The Three Bears of Whitstable

A few months ago I took three days off to go near the sea. Normally I would go to the North East of England or Scotland where I still have some friends, but this time I decided to go to Whitstable. A good friend and old colleague of mine used to always talk about it and how she would love to live there one day. So my curiosity got the better of me and when I found a cheap deal on a room because of a last minute cancellation I decided to visit it.

I arrived on a late afternoon and after checking in and leaving my bag I went out hoping to catch a glimpse of the sea before it got too dark. It was extremely windy and the clouds were running with an amazing speed, rather like when you are on a boat. I could smell the sea even from the high street. The high street was basically one long road, with shops either side that in the end forked into two; one road led to the beach and the other one towards the port. I saw all this in a folded map from the hotel.
But I did not make it very far down the high street on that afternoon. The high street is full of really interesting shops. Every second shop is a charity shop and in between those there are lots of antique shops and second hand shops. So I stopped at at least four shops to look at different things and by the time I came out from the last one the wind was blowing like mad and it had started to rain in an almost horizontal fashion.
Just before I turned around to go back to the hotel, I looked into a charity shop window and saw what looked like three stuffed bears displayed on the floor. I could see they were really flat, rather like cushions, and quite old-fashioned. There was so much rain on the shop window it looked like the place would flood at any minute. When I got back to the hotel I realised those must have been The Three Bears from the story with Goldilocks. That was really funny because at the time I was sketching the three bears and Goldilocks and the red riding hood characters for a book for Aretousa.

The next day I decided to head straight for the sea and not stop that much. I only stopped to look at those Three Bears. They were still on the floor like the day before. I liked them but immediately. There were only two reasons I did not buy them . They had a weird, musty smell about them (a little bit like old urine I am afraid to say) and also they were The Three Bears from the story, which meant if I bought them I would never be able to finish my ones. These would definitely take over in my mind and any design I would do afterwards would look a bit like them. So I stopped looking at them too much before I memorised them.
When I reached the sea I decided to buy them only if they were still there the day I left and only if I had managed to finish my own drawings by then.

Whitstable Beach

Whitstable Port

The following day I managed not to stop and look in the shop, but on purpose I walked on the opposite side of the road. That lunch time I decided to try the famous Whitstable native oysters and local beer in an Oyster Bar. It was so busy as if I was in Paris! They found me a table in the end and I got out my little black sketchbook to try and finish my drawings of the three bears for Aretousa. This always works one way or another with me. They either see you are busy in the restaurant and leave you well alone to work or they think you are some kind of food critic and start being over attentive. The second thing happened to me there, so that is my excuse for not finishing the three bears sketch. Also I was thinking by then only of the actual Three Bears in the shop and starting to fear they were sold.

The three unfinished bears

As an act of self discipline rather than anything else (and stubbornness) I still did not look in the shop on the way back. That night I did not sleep well and the next day I was leaving. So I went to look for The Three Bears in the shop, still unsure of whether I should be buying them or not. They were not on the floor and at the same time that I was relieved, my heart felt heavy. The Three Bears had changed position, I saw them on the way out. They still smelled very bad, I think worse than the first time I saw them and their design was by now imprinted in my head. So I bought them for £1 per head.
I had to seal them in a bag, unstitch them, remove the stuffing and wash everything twice, then refill them and re-stitch them before they were presentable. They are still a bit floppy, but have become Aretousa's favourite thing, so I felt that at least I did not return empty handed from Whitstable.

The Three Bears of Whitstable

Russian Dolls

The lack of sleep has caught up with me this week and the only resolution to the problem is going to bed early. This helps enormously but I cannot bring myself to do it regularly as it is mildly depressing. One of the signs that its time to hit the bed early is when I am so exhausted that I start having visitations from fictional characters. Thankfully this happens very rarely nowadays, but that wasn't the case always.

