My painting ‘Summer, garden’, has been selected for the Royal Institute of painters in water colour exhibition at the Mall Galleries, London. The exhibition opens on Wednesday 6th April  – Saturday 16th April.
Very exciting !
The Hoosie
‘The Hoosie’ cafe at the end of my line. Mixed media on paper.
Hill street
Mixed media on paper – Montrose Review newspaper.
Cold easterly winds bring sleet. Walk through the town and on to the industrial estate. Hangars, warehouses, engineering firms for the offshore industry, cranes, lorries and nissen huts at the air museum. I spot ‘The Hoosie’ catering portakabin and pop in. Engineers, a driving test examiner and Steve the cook. I ask if I can take some pictures and tell him his catering establishment is the end of the line. He laughs and says ‘you’ll meet everyone here, sooner or later.’ The conversation turns to the quality of morning rolls at Lidls. From where I sit I look out of the door to a Spitfire and and the Union Jack flying – Â polystyrene tea, the war, it feels peculiarly nostalgic on this winters morning. He has pots of fake flowers outside, a nice touch. I say cheerio, saying I will bring my drawing of the cafe next time and head out back down the line.
Market Street.
Mixed media on paper – Montrose Review February 4th 2016.
California street
Sitting in the car working out my route on the map. The sky is a damp sheet of grey, darker toward the west. Walk.
I chat to Flo in the public loos about her work. She plays country and western music, the speakers piping it into the ladies and gents. The flower arrangements are beautiful, and she tells me I should see the place at Christmas. Flo has just been awarded toilet attendent of the year 2016. We smile.
Finding my way down Orange Lane I come across an Oxfam shop and spy some Midwinter 1960’s crockery in the window in a very lovely blue. I go in and ask Doris what is the best thing about Montrose and a customer yells ‘ The road oot a’ here’. Everyone laughs. I buy my found treasure, promising to come back and buy the sauce boat . Hmm….
Walk, rain, library. I watch a man on the microfiche machine scrolling through the pages of the Montrose Review. He has done this before. He looks efficient and seems to know what he is looking for. Unlike me. But then, what I find, is it. Walking a line means I have to face everything with the same curiosity. This is the interest, and the challenge of the imposed parameter.
Poetry
From a series of photographs for Dighty poetry group taken yesterday. A big thankyou for everyone’s patience. An anthology of the poets work will be published shortly. Here is my contribution which came about from a particular walk a winter morning last year, when I came across an airman’s type jacket frozen to a wire fence, and a torn up Christmas card which read ‘To Lisa and the wee man’. I had been reading about a German airman who had been captured and paraded through the town. He was apparently exceedingly tall. A friends Aunty told me that during the war her Dad had buried an old bread van in the garden as an air raid shelter for the family complete with bunkbeds. I was also investigating the circuses and travelling shows that would come to Dundee. This piece came from those beginnings.
Caravans.
On the edge of town
a bone black fineness of winter air
licks the salty rime at the lip of last tide.
Bridge pilings punctuate the slaked slip clay
sooking the river toward the sea.
The small terrace of brick houses,
backing up the hill,
tell stories to
soft morning rolls of babies, tucked up in the grocers van.
Wash day legs give up to floral loose covers,
peonies and roses.
Still.
Beyond stiffened boiler suits forgotten on the line,
the tackety boot lane opens out onto waste ground,
common grounds for
stories and secrets, promises and plans.
Ragwort,
bindweed,
nettles.
Waiting.
With quickening pinched toes, blue knees,
rattly grin,
that two day old bruise, deepening, darkening, at once,
now,
bring him,
laughing,
magicking,
birling, swirling, starry lights,
diesel, fried onions, burnt sugar.
All seven feet tall in his showmans breeks,
yelling scream if you wanna go
somewhere,
anywhere,
from here.
Head thrown back, blinking the colours away.
All seven feet tall with his brylcreemed hair.
Lamp black,
lunar black,
crow black.
The token he gave only good for a ride,
sorry ma wee lass.
Rest.
The gennies tut as they quietly cool,
bulbs dim.
The uncoupling of parts.
Early morning sees a nippit wind,
funnels the soor smell of your breath.
A whale back sky brings word from the north,
whips the clay slaked water as it heaves upstream,
on its way,
passing through.
America Street – drawing
First drawing for Wall projects exhibition in Montrose. Text from last weeks Montrose Review, January 28th, acrylic, gesso, charcoal and conte on paper.
America Street.
I spent my first day in Montrose, wandering and sleuthing my way around. I surprised a sleeping shag on the beach, and asked the toilet attendant what is the best thing about Montrose ? It felt as if I had asked her a very personal question. The steeple she answered nervously. Â I left thinking there must be more, and I walked and found interesting street names, dark, narrow closes off the High Street, the abandoned warehouses of a global trading port and a wonderful Victorian museum. These are some of their finds –
An ear bone of a Greenland whale, and Russian birch bark shoes. A man o’war ship made of bone, from French prisoners of war. A message in a bottle -‘We ate the dog, three men left alive, have mercy on our souls, Amen’.
Treasures. Â I shall return, to draw .
Kellie Law to Edinburgh
Acrylic on paper.
Had my first accordion lesson last night, hmmm… its harder than it looks. The teacher is a man called Billy Anderson and he wears a waistcoat and  tweed jacket and looks and sounds like Ken Stott, the actor. Very patient and jolly with me. The rest of the group were very encouraging, so I will practice my scales, and my first tune, thankful for it not being ‘twinkle twinkle little star’, and I’ll be Jimmy Shand-ing before you can shout ‘Auchtermuchty’.
North Tree.
dominique cameron RSW 