But I'm proud of it anyway!

When Alicia suggested dividing the plot into rooms that's exactly what she meant, so I'm posting some more pictures of the rooms because I think they are really great. This first one is immediately outside our kitchen window. We thought the statue of the black cat might put the birds off but in fact it has the oppsite effect. They even sit on its head and do nasty things to it. Mind you Daisy, one of our own cats, views it with considerable suspicion.
You'll notice another 'room' beyond this with a copse of trees and shrubs. These surround and effectively obscure one of the most interesting features in our garden..... the septic tank!!

What we call our 'Circular Room' and in many ways Alicia's favourite. The red bed in the centre is currently filled with red crocosmia and in summer really hits you between the eyes.

This is the main lawn area to the rear of the house. Alicia is the one with green fingers who plans and looks after all the borders. Me? ....... I cut the grass and sweep up the leaves!!

Another view of the lawn just to prove that my area of expertise is just as important as the flower beds! With all the rain we've had this summer the lawns are pretty waterlogged but dry out quickly is we get a couple of dry days..... thank god!!

Giverny it ain't!

When Alicia and I bought the house here in Ballagh we also bought with it an interesting prospect of garden. Actually a more fitting description might be scrubland… two thirds of an acre of it! We were told that the previous owner, an elderly lady, had a habit of ridging the area for potatoes in the spring then levelling it again in the autumn. She had left the house three years earlier leaving it fallow and still ridged. Meadow grass can grow quite tall if left uncut for 3 years.
First thing I did was innocently set out to pace the limits of my holding. I got about 20 yards before falling flat on my face and nearly breaking both legs in the gullies between the ridges.
The next thing we did was organize a guy with a JCB to come in and level the whole thing so we could start out with a blank canvas as it were. (Always a good artistic principle that.)
It was then we realised what a garden extending to two thirds of an acre actually looks like. My initial reaction was to wonder how much it would cost to concrete the whole thing and have done with it but then Alicia, who is brilliant with anything in the horticultural line said, “ Divide it into rooms….” Which is what in the years since we have done.
At first it didn’t look like much.

Just a flat expanse of grass, a couple of poly tunnels, and a greenhouse, which we subsequently watched from our kitchen window as it lifted in a storm moved four feet to the left, then collapsed in a heap of tangled steel and broken glass. But now… well it may not be Giverney but I reckon it’s as good as any other artists garden.
On warm summer days, and yes we do have them even here in Ireland, its great to step out into, lose myself in the peace, colours and paint wherever my brushes lead me!

Been away

Alicia and I have been to Oxford in the U.K on a short holiday. We first went there when we were running the Hall and enjoyed it, so we decided to pay a return visit. We crossed on the boat from Dublin to Holyhead, stayed a night in Bangor and then drove through Snowdonia on the A5 to Shrewsbury. Then by motorway to Worcester, and through Evesham and Broadway, where we lived for a year after the Hall closed, to Oxford through the north Cotswolds. A long drive but really enjoyable because of the autumn colours in the trees.
It was almost like New England in the fall and due, so the experts tell us, to the unusual weather we’ve been having. Freak or not, it should be enjoyed for what it is; natures palette at its best!
For years now we have been staying in Travelodges, and did so this time, but we’ve rarely encountered so many accommodation problems on any one trip. If it wasn’t curtains failing to close, broken showerheads, and beds collapsing when we lay on them, it was burst water mains meaning no water even for a drink, and taps that refused to turn on even when water tankers delivered fluid into the pipes. I think Travelodge should pay us an annual stipend to keep away from their lodges. Our vibes are obviously alien to that enterprise!
We’ve decided that Oxford is one of our favourite places. And so easy to get around. A great testimony to the effectiveness of Park and Ride systems, (why can’t we have something like that in Dublin?) Even in the rush hour the only real danger on the roads is that you’re going to collide with a student on a pedal cycle. And the buildings, Lovely cream stone, turrets, pepper pot towers, and lovely little shops. And quiet university Closes you can stroll around at your ease and leisure while entertaining lofty thoughts. No wonder everyone talks about ‘the dreaming spires of Oxford,’ it’s beautiful.
Typically, for me at least, I forgot my camera so I’m afraid no piccys to remind me what it was like. But at least that gives us a good reason to revisit the place doesn‘t it?

An Artists Tale.

