Ever the best of intentions – this blog is a few months late. The trouble is there’s always painting to do, and I’d always rather do that. However, after 3 days of messy play with oils and cold wax (Paula Dunn’s workshop – it was wonderful), I’m settling down to an admin day.

So – one of my goals for this year was to run the Cleveland Way with a sketchbook. I did it back in May and I loved it! I live with my husband and three children so time alone is a rare thing. I generally send everyone away for a week in the summer and I know that after 4 days the world becomes a little drab and I start to miss them. It was the ‘being on my own’ element of this little adventure that I wasn’t sure about. It turns out that having only myself to worry about was very liberating and I’d like to do more!

The Cleveland Way is one of the National Trails. One of the shorter ones at 109 miles. It starts in Helmsley. Heads towards the coast at Saltburn on Sea. And then follows the coastal path all the way to Filey Brig. I ran it over the course of a week. I could have done it much quicker, but wanted to be able to stop and draw, and not have to worry about getting to the next place. I wanted to enjoy it!

Day 1 Dan waved me off in Helmsley early on a sunny Monday morning. I had a change of running kit, shorts to sleep in, and waterproof, warm, windproof layers in case the weather turned. A bank card, a phone, some revolting sandwiches, water, suncream, a map, and a very carefully chosen minimal drawing kit:

I had an OMM map pouch on my front so I didn’t have to take my pack off to get to my drawing things. I knew I wouldn’t stop as often if I had to faff around.

Day one was HOT. By the time I got to Sutton Bank it was that still, sultry kind of heat. I watched the gliders and ate my now body temperature salami and hummus wraps. Don’t judge me – it was all we had in the fridge and they were as disgusting as they sound.

Highlights from day one were Rievaulx Abbey, Sutton Bank and the North York Moors. My rattly running pack was heavy, despite my careful packing (it doesn’t matter how low you drop your standards, water is always weighty) and distractingly noisy. About 10 miles in I resorted to a play list and not being able to hear my pack made me less aware of it and I started to really enjoy myself.

The moors were tinder dry – the heather was sun scorched. I wasn’t at all surprised by the moorland fires that raged in August. I didn’t see a soul running north along the edge of the moor. I was entirely alone and it was lovely! By the time I arrived at the YH in Osmotherly I’d run 25.5 miles and needed about 5 cups of tea.

Day 2 was very lumpy! It was another hot one and seemed an endless series of steep ups and steep downs, none of them very runnable. It was only 14 miles, but only two of them were nice. Day 2 was my unfavourite bit.

But my Airbnb was beautiful; hidden (I got so lost trying to find it) in bluebell woods. I sat on the doorstep in the sunshine and worked on my drawings from the last two days. In the morning I was woken by a cuckoo…

This is one of the paintings – very nearly finished. It’s going to be called ‘Flight’. For the gliders, the swifts and the butterflies:

Day 3 was cold and gloomy, but once I’d climbed up on the ridge I had about 10 glorious miles of flat foggy moorland. Captain Cook’s Monument and Roseberry Topping were in the distance.

I did not enjoy climbing Roseberry Topping. I do not like heights and I am a wuss. I went up it looking at my feet, and came down like a crab. It’s pretty though. I like the view of it rather than the view from it. I feel that way about the sea too.

I spent the night in a less friendly Airbnb in Great Ayton, where everything was grey and I couldn’t cook anything. There was a lovely view of Roseberry Topping the next day though, as I was making my way back to the route. I liked the way the windswept pine and the peak made an arc.

I’ve been working on these paintings: still plenty to do…

I seem to be painting chronologically, though it wasn’t my plan. It just seems to make sense to remember the light and the colour for each day. I’ve almost painted 7 pictures so far, and I’m only on day 3. They’re all quite small which is making a refreshing change after the Calderdale epic! I’m working on several at once because I can fit them on my desk!

As I’m not having an exhibition this year it’s been really nice just to play, and see where the mood takes me. Sometimes I have a notebook full of ideas and no time to do anything with them. So, with no particular aim in mind, I just really wanted to paint these!

My family has been going to Northumberland for Autumn half term for years now – it’s a tradition. Another tradition is the hat! I bought all three children a new hat the first year we went, expecting windy walks along the beach. Daisy chose the monster hat and christened it ‘Death’. It was a good hat for stomping and sulking in. Death has been with us every time since, even though he’s a little small now. And she doesn’t stomp and sulk anymore – in fact she did her very best to humour me when I woke her for the sunrise last Autumn.

I find the short days very difficult and go into a bit of a panic when the clocks go back. I feel the need to get all the daylight I possibly can, which annoys the teenagers who’d prefer a lie in. Every morning in Norhumberland I got up to watch the sunrise on Beadnell Bay, and then run to either Football Hole Beach, or on to Embleton Bay. Running on the wet sand is like running in the sky and I look forward to it every year. I mean – just look at it!

