Alanart

Dynamics change.

2011-01-17T13:56:00.002Z

For most of our marriage there were two main people in our lives, myself and Alicia , - and I usually took the lead. God was there, but almost always as a guest, a sort of onlooker, albeit an onlooker both approving and ready to become involved in whatever way I and Alicia wanted.

Now that Alicia has died, and her spirit is with God, all that has changed, and I must learn to live with the consequences of that change.

Where once I led the way and, in many respects, Alicia was content to follow behind - now it is Alicia who leads and, in the years ahead, I must follow because she is leading me home to God. The God who made us both, not just for each other, but for Himself also.

Now God is Alicia‘s‘ senior partner,’ - and I am very much the junior!

' Remembering Alicia' is up!

2011-01-13T20:34:00.004Z

It's my first post of 2011, and in my book it proves I'm a genius! Not the worlds fastest genius, ( it did take me nearly a week to work out how to get the photo's into it without them ending up in all the wrong places,) but nonetheless my illustrated piece ' Remembering Alicia,' is now up on her blog at http://alicia-cox.blogspot.com/

It's all about how we first met.

In future anything I write about her will go onto that blog with everything else I want to post about her,and I'll simply put a note of it onto this blog.

This photo of her beside Gortinty Lake in Co. Leitrim in Ireland was taken in 1982 when we were living there.

Going to Harvington.

2010-12-05T22:54:00.002Z

Weather permitting, ( and it had better permit!) I'm going to Harvington Hall near Birmingham in England, where Alicia and I lived and worked between 1985 and 1993, to inter her ash's in the little churchyard beside the Hall. I'm really grateful to the parish priest, Monsignor Moran, and the parishioners for allowing Alicia's ash's and, ultimately, my own to be interred there. It really means an awful lot to both of us. I'll hopefully put up a fuller post when I get back to Ireland.

In Manchester

2010-12-01T14:18:00.002Z

I've been in Manchester for a few days with my sister, and had a great time. No piccy's I'm afraid but I got to two concerts one in the M.E.N Centre, the other in Bridgewater Hall. Both very different but both very enjoyable. The one in the M.E.N. centre was a Classical Spectacular with the full Halle orchestra and the full Leeds Festival Choir. It really was spectacular!! Think ' Last night at the Proms' add in revolving spotlights,gunfire, cannons and fireworks for the finale of the 1812 Overture followed by more gunfire and fireworks and 8000 people on their feet with flags and singing Land of Hope and Glory and you have some idea of what it was like. Makes one proud to be British!

The other concert in the Bridgewater Hall was a more sedate affair. An ensemble group in eighteenth century costume playing Handel, Mozart, and Vivaldi's Four Seasons. Just the sort of concert Alicia would enjoy!

I had to come back to Ireland a day early because the weather was turning for the worst and thank God I did. The Irish Midlands became really bad the following day. Next week, on the 8th of December I'm back in England again to inter Alicia's ash's in the churchyard at Harvington. More perhaps when I get back from that!

A portrait of Alicia.

2010-11-20T14:15:00.003Z

I've put this portrait which I've just painted onto Alicia's own personal blog, www.alicia-cox.blogspot.com but I'm putting it up here just for the record as well.... and because I'm inordinately pleased with it!

Changes and Additions.

2010-11-08T19:57:00.003Z

In the last few weeks I've not only started writing again, ( see my writing blog at Alanwrite,) but also, thanks to the workshops I'm holding in my studio, been able to start painting again. Who knows I might even get to to paste some of my paintings up onto this blog. At the moment I'm trying to put the finishing touches to paintings I started before Alicia became ill which is therapeutic if nothing else ...

I've decided to start putting items which relate specifically to Alicia in a blog devoted exclusively to her. Hopefully I'll get that up in the next week or so ...

Meantime let's see if I can get a picture into this post...!

Octobers letter

2010-10-26T21:14:00.002+01:00

I know I haven't written you a letter every month,.... but then I haven't written anything at all in some months. So excuse me if I try to make up the deficit!

Alicia,

After my trip to Assisi, and what the priest said to me in confession, I know that you are in Heaven. But I also know that you are not just at my side as I have always believed you to be, but you are all around me, caring and loving me, bathing my spirit in the light of Eternal Love which is God’s gift to us all, and infusing my soul with some of the joy and happiness which you are experiencing in Heaven. So much so that at times I hardly seem to grieve at all--- at least not in the way that people around me expect me to grieve.

