I went to the National Portrait Gallery.
In one room I found two very unusual paintings. Two men’s portraits, hanged on both sides of the entry to the room. On one, the men is looking at us, while on the other one the men looks somewhere away.  You could say two different paintings but yet somehow very deeply connected.  You can feel it, even before you read the white cards next to them.

Both paintings were painted by the same artist, Charles Haslewood Shannon.
The man looking at us is Charles himself, the other one is his partner Charles Ricketts, also an artist.

There is a calming feeling in those portraits, beauty and sadness. You can easily feel that the artist was committed to his art work, that the art was his life.
Sadly enough Shannon became disabled in 1928 after a fall while hanging a… picture.
Art can be very danger, sometimes in a literal way.

 

 

I always thought, that living in a big city deprives you of the possibility of communing with wild nature.
It seams our big city is full of wild life. Bees live under our roof. (one day I will come back to this topic)
Fat Squirrels from the park are not afraid of people and you can meet foxes on a daily basis.

At first I was shocked, now…I am sad.
It doesn’t look like the nature takes its place, but it is a kind of weird coexistence.
Somehow foxes find their way here. They eat from trashes, wander around after dark, or play on tube’s railway.

Last time I saw the fox, he was sad too. We both looked at the empty place, where our tree was just day before.
Then He look at me with his big eyes.
And I saw the wild nature.

 

 

I made a collection of 12 birds for each month of 2018 year.
So here goes January’s starlings.

I Wish You A Wonderful Christmas Time

Since we are here, on this island, snow was never a guest.
But this year snow surprises us with its visits.
Maybe they are not often and it doesn’t stay for long, just for a tea, but for sure it gets on the first pages.

 

When I was living with my sister, every year in the evening of the first snow, we looked for old cassette (not CD, or mp3, but an old tape cassette) with Frank Sinatra songs. We were singing Stranger in the night, or It was a very good year and look at the white, fresh snow outside the window. After we took our dog for a long walk into the pure, white mystery world without scent.
We called this event Franky Time.

Today, far away from my sister in the galaxy far far away, when I saw first snow, unconsciously I looked for CD with Franky and listened : That’s life.

 

I miss my dinosaurs.

 

With the coming of Autumn I became a little homesick.
In order to make myself less sad, I collected some cucumbers, horseradish, dill and put it all into a jar.
Now, I have a small piece of home in the jar with me.

 

Because I have enjoyed it so much, and let’s be honest, the circumstances of nature were simply begging to be painted, I made more quick sketches. 
So here they are, more of white cliffs.