Some days I’d end up on Embleton Beach twice in a day. Once alone in the morning, and again with flasks of tea for treasure collecting with everyone. Robin called in ‘Treasuring’ when he was small, and the name stuck. He’s like me in that he’s always on the lookout for something. Daniel laughs at Robin and I on the beach. As soon as we’re on the sand we’re both heads down and searching. ‘You’ve assumed the position’ he laughs. This year the new treasure was seaweed!

Previous years have been colourful string and shells with holes in (to thread as we walk) and beach glass. And one year a perfect seabird skull. For my birthday last year a friend bought me a seaweed press and it opened up a new world of pattern possibilities.

In the early morning I liked the way the windows on the beach huts shone gold in the sun, with the massive Dunstanburgh Castle appearing ethereal in the distance. From visiting in previous years I know it’s like that scene with the knight in Monty Python’s Holy Grail; you walk and you walk and you never get any closer.

Another favourite spot in the other direction is the Monks House, which lies between Seahouses and Bamburgh. On another bright day (we were spoiled for bright days last year) we drove to Bamburgh and walked back to Seahouses for Fish and Chips so we could walk them off on our way back to the car. The shorter day and the incoming tide meant a bit of a race with the incoming tide and sun going down.

As we approached the houses I thought I saw a murmeration. There were two flocks of birds swirling around each other. The light caught the wing tips though and they appeared silver, so they can’t have been starlings (therefore not a murmeration, which is a pity as it’s such a beautiful word). Some kind of seabird I think, but smaller than gulls. I didn’t photograph it as I though it better to just watch. But I planned my picture as soon as I got back to the house.

My drawings are always rough and a bit wobbly. Usually I’m drawing fast because of the cold or because I’m being left behind! I like to draw the movement of the waves and often end up with wet feet. I’ve been developing some of the waves drawings this week. Some Cleveland Way waves, and some Northumberland waves!

This one is in need of a title because I can’t call it Murmeration. Let me know if you’ve any ideas! I’m proofing them tomorrow with Rob the printmaker and then they’ll be all ready for Hebden Bridge Open Studios in a couple of weeks! I’m opening my Linden Mill Studio on July 4th, 5th and 6th.

That last one was the bad post that I needed to write. I wanted to get it done before going back to the studio on Monday January 6th. For me the new year begins then! My children are rejoicing in the room next door as the first school day back has been declared a snow day! Which means that when I’m back in the mill tomorrow, I will have company. We set up a HUGE scalextric track over the holidays so they’re going to come in for one last play on it before putting it away. I can then reclaim my desks…

Next year, and this feels very risky, I am NOT having an exhibition. After a really busy year of building towards the ‘Engineers & Chocolatiers’ exhibition at Bankfield, I wanted to approach a project differently. Usually I agree a date with a gallery and work backwards from that. This time I wanted to start with an idea and see where it takes me. So…

In July last year, when my family was all away, Daphne (my little car) and I went on a little adventure to Kilburn. This will mark the beginning of two journeys I’d like to complete in 2025:

Me and my lovely running girls ran a section of the Cleveland way in 2023. We ran from Staithes to Scarborough, stopping over night at Boggle Hole. It was beautiful. I’ve always wanted to run the whole 109 mile trail, and this year I plan to do it! I want to run it mostly on my own, with the bare essentials, a sketchbook and a camera. I want to draw on the way round (which is why I’m best on my own) for inspiration for a series of Cleveland Way inspired paintings. Perhaps also to create a book and a map.

I need to work it all out. I might do it in two halves – the inland section and the coastal section. I’m NOT camping!

The Path begins at Helmsley, so while I was away in the summer I stayed the night there. I met several couples, all starting the path. I’ve painted lots of places that are on the Cleveland Way over the years. Here are a few of my favourites:

After the Rain at Rievaulx – Kilburn White Horse

Catch Your Breath – Spindrift – Whitby – Staithes

The path passes the White Horse at Kilburn, which I’d sat and drawn in July. To find the best view I had a nasty encounter with some dogs that chased me into a beautiful meadow. I felt I’d earned the right to a use a little artistic licence and included the meadow in my ‘Summer at Kilburn’ painting:

‘Summer at Kilburn’ – 2024. Inks, acrylics, gouache, watercolour, gold thread and gold leaf.

This marks the start of journey Number 2: to find all the White Horse Hill figures! Well, most of them. For that I’m going to be heading down to Wiltshire (where my parents are) and Oxfordshire, and hopefully exploring them with Daniel in Spring. One of my favourite artists is Eric Ravilious and he painted the South Downs. There is a quiet beauty to his work that I love. I want to find his views.

Kilburn White Horse – Wood Engraving with a little gold leaf. 2024

I know what I’m doing with the Cleveland Way project. I think that’s going to Chantry House Gallery in 2026. As for the White Horses – I’ve no idea! It would be nice to find a gallery outside Yorkshire to take my work; I’m just going to see how it develops.

There! My statement of intentions for 2025. If I’ve said it out loud I HAVE to do at least one. Best start training.

It’s a tricky one, this. It’s a blog post I feel I should write, though my husband says I shouldn’t. He says I should forget about it and move on. He’s right – but just in case this could be shared with someone in time to stop them making the bad decision I made, I’m pressing ahead.