I hope this does not mean I love you less than I really want to, because I want my love for you to be as all embracing, as total and eternal, as is God’s love for you. I want God to let me experience some of His love for you. Even a fraction of that Divine Love will be more than enough for my poor soul to bear, but still sufficient to impel me to love you even more.

It seems to me that growth into limitless love for you, through Him, would be the essence of the Kingdom He has promised us. So teach me to love you Alicia as God loves you. In His presence you know my heart as well as anyone has known it. Unlock its depths to the light of Everlasting Love.

I would willingly surrender my present sense of your immediacy and presence if it meant, in Gods own time, I would hold you in my heart as He has always held you in His! That would truly be Heaven.

Letter from Assisi

2010-10-25T17:02:00.003+01:00

I went to Assisi knowing that, in spirit, Alicia would be with me. When I came home I tried to say in letter form what I had realised.

So Alicia, what did I learn in those few days and nights spent in Assisi. That beautiful town on a hillside so beloved by Francis and Clare- and lately by you and me?

I learned, my darling, that what divides ‘now’ from ‘forever’ is paper thin. That you now exist in the bright forever sunlight of God’s love, and that often that sunlight can penetrate whatever separates you from me. Not totally of course because such a light would be too fierce for my present soul to bear, but enough breaks through to illuminate my heart with joy and happiness.

I have cried joyfully often Alicia not just in Assisi, but over the days and nights since you died, and I would wish to cry with such joy forever but know that the happiness you now experience still lies some way ahead of me. Nevertheless I know you are leading me there. That your hand has hold of mine, your loving heart is joined with mine, and you are waiting for me beyond that paper thin divide.

And while we wait, you make up whatever is missing in my love for the great eternal God. Where I stumble and fall, you share your strength to lift me up and carries me on; it is your courage that strengthens my weakness every day, and at night I can sleep certain in the faith that because of you, one day we will both share together in God’s kingdom.

But how do I know all this? How do I even know you still exist?

Because I know how great your love for me is, and I certainly know how much I still love you. But I also know how much greater is Gods love for both of us, and that He cannot bear the thought of being separated from either of us for a single moment of time, let alone for eternity.

In Assisi over those few precious days I came to realise that if I recognize in you’re soul ‘beautiful sister Clare’, then in many more ways than I can ever imagine, I am now your ‘little brother Francis!’

Assisi

2010-10-23T22:46:00.002+01:00

I’ve recently fulfilled a promise I made Alicia just before she died …. to visit Assisi in Italy, which we both fell in love with some years ago, so that she could accompany me in spirit.

A walk in the footsteps…

On a warm and sunny Friday morning I walked down the hill from Assisi itself to San Damiano, where St. Clare and her ‘Poor Ladies’, obeying church authority, lived out their lives in truly Franciscan poverty. It is a place redolent of that early spirit of joyful surrender of everything for love of the crucified Saviour. Visiting the tiny chapel where Francis first experienced his own call to poverty one cannot avoid a feeling that here, at least, the spirit of Assisi’s ‘il poverello’, little poor man, still exists.

Towards the end of his life when he was very ill Clare got permission to care for him for a while at San Damiano. She built him a small shelter made of branches in the garden and it was there that, almost blind and racked with pain he composed over a single sleepless night his wonderful ‘ Canticle of the Creatures’; surely the most inspiring and hopeful compositions in all medieval literature.

Later after he returned to the brothers living at Portziuncala, and Clare learned that he was dying she asked whether she might see him again? Francis sent one of the brothers, I think it was Raphael, to her with a message and 2 white doves.

The message was that she could not see him again, but she was not to be afraid.

“ Tell my little sister Clare that after my death she will see me again, and the sight will bring her great comfort. I also wish her to accept these 2 doves as a guarantee of my promise, and henceforward as long as the doves remain in her garden I too will remain with her at San Damiano.”

This story, really a legend, is recorded in the Fioretti de San Francesco, the ‘little flowers of Saint Francis’, but it is apparently a fact visible to anyone visiting San Damiano, and certainly visible to me, that ever since then, whatever the season… two white doves remain in Clare’s garden at San Damiano!