It all started the summer I was 9  years old and took out the first tome of Les Miserables. It took the whole of that summer's holidays and of the next summer's holidays to finish it. I was not allowed to read it during the winter because it interfered with school. So for a whole two summers and a winter and a bit longer I was completely consumed by the story. Little Gavroche was the character I connected with the most and for all that time he did not leave my side. I started learning French and excelled very quickly, I wore the same clothes and played  roughly in them till they looked completely used and permanently dirty, I got into trouble at school and started to look like Gavroche dangerously. Maybe this was due to an over active imagination or maybe all single children get this. Gavroche was only gone from me when I started reading the very nostalgic for me Maurice Leblanc. His unforgettable character of the gentleman thief Arsene Lupin was my next companion. Extremely romantic and dangerous he was my secret weapon when school children were unkind or just plain boring. I felt very strong indeed. I have not been able to read these novels again in case the whole thing was so beautiful because I was just a kid. I remember L'Auiguille Creuse, The Hollow Needle, and La Comptesse Cagliostro, The Countess of Cagliostro, as totally thrilling. The next book I picked up was The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler and by that time I was reading books in the winter too, secretly. Philip Marlowe is still my favourite character and he was hanging around for at least a couple of years. He got me to start smoking a pipe-that's what I said when I got caught. I remember my intense anger and frustration with Raymond Chandler after finishing all his books that he did not write any more. I am still angry with him.
And thankfully the final fictional character to accompany me around was in the last years of school when I read all the Agatha Christie novels in a year. I maintain that this is the best way to learn English as a second language. Beautifully written, very flowing and easy language and writing that brings you straight into the British world. Some of them start with creepy British nursery rhymes; more mysterious than the stories themselves. Captain Hastings appears only in a few of the novels, but he is a sweet, slightly slow but extremely loyal and lovable friend of Poirot's. He is like the perfect uncle and he is the one that still visits me, albeit very rarely. In a way I am very happy that it is him and none of the other ones, as this would be much harder to deal with these days.

Sometimes I think someone should have been censoring the bookcase at my childhood home, as I am sure half of these books were not age appropriate. I have been always reading after that, but thankfully, although other amazing and memorable fictional characters came, I have never had such problems with them.  Although I do not regret reading novels, I do often wonder how I would be had I not. And I am jealous sometimes of people that have not read novels and who might have a clearer, unpolluted mind. Mine often feels extremely heavy, like I am carrying a little bit of fiction around.

And below a healthier version of the "hidden character" situation I made for Aretousa.

With a little help from the chefs...

One of my favourite programs on television a couple of years ago was a cooking-travelling program called Two Greedy Italians, with Gennaro Contaldo and Antonio Carluccio. I think there also was a sequel to it. The two guys are close friends and of course great cooks and that together with the fact that they were travelling trough Italy, meeting the "real people" and the local recipes made the series very entertaining and never failed to put me in a good mood.

Antonio Carluccio

I don't think I will be alone if I say that I have noticed an unprecedented bloom of cooking programs on television the last five years at least. There are competitions for amateur and for professional chefs, baking competitions, very quick meals, very healthy meals, top models turning into chefs, Parisian meals, exotic meals, how to make your favourite takeaways, Michelin star chefs sharing their secrets, chefs travelling around the world, chefs on almost all the morning programs and so on and so on. The exposure, expansion and success of the culinary profession must be one of the highest in the last few years. People are addicted to these programs and they have claimed a large portion of airing time on TV and of course shelf space with the accompanying books in bookshops.
What do these cooking programs owe their huge success to? Is it that the British people were not exposed to interesting food and needed this injection of inspiration? I don't think so, as apparently cooking shows are blooming in other European countries and in the States too. Is it maybe a secret need for the domestic and for making tasty food from scratch for your family? Maybe its the fact that food is a primary need which makes it a universal theme that attracts most of us? Or a health craze has lead more people to want to cook "proper food"? Or does it come down to some great characters with lots of passion and dedication to what they do, getting out there and starting something that more young chefs and individuals aspire to?