This isn’t for sympathy, and it isn’t for vengeance. It’s for information.

Speccy young me in National Health Specs

Just over 5 years ago I did a little post about having corrective eye surgery. It was December 2019. I was excited, I wasn’t nervous. I never said anything about it after that, and here’s why:

There’s not a lot of point naming names. The laser surgery company is probably the biggest name in the market in the UK. If you’ve ever looked into having eye surgery, this may have been the one that came up first . The surgeons name is almost irrelevant.

In a very brief summary.

• In December 2019 I had Natural Lens Replacement Surgery at their suggestion. Though the surgery didn’t go wrong, the result left me with short term damage (secondary cataracts) and permanent damage to my eyesight that cannot be reversed.
• I went from someone who wore one pair of glasses, or one pair of contact lenses, to someone who cannot tolerate contact lenses, and who has 5 different pairs of glasses for different activities. And even with those, my sight is quite poor.
• I have almost permanent double vision, and have had to change the way in which I paint and draw. It’s also reduced my ability to drive.
• Specialist medical reports done as part of a legal claim against the surgeon concluded that I was an unsuitable candidate for the operation because of a history of squint from a very young age. A range of tests were not carried out. Given my medical history, they should have been. They had a legal obligation to do so.
• After 4 and half years I reached a settlement out of court. There was no admission of error from the surgeon or the LS company. I was told from the start by my legal team that the defendants would never admit wrong doing.

That’s probably enough. But for anyone who knows someone considering the operation, here’s a long winded diary of events which may make them proceed with caution.

I’ve worn glasses since I was about 18 months old. I had a squint when I was very small and I had two corrective surgeries when I was a child. Ever since laser eye surgery became a thing in the early 90s, I’ve always wondered if it was possible for me. My prescription was strong, my eyes were very imbalanced, and with my squint history I always assumed it wasn’t. However, late one night I just did a little Googling and half filled in a form on line. I didn’t complete the form – I walked away. But the next day the company called me and invited me in for a consultation at their clinic in Leeds. I was told that Laser Surgery was not suitable, but that Natural Lens Replacement Surgery would be. NLR is basically cataract surgery; replacing your natural lens with a prescription acrylic lens. An operation that’s been around for over a century – I was told safer than laser surgery. A longer chat with an Optometrist in a white coat. Some tests. Some costings. A few days to think about it. After extracting a hefty deposit, the surgeon squeezed me in for a brief consultation between surgeries. We were literally with him for a few minutes. The conversation was standard. All standard questions – nothing pertinent to my case. At the time we assumed it was such a routine operation that there wasn’t really much to say. In the months that followed we became fairly convinced that he had never read my notes.

My eyes were done over two days December 12^th and 13^th 2019. Friday the 13^th – the day that Boris Johnson became our new PM.

Initially recovery was as expected. After a few days I started to worry. After Christmas I was sick with worry and demanded an emergency appointment back at the Manchester clinic. My sight was juddery – wobbly. Everything was dimmed. I’d got myself to the clinic on the train, and I’d gone on my own. My concerns were dismissed and I remember being told that as an artist I was being hypersensitive.

Over the next few weeks things got steadily worse. I couldn’t cross the road on my own. I wouldn’t go out on my own as I didn’t recognise people. Everything was getting dimmer and it felt like I was looking at the world through a narrow tube. And still everything juddered. I could look at a fixed point so, strangely, I could still sew prints on my sewing machine. But I could not scan a page or a rack of inks, so couldn’t paint or draw.

Numerous phone calls got us nowhere. The surgeon would not see us until 8 weeks after the surgery. I was told I was being impatient. I was at this stage inconsolable, and Daniel was begging them. It made no difference. I left a one star review on Trust Pilot and got called within the hour for an appointment with a surgeon in Manchester. At this point I was allocated a Patient Representative who came with me to all my appointments. She seemed nice – told me that her partner had just had the same procedure and was having similar problems. I had her mobile number and I called her in tears a number of times. She always managed to calm me down.

Tests at the Manchester clinic revealed secondary cataracts, also known as posterior capsule opacification (PCO); essentially scar tissue forming around the edge of each new lens reducing light and vision. Very common. Actually very very common – like 20% of patients get it to some degree (which wasn’t a statistic shared on the advertising leaflets!). On Valentines Day I had a laser procedure called a YAG to cut away the scar tissue. It was like someone drawing net curtains from my eyes and I was hopeful that everything would be okay after a few days. It was not.

The PCO had been masking other visual disturbances: flare, strobing, glare, ghosting, double vision. At this point we realised that I could no longer tolerate contact lenses as my eyes were too dry after the NLR and the YAG. That any spectacles would need to include a prism. Essentially, no matter what I wore, I could not get clear vision.

Suddenly all appointments were cancelled and we went in to lock down. I waited patiently for them to get in touch when they reopened. They never did.