When I left I didn’t want to climb the steep path leading back to Assisi, ( it was the one part of our previous visit that Alicia hadn’t enjoyed,) but I saw a sign pointing along a path down the hillside and onto the flat plain below which said ‘ Sanctuary di Rivo Torto’

Rivo Torto is the place where Francis and those who followed him immediately after he surrendered his wealth lived. They occupied a shelter for farm animals for about 4 years. The shelter is still there inside the church built later over the spot; though now the ‘hovel’ as it is known has a slate roof rather than the roof of branches from the time when Francis and the early brothers lived there. I’d never been to Rivo Torto before so standing on the roadside outside of San Damiano I thought,

‘ Come on Alicia, we’ll walk to Rivo Torto. At least it isn’t uphill!’

It turned out to be a distance of about 4 kilometres which it took me about an hour to walk. My legs were really aching by the time I got there, but after I’d stayed for about half an hour I came out of the church and realised I was facing a fork in the road. One road, the one I had just walked along, went back to San Damiano. I asked a lady in the car park where the other one went to.

“Portziuncala,” she replied. “ In Santa Maria de Angeli!”

Portziuncala of course is the little chapel once owned by the Benedictines which Francis repaired as he did San Damiano, and where the early members of the order moved to when Rivo Torto became too small to accommodate all of them.

‘ Alicia,’ I thought, ‘ We just have to walk to Portziuncala along this road.’

There is another story in the Fioretti which tells how Clare and Francis were walking along the road one day when they came to a fork in the road ahead. ( Was it at Rivo Torto? I wonder.)

The ground was covered with snow but Clare knelt down and said,

“ Francesco, it is for you to decide which way we two must go.”

Francis prayed for a moment and then replied,

“ Little sister, our Heavenly Father wishes you to take the road to your sisters at San Damiano, while He wishes me to take the road to my brothers at Portziuncala!”

Clare rose sadly from the ground and, as they turned to part she asked,

“But when will you and I meet again?”

“ When roses are in bloom,” Francis replied, “ We two will meet again.”

He had only gone a short distance along the road to Portziuncala when he heard Clare’s voice calling to him again,

“ Francesco!….Francesco!!”

He turned and looked towards her and saw that where she had knelt on the cold ground… fresh roses were in bloom!

It took me about another hour to walk from Rivo Torto to Portziuncala because I took a wrong turning and ended up beside a typical Italian farmhouse where an elderly lady who couldn’t speak a word of English took endless trouble trying to explain to me where I had gone wrong, but eventually I got there

The tiny chapel of Portziuncala is now housed under the dome of the massive basilica of Santa Maria de Angeli, and a few feet behind it is the tiny stone shelter called the ‘ Chapel of the Transitus’ which covers the spot on the ground where Francis actually died. He had asked the brothers to lay him naked onto the bare earth because, ‘ I came into this world with nothing and I desire to leave it with nothing.’

I said a few prayers at each chapel and then turned away to leave the basilica. Beside me were a group of English pilgrims, and one of the ladies in the group beckoned over one of the friars who were around the building making sure that everything was running smoothly. She asked him,

“Where can we see the roses?”

“Ah…. You want to see the garden with the roses? Come with me.”

He led them off to a side doorway and pointed down a passageway beyond.

“Down there… you will see the roses.”

I thought ‘ Alicia, we must follow this.’

We went down into the passageway along one side of which were large glass windows overlooking the small garden at Portziuncala. There’s a grey stone statue in the middle, life size, of Francis stroking the wolf of Gubbio, but the rest of the garden is filled with rose trees, and apparently no matter what season of the year you visit, whether it be summer, spring, autumn, or winter…. roses are always in bloom in the garden at Portziuncala!

Photo's, Plays, and medical matters!

2010-08-23T23:14:00.001+01:00

Recently two really nice things have happened.

Since she died I’ve been getting all my photos of Alicia together to put them into one album. There was one box of photos, mostly from the time she was a student at Manchester University which I just couldn’t find. I could see the box in my minds eye, and I knew where it should be… but could I find it? No way. For 6 or 7 weeks I searched high and low for it… but no luck.

Then a week last Thursday I got really depressed over something and, trying to snap out of it, decided to do some dusting….. and there it was! Right where I thought it should be and in my full view ever since before she died. My depression lifted immediately. I can only think she didn’t want me to see it until finding it would do me the most good. Thank you Alicia…. you’re still looking after me.