When folk realise that I only came to painting late in life they often ask how I got started. Well the truth is it was really by accident rather than design. When Alicia and I left the stately home we ran in the English midlands and moved to our house in Ballagh in 1994 we were both a bit depressed. As I shall explain later, running Harvington Hall for the previous 8 years had been a fantastic experience for both of us, and when we moved to Ireland we both felt pretty low, me especially. But they always say it’s darkest before the dawn and in this case that was certainly true.
One evening in 1995 we were sitting watching a programme on T.V. showing how to paint landscapes. One of Frank Clarks ‘ Simply Painting’ series. ( Thanks Frank, I owe you my sanity!)
I happened to remark how simple it seemed then added, “ I can do that!”
In the nicest possible way Alicia suggested I should do it rather than just sit there feeling sorry for myself. So I did.
To be honest the first painting I produced wasn’t that good but, bless her, Alicia complimented me on the sky, and that gave me the confidence to keep going. Now any day that I don’t do at least some painting I feel I’ve missed out on the day altogether.
Of course it was a few months before I dared to ask anyone to actually buy one of my creations, and again it was Alicia who prompted me to do it. (Where would any of us blokes be without the woman in our lives?)
At that time Alicia was producing pressed flower pictures and we took them onto craft fairs to sell them. One day the person who had hired the table beside us simply didn’t turn up, and we were asked to spread ourselves across the two tables rather than leave an empty space. We didn’t have that many extra flower pictures so Alicia suggested that I put out some of the art work I always carried around with me in the boot of the car. At first I didn’t want to but she kept on insisting until finally, to keep her quiet as much as anything else, I brought some paintings through, put them out, and put what I thought were crazy prices on all of them. Crazy, HIGH, I mean.
Almost immediately a couple of ladies appeared at the stand, bought almost every one, and even commissioned me to paint some more! Which, of course, I was only too delighted to do…. and have been doing ever since.
That television programme I had been watching was ‘Frank Clark Paints Acrylics’ and so it was acrylics that I started with. Later I started experimenting with soft pastels and now they are the two mediums in which I produce most of my work. I have painted using watercolours but I find them such an unforgiving medium, one mistake and the whole painting can be ruined, that I usually avoid them if I can. Its usually only when producing a pen and wash work that I will use watercolours, and sadly I am allergic to something in the oil medium so I have to keep away from them.
But other than that I am now a very happy little artist painting away in my studio… which is what I’m going to do once I’ve uploaded this post along with an example of my work, a painting of Croagh Patrick, now sold, just in case you haven’t visited my website at www.alanartmarket.com

Oh dearie, dearie me!!

Well I did say I’ve hardly enough time in the day to do everything I need to, and I’m afraid this blog has fallen into that growing department in my affairs labelled ‘neglected.’ Is it really 2 months since my first, and last, post?… where is my time on this earth disappearing to? To all those millions of people who I know, because I’m such an optimist, keep hitting this blog in the hope of new postings all I can say is “ SORRY!!” As I wrote on more than one unfortunate childs report in my teaching days I ‘must do a lot better in future.’ To compensate, I’m posting this lovely picture of my lil ol homestead and studio in Roscommon for you all to look at and go ‘ooooohhhh… aaaah!’, and I promise to try and do more regular posts in the future.

Who the Blazes is 'Alanart?'

That’s me out in my garden painting and this is my first blog. It’s intended to run alongside my web site at www.alanartmarket.com, paint in some of the background I can’t put onto the website let you know who I am, what I’m all about, where I’m from, and where I think I’m going…. and not just about my art either.
So where will I start then? Well I suppose the main thing you need to know is that my real name is Alan Cox and I’m a self taught artist, retired from the rat race, and living here in Ballagh, in the lovely County Roscommon in Ireland. There’s the beautiful Slieve Bawn mountain facing my front door, the tranquil River Shannon flows into Lough Ree ten minutes down the lane, and there’s even roses and honeysuckle growing in the front garden. In fact there’s almost half an acre of garden here we’ve developed over the last 14 years. Monets Giverny it isn’t, but it is our little piece of Eden.
I’m certainly a long way from the streets of Manchester in the north of England where I was born in 1941 and spent the first 40 years of my life
As a young fella I had all sorts of jobs including 2 years in a monastery, but then, in the early 60’s, I met Alicia, (she’s from Leigh in Lancashire,) got married and qualified as a teacher. Roughly in that order. Leigh, by the way was formerly a mill town, so that makes her a real ‘Lancashire Lass’, but nowhere near as corny as Gracie Fields!
I taught for almost twenty years in primary schools around the Manchester area and in answer to the obvious question…. no I didn’t specifically teach art. Far from it. My idea of an art lesson at that time was to issue every child with a piece of sugar paper, a box of crayons and tell them to draw a picture of a football match while I got on with correcting their English essays. I dread to think how many potential David Hockneys I killed off with that attitude!
Then in the early 80’s, along with Alicia who was also a teacher, I came to live in Ireland. We’d no children, just a cat and a dog, so that facilitated our decision to throw in the teaching, and do our own thing. We both have Irish ancestors, mine from County Leitrim and Alicia’s from Tuam in County Galway, so that made the choice of Ireland as a bolt hole from the rat race a natural one.
We ran a craft business for 5 years, ( but still no painting by me!), and then we returned to England where we ran a stately home in Worcestershire for 8 years. Now that was fun but I’ll come back to all that later.
In 1994 we returned to Ireland, and bought this cottage in County Roscommon and it was then that I began painting, and Alicia got her chance to create her own garden from scratch.. Well, lets face it we’ve both done the 9 to 5 routine, bought the tee shirts and all that. Now we’re both retired, and at long last really doing our own thing in our own way …and loving every minute of it. In fact I don’t know how either of us ever fitted ‘working for a living’ in!