Over lock-down I began to paint small scale pictures which meant that my eyes didn’t have to scan a large page. I took photos and worked from those, rather than drawing from life. I had several different prescription reading glasses. One for drawing, one for gilding, one for sewing. Eventually, once opticians were open again in the summer, I managed to get prescription distance glasses so I could drive again. I hadn’t felt safe enough to drive for 6 months

Experimenting with different prescriptions having been left high and dry by the LS company. Thank goodness you can get glasses on Amazon!

In September 2020 I chatted to a friend who was considering NLR surgery, and had had a consultation with the same company. I was angry to discover that they were operating again but hadn’t been in touch. I’d never been signed off. I wrote down details of everything that had happened to me, and he took it along to an appointment. His clinician said ”I know just who you are talking about. I was called in to deal with her case. She should never have been referred for surgery in the first place”. At this point I decided I needed to speak up.

Unfortunately for one woman versus a huge corporation (with a huge legal team), ‘no win no fee is’ the only option. But my solicitors were great, and had had dealings with this laser surgery company before. I was warned that they were slippery and would admit nothing. They were right.

The Solicitors pursued the surgeon and the LS company separately; the surgeon being self employed, sub-contracted by the company. They each blamed the other. A year or so in, I was advised to pursue only one of them, as if the case succeeded against one, but not the other, the other party could claim their legal expenses out of any settlement. It was decided that the LS company should be dropped, going only after the surgeon. I could see the sense, but remember that the LS company walked away at the beginning of lock down, feeling no responsibility for their patient unable to see well enough to drive or to work. They never got back in touch.

Medical reports (and there were many trips for tests at Spire and at LGI) concluded that because of my childhood history of squint I should have been referred, by the surgeon, to a different clinic for a range of specialist tests relating to eye imbalance and squint before he approved me for surgery. A specialist Orthoptist would have advised against surgery as, after 40+ years of the brain suppressing the double vision caused by a squint, any messing around would have had a very high chance of permanent visual complications.

As with most cases like these, mine did not get to court and a financial settlement was made 4 years and 6 months after the surgeries. The surgeon never admitted liability, but when the final reports were provided his legal team were very keen to settle quickly.

I conclude that I was naive. I’d never had any dealings with private medicine before and foolishly believed that a doctor would never do anything that was not within my best interests. I believe that the surgeon was too busy to read my notes, and I was on a conveyor belt of paying customers for an easy, standard operation. I believe that the LS company realised early on that the operation should not have gone ahead and that my kindly patient representative was them managing me, and keeping me quiet. I believe that they clean their social media, and I should have been suspicious that there were not bad reviews. I know now that they have been in trouble before, and that they are almost impossible to prosecute. There was a Radio 4 program in which they were investigated. I would like to believe that the surgeon learned something from my case and will behave differently in future.

So if we’re ever sat in the pub together or across the table in a cafe and I look shifty, it’s not because I’m feeling guilty about something, but because I’m not sure which of your lovely pairs of eyes to look in to.

To write this has been cathartic. I’m done now. Let’s move on.

If you want to ask any questions about my case, then please email me. I’m happy to share.

I had an exciting meeting at Bankfield this week, about something that’s going to be keeping me busy in the winter months. It’s going to be lovely to be able to hide away in a sea of colour whilst it’s colourless outside. I don’t think I can say too much until it’s all agreed.

It’s half term next week and I want to encourage you to go to Bankfield and see the exhibition while it’s still up! It’s there until Dec 21st, after which many of the paintings will be going to their forever homes, and they’ll never be all together again. Here’s a little blog about the final three of the exhibition:

This one is ‘Luddenden Dean’. I love this view! It always takes my breath away when driving out of Luddenden village and up towards Mount Tabor, but there’s nowhere to stop in the car. In search of perfect Calderdale views I walked from Wainstalls to Mount Tabor, and down a muddy field to Stocks Lane. I was freezing at the top of the hill, and then too warm in this sheltered spot where I stood and drew with my sketchbook resting on a moss covered dry stone wall. It was a spring day where the light moves fast. Different distant hills were being lit up in gold, and turning almost purple dark within half a minute. I love days like this; I think it’s a very Calderdale thing. To the left, in the bright patch, is Oats Royd Mill. Above it, in the far distance, is Stoodley Pike. Towards the right is Booth, with Booth cricket ground just visible through the trees. Behind that is Broadfolds, once the family home of the Murgatroyd family who owned Oats Royd Mill, and most of the Luddenden Valley. Midgley Moor is on the far right.

In starting at one end of the valley with Todmorden, I had to finish my Calderdale Journey with ‘Brighouse’, at the other:

I started at the top of the town at The Smith Art gallery. It was a bright and warm day and the grounds surrounding it were full of wild flowers. The walk back down to the town is flanked by two large churches. The Central Methodist Church on the left, and St Martin’s Church on the right. There’s a lot of artistic licence used to patchwork everything I wanted to include as the town is full of pretty and interesting buildings. So, below the church there’s the old town hall, The Prince of Wales Inn, the Richard Oastler Pub (in an old Methodist Church), a pretty little dry cleaners (which I think was probably once a Picture House). A grand parade of shops that include Harrison Lord Art Gallery and the old Post Office building. The pretty building below is the old Victoria Theatre (now the Calder Pub). Sugden Flour Mills demand to be acknowledged. My children used to love Rokt climbing walls, and I think they’re probably Brighouse’s most distinctive landmark. From the mills I walked along the tow path and out of the town towards Cromwell Bottom nature reserve. It very quickly goes from industrial to quiet green space with the Calder Valley Greenway passing between the River Calder and the Calder and Hebble Navigation. That was quite a revelation to me. I had no idea that Brighouse had so much green!