Then last week I went up to Dublin and spent a few days with my sister Christine. She flew over from Manchester. As often happens with me I managed to leave my camera at home…. so no piccies! --- but we had a lovely time, and except for one heavy shower of rain, we also had nice weather. Went round museums and galleries, got to see the Book of Kells and the Library in Trinity College which I’ve always wanted to see, and even went to see an excellent production of Sean O’Casey’s play ‘The Plough and the Stars’ at the Abbey Theatre, ( actually the second time I’ve seen this production.)

It was absolutely brilliant and I still can’t believe that front row seats on both occasions only cost me 15 euro’s each. There are other theatres I know where they wont even let you stand at the back of the gods for that money! No wonder the Abbey was full both performances I attended!!

We stayed at Buswells Hotel which is a nice hotel to stay at if you’re in Dublin, central to everything including Dail Eireann where the Government meet. The hotel’s bar is reputed to be one of the favourite watering holes for Government Ministers when they’ve finished trying to run the country for the day. They’re all on their summer recess at the moment, so I didn’t get to see even one. Since most of us poor voters are enjoying a year long ‘recession’ at the moment, it’s probably just as well I didn’t meet one!

This week I seem to be almost permanently in the hands of the medical profession. Blood tests, dental checkups, checks to see if I’m now a diabetic, or is that only a distant future possibility for my doctors overheated imagination to worry about? I might even have the chiropodist do another check on my big toe!!! The list is endless, but I’m hoping on Thursday to get back to Dublin for a lecture in the National Museum on Medieval Ireland, a subject I know almost nothing about. ‘Strongbow’ I’ve learned was not an Irish cider brew!!

The weather is pretty lousy at the moment, unable to decide whether it wants to be wet or dry, but I have managed to dodge between most of the showers and get in some serious weeding and tidying of borders in what I now think of consistently as Alicia’s garden! At least it’s beginning to look the way she wants it.

Feasts, Famine. and Frights.

2010-08-20T14:09:00.004+01:00

Last week I spent three days with Michael and Eilish Kennedy at their home in Wexford. Michael, Alicia, and I taught together in Manchester between 19 and 1971, and we’ve been friends ever since.

They have a lovely house near Kiltealy, and Michael is now the retired principal of Courtnacuddy National School. I had a really great time with them, with lots of laughter, chat, and 2 barbecues at which they made sterling efforts to put some weight onto my bones. That’s the ‘feast’ bit. So where does ‘famine’ come in?

Well on the second day of my visit Michael took me for a drive around Wexford which included a trip to meet his brother Martin on his boat moored on the River Barrow in New Ross. Moored quite near Martin’s boat if the replica ‘famine ship’ the Dunbrody which I’ve read a lot about but never visited. They’ve done a great job building the replica and because we had a little time to spare before meeting Martin we went on a guided tour around it. Michael had done the tour many times with his school,so was probably a little bored going around it again, but I found it fascinating. When you think what our ancestors had to endure just to survive in this world it makes you realise how lucky we are, and how relatively insignificant many of our current problems really are.

That was the ‘ famine’ bit!

The rest of the break was really good too…including our attempt to frighten Martin and his children that night by rising from behind some bush’s with heads covered with towels and a torch under the chin while howling like a pair of banshees. That’s the sort of thing ‘retired professionals’ do!!!

Chinese Lanterns

2010-07-30T17:38:00.003+01:00

Last night my neighbours Luke, Eilish, Karen, Sisiter Xavier, and Mary came over and just after midnight, a few minutes into our anniversary, we sent up 2 Chinese Lanterns into the night sky as a prayer remembrance of Alicia. There was very little wind and the lanterns stayed above our heads for quite a while. I have to thank Eilish and Karen for organising this wonderful memory of Alicia. She always loved any sort of celebration involving bonfires or fireworks and she must have enjoyed and appreciated this event. They even left me with another lantern I can use on a later occasionn and I even managed to get a couple of images of the first lantern as it went u[p and disappeared.

Anniversary letter

2010-07-30T08:10:00.002+01:00

Alicia and I were married on the 30th. July 1966, ( as we always reminded people… the day the England soccer team won the World Cup!) Today is our 44th wedding anniversary, and this is my ‘anniversary letter’ to her.

