Spring Up-date: April 2015

                      Spring News - 2015

The west wind rattles the rafters, white clouds tear across a brilliant blue sky & daffodils nod vigorously in the hedgerows. Temperatures steadily on the rise?
Spring is on its way at last!

To celebrate, Pete and I have dusted off our old acoustic guitars & we'll be venturing out to play another local gig this weekend.

Music:

                                Penhale & Flaskett 
                                              at
                                 ST. KEW INN
                                Saturday April 4th
                                      8.30pm
                                     Free entry

Courtesy of Mike and Sarah, we enjoyed a great evening at this wonderful old pub in February, when we played a wide range of songs to a great audience, gathered especially for St. Valentine's.
This weekend we'll feature more original material, along with fresh re-workings of old folk, blues and country tunes. Pete's even threatened to bring his mandolin, so anything might happen!

Also something to look-out for on you-tube:
a video of Pete & myself playing 'Catch That Train' at Pete's house down in Bridge, St. Columb.
We recorded three tunes by his fire-side, back in the heart of winter, and this is the first to be ready.
Filmed and edited by Hana Backland (my step-daughter and film-maker extraordinaire!) it's about to be posted on you-tube with a link to this web-site.


Painting: 
Here are the dates of my new 2015 Whitsun show:
               
            New Paintings & Constructions
                    Rock Village Institute
      Friday May 22nd - Sunday May 31st
                    10.00am - 5.30pm
                      'Meet the artist'
        Sunday May 24th   3.00pm - 6.00pm

With two months to go before this new show opens, I'm busy preparing the new work, focusing primarily on a sequence of mid-to-large-scale paintings.
This time I also plan to include some constructions.
These are essentially multi-media 3-D assemblages, made mainly of wood - flotsam&  jetsam - materials I've gleaned from shore-line and moorland, which I've then shaped and coloured. They necessarily inter-link with the shapes and colours in the paintings.


Writing: 

Following the successful launch of 'Wave Hub', the new anthology of poetry from Cornwall,
I've taken part in a couple of group readings, the most recent in 'The Edge of the World Bookshop'
in Penzance in February.
The anthology, which includes fourteen of my poems, is available from all good bookshops and the details are as follows:
                              'Wave Hub'
                    New Poetry from Cornwall 
                           (edited by Alan M. Kent)
                                        Francis Boutle Publishers
                                                      London
                                        www. francisboutle.co.uk

Meanwhile, I had several poems short-listed recently for the Charles Causley Poetry Prize &
my 'Cornish Lexicon' collection continues to grow.