There’s a funny story about this last one – my Calderdale Map. A bit of insight into the business relationship with my husband!

Daniel and I have been together since 1993. Since school! And he’s been my business partner for 8 years. He returned early from work one day in 2016 announcing (very happily I remember) that he’d been made redundant, and was going to come and work with me. I told him that he certainly wasn’t! That this was my business, and that living and bringing up 3 children together was quite enough without working together as well. He persuaded me to try it for 6 months, and I’d have to admit that it’s worked out pretty well. BUT, we set ground rules, amongst them: NEVER question how much I spend on art materials and books, and NO spread sheets in the studio.

Now this exhibition was a huge undertaking, with less time to do it than was comfortable. We had a few meetings about what was needed, and these had to be in neutral gound (a cafe, so we coudn’t have an argument.). I always have more ideas than time and will get carried away; I will admit that I need reigning in a bit. So he ‘MOSCOW’d’ the project. The MUST haves, the SHOULD haves and the WOULD be nice to haves…. Given the time scale, there was simply not enough time to produce the map. But to me the map was central, and was the thing that I’d planned first, in the summer, sitting by Lake Annecy, whilst planning my year ahead. So I rebelled… I did a little every day and kept it hidden under piles of papers. By the time I revealed it, it was well underway and had to be completed! So the map was my act of rebellion…

It was important because unless you understand the topography of Calderdale, it’s hard to understand why it’s developed as it has. I didn’t understand the shape of the valleys and the rivers until I started to paint it, and to understand that is to understand why industry developed as and where it did. Also – I love the names of things. There’s power in knowing the names of the moors you’re lost on (Soyland Moor, today in the fog) and the rivers you’re being flooded by.

So please – go to Bankfield! It’s a lovely museum. Mr Darcy’s shirt is there, and you have to pass my paintings to find it.

When did having ‘your 5 a day‘ become a mantra, likewise your 10,000 steps? They’re all just ideas in the public consciousness that are just out there, and maybe we adjust our behaviour a little because we are aware that this is something we all SHOULD be doing.

I think it’s time for new one to launch into the ether and it’s

5 human interactions a day

Though it may need a snappier title. How about

‘Hi -5!’??

Human Interactions x 5. Any suggestions?

It is becoming so very easy to spend days at a time without any kind of human interaction. You can self-serve at the supermarket and an increasing number of high street shops. We can collect and drop off our parcels at click and collect points. Getting a GP appointment is so difficult now that most people will call on doctor Google rather than call the surgery. We have our faces in our phones in queues and waiting rooms so we don’t chat to strangers. We mostly buy our train tickets on line now, and we don’t even need to speak to the bus driver if we pay contactless. All these little cuts: the self service, the removal of ticket offices at railway stations – they’re all one more human interaction taken away. We’re going to forget how to do it.

My Dad says that socialising is a muscle, and the less we use it the more difficult it becomes. It’s not right, it’s damaging us. Both our mental health as individuals and our society.

I have 3 children. My eldest is 17 and, just as I was at the same age, she’s shy and will avoid talking to strangers. I remember becoming aware of how she was withdrawing over lock-down. She, like lots of kids, was reluctant to go back to school when the time came. She’d forgotten how to be around people. There were consequences for children her age. It changed them. They learned how to navigate the world without having to deal with people. It’s that age group that I see with big head phones or ear buds, shutting out the world.

But it’s my age group too. I look at my phone too much, but I am making a concerted effort to stop. I made a pact with my little sister at the beginning of the year to replace phones with books. She’s doing way better than me, but I’m trying.

Last week was the ‘back-to school shopping trip’. School shoes and stationery – we always have fun. Not the shoes bit, but the stationery bit. And we always have lunch out, with cake. It’s part of the ritual. Of the 25 people on the station platform, I’d say 15 were on their phones. On the train it was worse – it always is. But when I got on the train an older man made some comment about my son’s hat; said he looked like Peter from The Railway Children. So we talked all the way to Rochdale about the film, and then old TV shows like Porridge, and Last of the Summer Wine (I’m not that old, but it’s something I remember watching with my Dad and my Grandad), and how David Wilde was in both. Then he got off and there was a lady with a figity dog, and we talked about kids going off to University. On the way home the train was silent until it broke down, at which point me and all the kids got talking to a sound engineer about music, and recording the individual strings of a grand piano so an electric piano could sound like one.

The point I’m making is that the less we interact with people, the easier it is to view everyone with suspicion, but that most people are nice and have something interesting to say. Little human interactions, those outside our familiy and our friends, mean we might chat to someone with whom we don’t agree on some things. Maybe on big, political things. But we might come away thinking that, though we don’t have a lot in common, they were okay – quite decent really. And maybe they might think the same about you.

