How to make paper mache birds
Read moreThe paper mache birds I’ve been making this year are more ‘folk art’ than ‘fine art’. People have asked me how I make them. There’s no precise recipe, I’m afraid, but this is roughly how I do it.
The suicide of Vincent van Gogh – 29 July 1890
Read moreOn 27 July 1890, Vincent van Gogh, an unkempt, unknown 37-year-old Dutchman, walked out of his lodgings in the village of Auvers-sur-Oise, just north of Paris, where he had been living and working since May. That day instead of his usual easel and paints, he carried a handgun he had perhaps borrowed from a farmer ‘to scare away the crows’.
Europeans discover Easter Island – 5 April 1722
Read moreThe rise and fall of Easter Island is a parable for our times; a warning from history of what happens when humans doesn’t pay close attention to every detail of Planet Three’s precious natural resources. On Easter Sunday 1722 Dutch sailor Jacob Roggeveen landed on a speck of volcanic land 12 miles long and 6 miles wide in the vast expanse
The death of Carl Linnaeus – 10 January 1778
Read moreThe Bible, Genesis 2:20, states: “And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field”. But actually it wasn’t Adam. It was a Swedish botanist: Carl Linnaeus. My dad was also a botanist, so since I was knee high to an orthoptera, I was aware that everything had a
Galapagos: all the fun of the fish market
Read moreThere is so much fun to be had watching wildlife at the fish market in Puerto Ayora, Santa Cruz, Galapagos: pelicans, sea lions, frigatebirds.
British Rock Music Painting
Read moreMy British Rock Music painting is pure Pop Art! My life has always been accompanied by music, much of it British, much of it rock. So what could be more natural to a British music-loving artist who has been having fun painting maps than a British Rock Music painting? 2017 marks the 50th anniversary of the release of the Beatles’
Robert FitzRoy: Captain Fantastic
Read moreEveryone knows what a weather forecast is, most people have heard of Charles Darwin’s Voyage of HMS Beagle, and most British people have heard of the shipping forecast. So it’s very sad to think that more people don’t know about Robert FitzRoy who made all these things possible.
How I made my painting of the shipping forecast
Read moreDiscover how I made my painting of the UK shipping forecast, ‘Attention All Shipping’ in this blog which includes lots of photos of the work in progress.
Shipping forecast wins award!
Read moreTo my utter surprise and delight, my shipping forecast painting, ‘Attention All Shipping’ has won a British Cartographic Society award!
The death of Jane Digby – 11 August 1881
Read moreHere’s a bodice-ripping love story of sex and adventure: the story of Jane Elizabeth Digby, Lady Ellenborough. She died on this day 1881. I celebrate her as a woman who did her own thing, when doing one’s own thing was very much not what women did. During the course of her lifetime, today’s average British woman will have sexual contact
The death of Frida Kahlo – 13 July 1954
Read more“They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn’t. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.”
Artist Frida Kahlo was born in 1907, the daughter of Hungarian Jewish father and indigenous Mexican mother….
Constellations of the Northern sky
Read moreRead about Jane’s painting ‘Heavens Above’ a map painted in watercolour of the constellations of the Northern sky.
The Shakespeare triptych
Read moreThree paintings in praise of Shakespeare: 1 a map of Europe with the plays shown in their approximate location, 2. the British plays, and 3 the Italian plays.
The death of Mary Leakey – 9 December 1996
Read moreNo matter who we are and what we think, the beautiful truth is that we are all children of Africa. It was in no small part the painstaking work of Mary Leakey that revealed this. For more than 50 years under hot African skies, archaeologist Mary grubbed around in the earth searching doggedly for clues that would reveal the truth
All the plays of Shakespeare
Read moreA painting of all the plays of Shakespeare as a map with the plays shown in their approximate location.
The death of Alfred Russel Wallace – 7 November 1913
Read moreHow and why do species change? Why do some occur in some places, but not in others? Why do they die out? These big questions didn’t scare intrepid British explorer, biologist and geographer Alfred Russel Wallace, who died on this aged 90. He wanted answers. Wallace’s achievements have since been obscured by those of Charles Darwin. But be in no