Tiredness Kills: Take a Break!

I am too tired to write my usual full blog since returning from down South.  The builders are back on site and a potential major problem has already been identified and sorted out (I hope).  The title of this post comes from the motorway warnings I seem to have been seeing constantly just lately, and it is a reminder to myself to not push too hard.

However,I had a day in London on Friday and  I can report that the following exhibitions are very good:

• Mira Schendel, Tate Modern.  Absolutely fascinating and absorbing as well as beautiful.
• Richard Rogers; Inside Out, Royal Academy (Burlington Gardens): inspiring.  I feel full of hope when I read Rogers' words and see his models for human, urban living.
• Li Songsong; We Have Betrayed The Revolution, Pace Gallery, Burlington Gardens. Great slabs of gutsy paint.  Loved them.  

I also saw Mexico at RA, but was too distracted by my lack of time to look at it carefully- I was not that impressed by the show but there is a good early Guston.  I didn't have time to see William Tillyer's work in Cork Street and I was sad about that.  

The reason I went down South again was to attend the seminar for SKETCH 2013 on Saturday. It was very interesting to hear the speakers talk about their own approach to keeping sketchbooks.  The discussion afterwards was thoughtful, although at present I cannot really recall much of it.  I am sure it will come back once I have some calm, quiet time.

I arrived home on Sunday afternoon with a little time to clear the kitchen of most of its contents in readiness for the great opening up of the new doorway and resulting dust and was up at the crack of dawn to finish the job before the builders came on site.  Then this afternoon, I was off to Scarborough for the second session of the short WEA course I have enrolled on entitled Ten Twentieth Century Poets.  Jonathan Brown our remarkable teacher enlightens and truly informs;  I always leave feeling completely uplifted.  I look forward to next week.  

Tomorrow, once I have checked the builders are OK, I'm off to Thirsk and from there Andrew Dalton and I are going to Leeds to discuss possibilities for the RAW flagship exhibition.

Meanwhile, I am considering participating in next year's North Yorkshire Open Studios and have sent off for the info pack.  I am longing to get back into the studio and at this rate, it will be the cold winter before I do, but I am learning to keep the faith and go with the flow, using my sketchbook to make small studies and put my thoughts down.  I am continuing to read, so it is not wasted time.