So what I propose is this: Try to have at least 5 human interactions a day. Unless you’re really in a hurry, queue for the cashier in the supermarket. Go to the post office rather than booking your parcels to be collected. Talk to someone in a queue. It doesn’t have to be deep and meaningful. Just say hello. I think speaking to a real person on the phone should count too, but not voice notes. Conversations have to be two way.

I feel that we are sleepwalking into something frightening, and I want to stop it before we can’t go back. This is important.

I wrote this over a week ago and haven’t posted it because I didn’t know what images to put with it. I still don’t know! So here’s a nice painting from 2018 called ‘A Break in the Clouds’. It’s my running painting. I painted it because I did the couch to 5k, and then discovered fell running, which changed everything for the better.

Couch to 5K. There’s another mantra.

But the new 5 a day is talking to people. Please talk to someone about it.

I had a lovely end to last week. The ‘Cragg Vale’ painting (in my last blog) sold last week and will be shipped to Houston, Texas in the New Year! Exciting to be so well travelled… I love to know where my paintings go, and they were such nice people.

So, after I’d stayed very local in the coldest winter months (though it’s the darkness I mind more than the cold), my friend Nancyann dragged me out to see her bits of Calderdale. After painting Akroydon a few years ago, I knew of Edward Akroyd’s other model village at Copley:

We parked near Copley village, walked over the footbridge to the church, out through the woods and up towards Pickwood Scar. From a gap between the trees you can see the river Calder, passing under two railway bridges, and back down to the Village.

Originally named ‘Copley Mills’, the village was first conceived as a model housing scheme by Jonathan Akroyd for the workers of his near by mill. The original Copley Mills had 136 houses, 4 shops, it’s own school, library and co-operative society. After his death it was completed by his son Edward, who went on to build a whole model village – ‘Akroyden’ – in Halifax.

I came back at the end of our walk to wander up and down the little streets. The early blossom and the washing was out in the front gardens. Then I went and sat in the woods just above the church. I drew the church, and I drew some of the houses. But I couldn’t work out how to put it all together without the church dominating the painting. It took a few weeks to sort it out in my head, and I went back just as the bluebells and the blossoms were fully out. Copley feels very hidden and very quiet. It’s lovely.

On this same walk Nancyann and I headed up to find Ladstone rock on Norland Moor. I’ve run leg 1 of the Calderway Relay fell race a few times, and the route goes past it (or near it). It’s a bit of a blur and there’s never time to stop and take in your surroundings! I know it’s a nice flat bit of the run, and I remember the way the heather feels underneath your feet. I especially enjoyed painting the heather and the curlews in this picture.

Ladstone Rock sits on the edge of the moor and seems to be a special place for many people; a quiet thinking place, overlooking the green valleys of Rishworth and Ripponden. Of the rock, I’ve heard stories of marriage proposals, wedding photographs, evening walks for bilberry picking, family picnics and of a cat that liked to be walked up there on a lead!

Next up was ‘Ripponden’…

This is the view that sums up Ripponden for me. I know it (again!) from the Calderdale Way, coming down from Norland Moor. On the day I drew this picture I’d just visited the children at Triangle School. We’d spent the morning making paper lanterns. It was February and cold and mizzly, but the edges of the trees were just starting to soften with the earliest signs of spring.

Don’t be fooled by these blog pictures. Norland Moor is a BIG painting. Nearly 150cm wide in its frame. As is this one – ‘The Golden Yellow Boat’ – of the Mayroyd Moorings in Hebden Bridge.

The importance of the Rochdale Canal to the development of Calderdale gave me a good excuse to go all out with colourful boats in Hebden Bridge. It’s where we all go for a splash of much needed colour on the gloomiest of winter days. There’s a boat covered in blue pots, my favourite is the golden yellow boat which is like a ray of sunshine on a drab day. There’s always bunting, fairy lights and washing. I’m sure boat life isn’t all sunshine and roses; I’ve heard it’s sometimes quite cold and damp. But from the other side of the tow path it looks very idyllic in the summer, and pretty cosy in the winter when all the little chimneys are smoking.

A friend who used to have a boat near Callis complained that there were SO many locks between Sowerby Bridge and Rochdale. I now know that the canal was very difficult to build and that constructing 14 locks was far less expensive than building the alternative tunnel. Several reservoirs were constructed to supply the canal, including Blackstone Edge and Hollingworth Lake! The canal was essential for joining the emptier upper valley with the more industrial end of Calderdale which starts with Sowerby Bridge and sprawls through to Brighouse.

The last one for this post is ‘West Vale & Greetland’.

This links with the Ripponden, Norland Moor and Copley paintings really.

I’m never quite sure where West Vale Ends and Greetland begins. I first went there in 2009 when I was doing a project with the children at Greetland School. The first thing I did was go to the wrong school – West Vale Academy, and they sent me up the hill to Greetland. Hattie, only 3 at the time, would come with me to the school sessions and either be left to watch Percy the Park Keeper on the teachers ipad, or be left to draw with a few of the older children. We played around with brusho inks and salt and built two big paintings of their town as they saw it. I remember catching Hattie licking the salt from the pictures – the blue tongue gave her away!