Darling Alicia,
At the moment I need to keep reminding myself that you are still with me, even after 44 years, and after you have died. That your spirit, the person you really are, didn’t leave me that morning in the hospital but is still involved in every aspect of my life. As involved as you ever were when you were physically present in this world.
But you no longer exist only in this world. You exist in eternity as well, and thus your present reality is incomprehensibly greater than anything I can possibly imagine. What’s more… and I have to keep reminding myself of this also… in trying to ‘humanise’ you so that I can ‘see you’, I inevitably lose most of your present wonder and beauty. Now I will only see you as you really are when I too die. For the moment, its the following reflection that helps me to keep going.
‘If the Alicia I knew in this world was so wonderful… how much more wonderful is her present reality?’
Your perspective is different to mine because you are now part of the eternal mystery, a perspective I can only dimly perceive and share, but every memory I have of you is immeasurably enhanced by the Eternal Love present in that reality.
It’s when I think about the person you were; when I recall your enthusiasm, your willingness to assume the best in everyone and everything; when I remember your delight in even small and apparently insignificant things, your willingness to trust when others would doubt, and most of all when I recall your prayer life so full of faith and hope, I realise that, of the two of us, you are the best one to lead us both into eternity. Following behind, in your care. as I now am, I am spiritually far safer than I have ever been. Whatever happens Alicia… whatever I do stumbling along behind you,…..please don’t ever let go of my hand!
I believe you are now experiencing eternal love, an experience currently beyond my reach, but one that I long to share. Not just in order to be with you, but in order to share with you a love more intimate, and fulfilling, than we ever had before. Because that love is the Eternal Love we call ‘God’.
He is the only person with exclusive rights to another person because He wills each persons individual existence; and, while I realise that your Heaven will be different to mine because we are two different creations of His will, I also believe there will be no difficulty in us sharing our two heavens. I do not believe that God will forbid us to share either. In neither of our cases, does He have any cause to be a ‘jealous god!’
Alicia, I love you now even more than I did before you died because what I perceive to be your present reality, your spirit, has become my guiding ideal. A light leading me on through these shadows, these whispered intimations of real happiness. Through you I now have a stake in eternity I didn’t have before, and even though that stake is currently in the ‘now’, only dimly understood… it is in my heart for eternity,… an eternity of love we were both created to share….., but to share together.
Happy anniversary Alicia!

Yesterdays achievements.

2010-07-20T20:30:00.001+01:00

Yesterday I achieved 2 things which I think Alicia approves of. The first is that I went into my studio and painted a picture, the second is that I watched Alicia on the television and felt much better for it!

I haven’t picked up a paint brush for the last 20 months since Alicia became ill, let alone painted a picture; but yesterday I finally decided it was time I went back into my studio, set out my things, and started trying to paint again. What I painted is nothing special, I certainly wouldn’t ever think of exhibiting it or asking anyone to buy it, but at least I ended the afternoon with a completed painting, and the feeling that I could go on painting… and I know that’s what Alicia wants.

She certainly doesn’t want me to spend whatever time is left to me in this world sitting around feeling sorry for myself, and just waiting to rejoin her!

Watching her on television was, in some ways much the easier achievement, and certainly the less stressful.

I have quite a lot of still photo’s of her in different places, at different times in her life, and doing different things. I have had some regrets that all I seemed to have were still photographs, and she was so full of life and energy that I almost felt short changed. Then I remembered that I had a video recording of a Mass televised from the church at Harvington in 1988 when we were joint custodians there. ( Lord…. , is it really 22 years ago?) and Alicia was part of the congregation.

At the time I recorded the transmission for the parish priest and celebrant, Father Tucker who wanted to watch it later that evening, and I haven’t watched it since. My recollection was that Alicia only appeared in it for one brief shot, and that at a distance. I was delighted, and not a little comforted to find that she appears quite a few times, and even has one close up shot while responding to the bidding prayers, and looked as lovely as I remember her looking.

Although, as I say, I was comforted by watching the video it was in some ways quite sad when I realised how many of our old friends at Harvington, who were also in the recording, have died in the subsequent years. R.I.P. to all of them.

Heavenly street life.