I don't have a clue, but I was thinking there is definitely something to be learnt  from the phenomenon of the cooking program. Is there any way this could happen to Art for example? What would the equivalent of the culinary success be for Art on television? Would a half an hour program of artists talking about their work be of any interest to anyone. Would someone have to show viewers how to make something that could be easily tried later at home to get them more involved, and would an artist even want to do that. (after all some of these chefs are true artists and they don't hesitate to show you how they make a recipe). Or is Art (or rather artists) above all this, above television, or simply do not need it. You would probably have thought the same about elite cuisine 20 years ago, but they have cracked it. So would the only airing time for Art on TV be the new amazing Manet show or a tour around a major museum. Chefs have even tried and some times succeeded in changing food habits and perceptions in society through television. I am one of the people that actually deeply dislikes TV, but it is one of the best ways to get across to people and the chefs have used it in the most productive and successful way for their profession. I just wish there was an Artist out there that could come up with an imaginative, creative and new way of using TV for the exposure and expansion of Art and Art practice in this modern society.  

Unfortunately, I am not this person, but I had a little culinary help to a series of 3 landscape collages I made through the space of two summers. In Greece, cheeses, salami, bacon and such things are cut or sliced and wrapped for you in a certain typical paper, printed with food images and the name of your grocer's or supermarket. I used such a paper by photocopying and enlarging it because I love the vivid colours of the prints and the poor quality of the marks on them. I could never use these colours myself if I was mixing them, because they are so vivid they don't come naturally to me. But in these collages I have to use what I have been given from the wrapping paper. If you look closely you can see a salami or two.

The original wrapping paper

Regarding ducks

I have been lately discussing the verbal development of toddlers with a friend of mine. Of course the amount of words a very young child uses is in no way a direct representation of their understanding, but nevertheless it gives us a little window into what's going on in the human brain at that age. I am mostly interested in how images and words make sense in a young child's mind. For example most toddlers begin by using a word to refer to a wider group of things, such as "mummy" for all female people, including elderly ladies and young girls. Or the word "horse" for horses, donkeys and zebras. Some then tend to be more specific and say "brown horse" or "baby horse" before they start using the actual words for different animals.

So far so good. My big amazement started when I realised that toddlers can recognise actual living animals even if they have never seen a photograph or a film of these animals, but only an illustration of them in a book. For example my daughter pointed at a duck in the park and said "dack". She had never seen a live duck before, but I went around the house finding which illustrations of ducks she had come across. The illustrations of ducks in the books are only the personal artistic interpretation of different illustrators and quite different from each other. So can the human mind recognise an overall "duck" shape in these illustrations that is instantly recognisable as that of an actual duck? Or is the repetition of the word "duck" by an adult each time the child looks at the illustration of a duck that links together in the brain all the different illustrative versions of a duck?

My friend's baby pointed and named an actual elephant at the zoo at age 18 months and the only one he had seen was Elmer who (for those poor of you who are enduring this although you have no kids) is a colourful elephant from small square books, I don't know how many times smaller than an actual elephant!

The different ducks my daughter had
access to around the house

Elmer the lovable elephant my friend's
baby  was exposed to

And then to top it all off I happened to watch a program on television about the capacity of the human brain for facial recognition. Basically if any toddler was exposed to, for a example, a flock of 30 ducks for a substantial period of time, they would be able to tell apart every single one of those ducks. And also pick them out amongst thousands of ducks. That applies to any species they were in contact with in their very early years. As adults, we are of course able to pick out a photo of our partner's face for example amongst thousands of images of people's faces. And we don't think much about this ability of our brain. Because it was programmed to identify even the most minuscule facial differences and got exposed to so many numerous different faces and facial expressions. This development happens mainly before age 5, so humans that were not exposed to other human contact by that age, are almost unable to regain this ability. But if you were for example to have grown up amongst chimpanzees (this program was about cases of children who did) you would be able to tell each one of them apart and pick them out amongst thousands of individuals.
So where do words come into this? And my confusion over the duck issue remains. Is it a visual learning of the word "duck" or a verbal  trigger that prompts the mind to learn what an image of a duck can look like?

