) it is the largest piece in the Bird series to date. There are several ways to deal with a warped canvas, all are potentially dangerous to a painting in progress, but in the end we went with my suggestion of replacing the warped stretcher bar with a spare one in Paul’s studio. After some delicate surgery, the painting survived intact and is ready for me to hopefully finish before I leave on Thursday.

That and the garden table took up half of the day, the rest was spent in the Ouseburn area of Newcastle where I shopped a bit and had a delicious lunch, or what they call dinner here in the North East and is generally their main meal of the day instead of what we Yanks call dinner and they call tea. That’s a shot of the canal in Ouseburn above and you can tell it’s been a dry summer, although the tide was out when I took the picture. Below is a shot of the Seaburn/Roker beach where we were last weekend to visit an artist/friend and where I got a bit of a surprise sunburn.

But the big news this week was our whirlwind trip to Liverpool, which was way too short but great fun. Our hotel was an easy walk from the Lime Street Station and minutes away from what is known as Cavern Central, a back lane anchored by the Beatles Museum surrounded by pubs and shops that are all Beatles all of the time. I thoroughly recommend a visit to both the city and the whole Beatles-arama thing, especially the museum which is kitschy and hokey but quite moving and informative too. There were plenty of people wandering through the displays and not all of them were old fogey tourists. I saw a Megadeth t-shirt, lots of tattoos and neon colored hairdos. I was a little disappointed there wasn’t more about Ringo, but much of the memorabilia was provided by Pete Best who is still alive and the drummer Ringo replaced.

We also visited the Walker Museum, which has a nice collection of classical art including some exquisite Medieval icons, plus interesting contemporary work and a separate show devoted to the topic of Gender. We trekked over in the rain to the waterfront and Mann Island, all newly renovated or in the process, to see some great photography at the Open Eye Gallery, and Tate Liverpool in its temporary location at the RIBA space in the same building. Liverpool has an arty friendly vibe which I attribute to the Beatles and what they brought to a city well into its decline and how much of that energy still survives today. Can you imagine life without the Beatles? Consider the scope of their influence and what has followed. Not just on the music industry or fashion, but your own life as well. Give it some thought - and with that, let’s get on with the day.