2010-07-18T20:05:00.001+01:00

Last week I travelled to Manchester to spend a few days with my sister. (It’s when I managed to upload Alicia’s photographs. I don‘t think the lap top I work with at home can manage it!)

Anyway, arriving at the airport I was faced with three possible ways of getting into the city centre. By rail, bus, or taxi. Because I was in no hurry I decided to take the bus, not realising that it was a public service bus and would be stopping at every bus stop to let passengers on and off. In the event the journey took much longer than I thought it would, but at least it gave me some time for thought…. and not a few tears when I realised it was going along the road in the Fallowfield district where Alicia was living when I first saw her!!

Perhaps it was that which cast me into such a reflective frame of mind.

The point is that as you drive into Manchester from the airport you pass through a variety of areas inhabited in the main by ethnic communities; Chinese, Middle Eastern, African, each with their own distinctive cultures and,…yes,…. faiths. In each of these, as we passed through, the pavements were full of people going about their daily lives. Pushing prams, shopping, or just meeting and talking with friends. Singly, in couples, or in groups. Young and old, all in different costumes, of different colours, but all living out their lives as well as they could. Hundreds of them…. No. In the space of that one journey, thousands of them….Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, even those who would say they had no faith at all; and it occurred to me that each one of those individuals was a unique, unrepeatable life experience. In some ways all the same, but in so many other ways totally different to every other life being lived out around them.

And what’s more each of those lives was being lived because the Eternal Creator, ( whatever title you care to ascribe it, or however you care to comprehend it,) simply wished that life to be, and in so wishing, caused each one to exist.

Multiply that concept by the number of streets and towns that currently exist in this world, or have ever existed since the beginning of time… or will ever exist until time as we know it ceases to exist, and what you have is an uncountable number of unique, and varied lives willed to exist by the Creator.

As a Christian I choose to call that creator, God…. but then I asked myself a question.

Am I really to believe that having willed so many incredible, beautiful, and unrepeatable lives into existence the Eternal Creator is only really interested in those who conform to my narrow set of beliefs? That the only ones He is prepared to share His eternal happiness with are those who go to mass every Sunday, say the rosary and have reverence for the man in a white cap and cassock who lives in the Vatican.

Am I really supposed to believe that God is that narrow minded?

No I don’t believe that, any more than I believe Alicia isn’t enjoying the wonder and variety of heavenly ‘street life’ …. and waiting for me to enjoy it with her!

Photo uploads. Bingo!!

2010-07-13T17:06:00.003+01:00

I don't really know how I've done it, I suspect it's because I've tried to upload the two photo's on another computor, ( in this case my sisters,) but at last I've manged to get them into the blog. I feel a lot better now!! More later.

Dear Alicia

2010-06-24T17:34:00.002+01:00

Dear Alicia,
Today, the 24th June, is your birthday. As with all the previous ‘birthday’ letters I wrote you I will not be so indelicate as to record here which birthday it is, but only repeat that we are now the same age again. But, of course, this birthday letter is very different from all the others I have written you over the years. This year I cannot put it into your hands, or watch your reaction as you read it, or then give you a birthday hug and kiss--- and the pain of not being able to do even those simple things is almost more than I can bear.
I told you once that I found it easier to write down what I felt about you, than to say it, and that my feelings always seemed more permanent and real written rather than spoken. Now, of course, I don’t need to write, or even speak any words because your spirit is so close to mine, so much a part of my own, that my thoughts and feelings are yours even more intimately than before…. and often before I am aware of them myself. But on this birthday Alicia, the first since you died, it helps me to continue the practice of writing you a letter, opening my heart, and recording what I feel.
I love you so much Alicia that even my grief at not being able to see you, hear you, or touch you; this terrible unrealisable yearning that so often prompts me to cry out loud, even that urges me to reach out and love you even more…. To love you until I can finally become ‘Love in your heart!’
For there I know I will be safe, for there I am held in unselfish and, now, perpetual love. Yes, there is pain, but there is no fear, no uncertainty. Even the physical chasm that separates us, binds us ever closer to the truth and reality of eternal love. Not just Gods love for you, or Gods love for me, but most of all Gods love for ‘we two as one.’
In those final days and hours in the hospital when I was able to stay beside you and hold your hand, tell you how much I loved you, and tell you why I knew that God would never really separate us, did you really understand? Because what separates us is only physical things, what unites us is our spirits now prompted even more urgently to reach across whatever divided us.
With all my heart I hope you did, but forgive me if I cry when I feel your spirit close within my heart. it’s the absence of physical things that prompts my tears… your loving spirit is closer now than it has ever been. Physically I have to let go of your hand, but I know from what you told the nurse that your spirit will never release its hold on my heart.
‘Birthdays’ I know are usually celebrated here in ‘time’ but, Alicia, enjoy your first birthday in Gods eternal kingdom. Enjoy it darling with your mum and dad, and all those you loved here on earth whose spirits went ahead of you, but …. reach back also, behind you, to where I still stand on this lonely, unseeing shore, looking out to sea and waiting for the tide of love to carry me after you.
Happy birthday luv….. Alan. XXX ( no need for more this time!!)