Unfinished business...

Snow has indeed fallen since Friday...cannot say it was exactly what I was hoping for. Still time though, today it seems to be turning thicker.

Friday

Sunday

I had a beautiful book as a kid, that was sent to us from a Danish family we met on a holiday. It was all about snow with illustrations of snow foot prints of different animals in the forest. It became very popular with my classmates at primary school and unsurprisingly I can no  longer find it amongst my old books at home.

I remember playing a similar game in Moscow from the windows of our coach, where I had to look at fresh snow-prints and then look at all the pedestrians and their different shoes and quickly try to match the right shoes to the right snow-prints. And then take it a step further and try and imagine their faces. Very annoyingly many times the traffic would suddenly clear and we would move or the angle was wrong or someone walked in front and I never got to see some faces. 

Anyway, the only interesting snow-print that can be seen from this window is this of a car.

Gone auto mobile, gone

Of course instead of sitting around (kind of) and waiting for the snow to build up, I could have been getting on with some of my projects. I often find myself complaining that I don't get the time to finish some of them off. It is very strange as very often I get an idea, somehow find the materials-or the other way around-and get on with it and finish everything very fast, even if circumstances are not favourable. Other times I have the idea and start something but time passes and things happen and  it just takes ages for me to finish something. These  unfinished projects hover around (literally and) in my head and I am now determined to finish at least a couple of them. 

Three wooden dolls with interchangeable heads, finished in
 less than a week in a dump house with a small baby

And the next images are of a new (really started months and months ago) set of wooden dolls, for which I had all the kind help in the world from a friend and his wood turning equipment and expertise, but despite that and despite living in a great apartment with no dump, they are still not finished. So I will give my self a deadline of 1 month from today to finish them. And that is that!

 

The one doll out of three that is finished

...and the pieces of the remaining two dolls  

Snow,snow,snow????

One of the things I really miss since living in London is the sea. It is a constant kind of slow burning longing that is always present and gets really strong with some triggers, like seagulls and some smells in the wind. The river in London doesn't really do much for me, as it is so flat and dark. The only time I was really taken by the Thames was when I watched  on television the Jubilee parade of so many different vessels, very colourful on the grey water; absolutely breathtaking.
Anyway, my "seasickness" (as in homesickness, not feeling nauseous) gets even worse in the winter for a reason I cannot define. I think because the summer feels so far away, and so does my next proper encounter with the sea. I always think about the summer places-mostly islands- I lived on and the sea throughout the winter and I really get frustrated when I am told that it is really the people I am missing and not the places or the sea. I of course miss the people, in fact it is the people I connect with the most, but I have never been able to convey to anyone that for me it is the place in its own right that I miss, for what it is. The people that are connected to it make it as much as the place makes them. To the extent that when I meet people from a beloved place somewhere else they always seem to me to be lacking a bit of themselves and always the encounter is somewhat disappointing. I think this is the curse of the landscape painter.
The only thing that will help in the winter is a good dose of some snow. We have been promised some for this week, but the first bit was so little and sad it made the seasickness worse. But I do really hope we will get it tomorrow so I can post a snowy photo. I am also wondering how a Northern person might feel without any snow and if they would get "snowsickness". Would be very interesting to hear.

Jubilee River Parade

A sea mobile with fish for Aretousa
(looks more like a pond mobile)

Hello...hello

Hello there everyone and anyone,

This is a blog I have just opened with a little inspiration from my friend Michael.
I could never keep a diary properly (I did once as a kid, but the first month my parrot escaped and I wrote for another month about how I could hear it calling around the house; but when it never returned I gave the diary up and never managed to keep one for longer than a week), so I hope that I will do better with this blog.
As the title suggests I will try to use it in my spare moments, which vary enormously from day to day. Most days I have some moments spare adding up to a couple of hours. As I am dangerously sleep deprived for a variety of reasons, the quality of those spare moments is debatable and I think some interesting things-visual and verbal- might come of them.
So till very soon-hopefully-have a good evening.

Natalia