I love the contrast as you drive into West Vale, with the array of old industrial mill buildings on one side and the 17th century Clay House on the other. The West Vale Academy, St John’s Church and Victoria Mills add to the collection of tall towers that distinguish West Vale. Up through the railway arches to the leafy streets of houses of Greetland and the right school! And St Thomas’s Church with the green hills behind.

I’ll stop now. Well done on getting to the end!

And it was lovely! Thank you to everyone that came along on Friday 28th June.

Filling that big hall with work has given me sleepless nights. Pictures that seem vast in my studio diminish in size as they are carried up the Museum’s grand staircase. But it did all fit, and I have to say that I was very proud of how it’s all come together.

It’s years worth of work, pretty much. I was sat by Lake Annecy last July, with a notebook drawing out a plan. A plan that began with a map! We were all sat around with our noses in books of one kind or another. Robin was sat with his feet in the water reading The Count of Monte Cristo. I was scribbling. I’m always scribbling when really I should be reading more books.

I decided I simply wanted to celebrate Calderdale. I’m not a historian; I’m a fan! I wanted it to be all about what a nice place this is to live. I think I can say that because I chose here. I came from Suffolk to Yorkshire in 1995. To Calderdale in 2005. I’ve lived in Hebden Bridge longer than I’ve lived anywhere.

I started off at my end of the Calder Valley, in Todmorden and Cragg Vale:

The heart of Todmorden always feels like the Town Hall – which is pretty damn impressive for a town the size of Tod. Stoodley Pike monument is in the distance, the Unitarian Church high on the hill. St Mary’s Church in the centre and the market building and the stripy market stalls. Then the town library and Water Street. When the blue fronted shop was The Bear Cafe, I used to take the twins for a treat. Robin poked a small red car into a hole in the floorboards upstairs. It was just the right size and impossible to resist! There was no getting it back and there was quite a fuss. Someone will find it one day. The legendary Golden Lion (I toyed with the idea of making it yellow!), and the marina with the metal fish. I like Tod a lot.

Cragg Vale always feels so quiet and seperate. The twins play in a Christmas concert at the church every year. It’s usually frosty and the tree in the church yard is swaithed in fairy lights. In spring this point is the end of leg one, and the beginning of leg two of The Calder Relay Fell Race. The Hinchliffe Pub appears over the bridge. The gate house for the Hinchliffe’s lost house, New Cragg Hall, is further up the hill, the Vicarage (also built by the Hinchliffes) appears between the trees. This painting took the longest time. Started first in September, and it was finished at the end of May. Some paintings are like that; they take a while to decide. I like the shadows in this one.

The next one was ‘Halifax – Toffee Town’ – which I think is my favourite. I wanted to wrap (almost) all of my favourite Halifax buildings around The Piece Hall. Can you spot: The Wainhouse Tower, Crossley Heath, Bankfield Museum and All Souls Church? Dean Clough, North Bridge, the old Mackintosh chocolate factory and the old Art School on Queens Road. Harveys Department Store, The Piece Hall, The Victoria Theatre (I was there on Saturday for the girl’s dance show! I love it and every year I cry). The old picture house (below the Victoria), Square Chapel, Square Church Spire, the Industrial Museum, Halifax Minster, Borough Market, the old Burton building and Halifax Town Hall. The current Chocolate Factory in the Flour Society Building and Eureka children’s museum, along the bottom near the railway arches. The Shay stadium had to be included for my friend Mick, who was a Shayman to the end. I think he’d have approved, or laughed. The tiles at the bottom are the colours of Quality Street wrappers, and in amongst them are some of the birds from the stained glass at Shibden Hall.

Hebden Bridge next. My home town! I’ve painted it often. This time I wanted it to be all about the waterways meeting and crossing. At the top is the steep Keighley Road and the posh houses (known locally as ‘Snob Row’) on Birchcliffe. The bridges layer on top of one another down the centre of the picture: St George’s Bridge at the top, then the packhorse bridge, the main road bridge, the footbridge linking the two schools (school bridge!), then the aquaduct that carries the canal over the point where Hebden Water and the River Calder meet. On the left can you spot: Windsor Road, Linden Mill, the Town Hall, the old Hole in’t Wall pub (now Hope Gallery), the pretty house that always has optimistic washing out on Old Gate, Heart Gallery (who stock my work) in the old Arts Centre building and the back of Primrose Terrace on the tow path? On the right: Stubbings school, The White Lion, Innovation Mill, Hope Baptist Church, the Picture House, and the Trades Club!

I’m wrtiting about them in the order they were painted. It’s as good a way as any. The last one in this first set is ‘Sowerby Bridge’. I’m in Sowerby Bridge often as Rob at Knight Graphics is my long suffering printer. He does a wonderful job and is endlessly patient with me being a colour pedant.