Alicia

2010-06-13T21:38:00.007+01:00

I haven’t felt like putting up a post since Alicia was diagnosed with lung cancer 18 months ago. Finally, after a long struggle with the disease, she died in Galway University hospital at 2.30 am on Monday, 31st. May 2010. As committed Christians we neither of us believe that our spirits cease to exist when our bodies die, and so I do not believe I have ‘lost’ Alicia. Her spirit is with me now , and she is in my mind and heart just as much as she was when I could see her, hear her voice, reach out and take her hand in mine, and give her a hug. My loss is not being able to see her, hear her, or hold her, and it is that loss that causes me the pain. I have photographs of her to remind me what she looked like, and they are a comfort even if they can never replace the real thing… which I believe now waits for me in Heaven, and I’m putting two of my favourite photo’s of her up into the blog.

The first was taken when she was 21 years old, on the day she graduated from Manchester University, and the second was taken in our garden a few years before she became ill and shows her doing what she always loved doing…. playing with some of our cats in our garden.

It is in the garden that I can feel her presence at my shoulder most strongly and it is going to be my aim, in the future to try and develop this garden in the way she would have wanted it. Not as some sort of memorial, but as a continuing testimony to how much I love her.

I’m also going to try to start painting again,…. another activity she encouraged me in and which, since she became ill I have abandoned. For some reason I don't understand I'm having trouble uploading pictures at the moment. Hopefully I'll remember how to do it shortly!

Cairo, here I come!

2009-01-26T19:19:00.002Z

One of the biggest thrills for me when I’m exhibiting my paintings anywhere is that moment when somebody, as it were, falls in love with one of my paintings. Such a moment happened just before Christmas at a one day fair in the Glen Royal Hotel in Maynooth here in Ireland.
I’ve exhibited there for many years now and sales have always been very good. This year was no exception, but the sale of one painting in particular does stand out. I’m including a picture of it in this post. I called it ’ Morning Glory’, and the inspiration for it, as I’ve outlined on my web site at www.alanartmarket.com was a walk I took early one morning near my home here in Roscommon. The morning light was creating fabulous colours in the surrounding trees and shrubs, almost repainting the fields and meadows in warm, glowing tones. I couldn’t wait to recapture it in my studio.
Anyway, there it was on my stand and this lady came past and admired it… then moved on. This often happens at fairs, but in this case she returned a few minutes later to study it again. This happened a few times and then finally she stood for a long time gazing at it. So far she hadn’t spoken to me at all but watching her face and seeing the look in her eyes I realised she was responding to the painting in exactly the way I hoped someone would respond when I painted it.
She told me she couldn’t help keep coming back to it, because it reminded her of the wonderful variety of seasons we experience here in Ireland. After she had bought it, and I was wrapping it up for her. she told me it would be going home with her in January.
“Where’s home?” I asked.
“Egypt,” she replied, “ Cairo! We don’t experience seasonal changes like yours in Egypt.”
I’ve paintings hanging in many different countries but , to my knowledge, this is the first to find it’s home in the land of the Pharoahs. I feel quite chuffed really!

But I'm proud of it anyway!

2008-11-21T19:19:00.005Z

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!

2008-11-17T19:31:00.013Z

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

2008-11-08T14:18:00.002Z

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.

2008-10-25T14:04:00.002+01:00

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!!

2008-10-24T19:18:00.001+01:00

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?'

2008-08-27T20:00:00.001+01:00

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!