I’ve tried to capture as many Sowerby Bridge landmarks as I can in one painting. The town is dominated by huge mill buildings that have been demolished in other parts of Calderdale. The weight of the town seems to be towards the bottom – by the river, lower than the canal. Sowerby Bridge’s industry was more for building the machinery for the textile trade, than for the textile trade itself. At the bottom of the painting is Dugdale Ltd formerly ‘Wood Bros – Engineers and Millwrights’. The railway arches seem to divide the lower valley from the lighter valley above. The beautiful building with the domed clock tower was once the town hall, and then Lloyds Bank. Far left (and out of sight in reality) is The Puzzle Hall Inn, along from the bottom of the footbridge over the canal and tow path. To the right is The Bull on the Bridge, and behind that The Blind Pig. The Navigation Inn is at the far right of the painting. There were a lot of important pubs to try and fit into this picture! The Canal Wharf is where the Calder & Hebble Navigation and the Rochdale Canal meet. Christ Church, at the bottom of Tuel Lane, and the huge Corporation Mill behind the main street.

Most important are the legendary Sowerby Bridge Geese. Hebden Bridge has geese too (often holding up the traffic on the main road and opposite my house), but I believe the Sowerby Bridge geese came first, and have their own Facebook Page. I had fun fitting them into tiles inspired by William de Morgan.

‘Engineers & Chocolatiers’ is filling the entrance hall at Bankfield Museum until December 21st 2024. Please go and see it! The museum is open 10am til 4pm. It is closed on Sundays and Mondays.

At the end of June this year I shall be holding a new exhibition at Bankfield Museum in Halifax. I was invited as part of ‘Culturdale’ – a celebration of all things Calderdale.

We played around with all sorts of titles and themes. ‘The Industrialists’ – too formal. Too much about what’s gone. ‘Legacy’ – was met with much scoffing. “Too much mentioned in wills”. I was trying to come up with a title that was unique to Calderdale and what shaped it. One day I jokingly said “Okay – how about ‘Engineers and Chocolatiers”. That’s all the mills, all the bridges and the canals, and the factories. Toffee was invented in Halifax. Sweets are made in Elland. And they all laughed and said “YES!”. Who wouldn’t want to come and see an exhibition with chocolate in the title?

So… ‘Engineers & Chocolatiers” it is.

I have a big map of Calderdale on my studio wall and have spent months trying to find a way in to the project. The hall at Bankfield is big and daunting, and I have to fill it. I want the paintings to be about the whole of Calderdale; from Todmorden at one end to Brighouse at the other.

Here’s Todmorden. I tried to find all the landmarks – places that were important – and patchworked them together in some kind of logical order. The Town Hall always seems to be at the heart of the town, and everything else wraps around it. There’s the canal and the legendary Golden Lion. The market, the churches, Water Street.

I was at a Christmas concert at the Unitarian Church in December. My twins play in the junior band and they, along with many other groups, were there to raise money for the building. It was so cold (we all bought hot water bottles and blankets), but it was such a vast and joyful gathering. It was the whole of the community under one, leaky roof. But filled with singing and mulled wine and candles and fairy lights.

Next up was Halifax. For me The Piece Hall is the heart of the town. It’s a rare and beautiful thing, and it’s currently putting Halifax back on the map. Seriously – who’d have imagined a Marvel Movie, or Blondie and Bryan Adams coming to Halifax?

And then there are the buildings that are less loved but still so beautiful, like the old Art School on Queens Road. I think this may be the most complicated painting I’ve ever done. There were just so many incredible buildings to get in. Obviously the chocolate factory is important – and with the Quality Street association, I wanted an Elmer style patchwork of wrappers to form tiles at the bottom. There will be many places I’ve missed, but I did manage to get the Shay Stadium in there, and Eureka!, at the insistence of my children.

Christmas in my family is never quiet. We’re a big, close family, but we’re spread about. So after hosting Christmas in Hebden Bridge, we travelled around a lot, visiting family and friends. We spent a few days visiting an old haunt from my childhood. The last time we were there was pre-Covid and it seemed to be thriving. Definitely ‘on the up’ as they say. But I was horrified at how desolate it’s become in the last 4 years. 65% of the shops empty. Building projects begun and abandoned. It was so sad. And walking to the heart, I saw how no one cared about where they lived any more.

I know I’m an outsider. I’m an ‘offcumden’. But sometimes it takes an outsider to notice. Calderdale is spectacular. Being proud of where you live is so important. I decided, driving back North after Christmas, that this whole exhibition is about being proud of where we live.

Now, I know my corner of Calderdale well, but I need some help identifying where is important to the communities of towns I know less well. I would really appreciate some help. I’m planning paintings of the following places and would love some suggestions:

Brighouse

Sowerby Bridge

Luddenden

Greetland and Elland

Rishworth and Ripponden

As well as the towns, i would like to paint the moors as well, so If anyone has suggestions for

Heptonstall Moor

Luddenden Dean

The Shibden Valley

Norland Moor

Elland Moor

Either comment, or email me. I’d be very grateful.

I’m taking this Halifax painting to a school in Shelf this afternoon. I want to see how many places they recognise.