Returning to painting (after 30 years)

I don’t quite understand the reason but I’ve been painting again for the first time since art college back in the 1980s. Back then I always had a little thing for watercolour, so it kind of makes sense that I go back to that medium.

I drew and painted so much when I was a kid that I actually grew to hate it by the time I’d reached my early 20s. For the moment I’m really enjoying the physical process of building up layers of glazes to try and make something that resembles an object without ever trying to hide the fact that I’m using paint, coloured pigment suspended in a water-soluble solution. 

Watercolour appeals to my anorak nature: it’s slow and methodical, requiring thought and some understanding of technique. There’s a lot of time for comtemptation between glazes, although ironically I’ve just purchased a hair dryer in order to speed things up.
Below is a self-portrait, in various states of completion and a pineapple (no idea why I’d paint a pineapple).

Poet B L Bruce – Guest Blog

For my first ever guest blog I’m featuring the very talented poet Bri Bruce. Bri’s book ‘The Weight Of Snow’ has drawn considerable praise and is available to purchase on Amazon and other outlets at the links below.

3 Awards for Poetry Collection “The Weight of Snow” by B.L.Bruce

2014 International Book Awards Finalist in the Poetry Category

2014 San Francisco Book Festival Honorable Mention, Poetry Category

2014 USA Best Book Awards “Poetry” Category Finalist

Featured on the USA Book News’s 2014 USA Best Book Awards Website

PAPERBACK AVAILABLE ON AMAZON $8.99

eBOOK AVAILABLE ON AMAZON, GOOGLE PLAY, iTUNES, BARNES & NOBLE, OMNILIT, AND KOBO $2.99

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Praise for The Weight of Snow

“The poems in The Weight of Snow are heartfelt, skillfully written, and keenly observed fragments of the natural world and our lives there. Bravo.” – Gary Young, Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County, Award-Winning Author of Pleasure, No Other Life, and Braver Deeds

“[Bruce] is the worthy heiress of Mary Oliver.” – John Gilchrist

There is nothing to say that would be as lyrical and eloquent as this poet’s language. She writes as a daughter of California’s wild places. . . . Make space, Gary Snyder, Jane Hirshfield, and Ellen Bass, there is a new poet climbing and swimming her way up to claim her place among you. – Karen K Lewis, Author and Executive Director at Mendocino Coast Writer’s Conference

READ MORE REVIEWS HERE

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In The Weight of Snow, author B. L. Bruce explores the many plights of the human species, from the mysteries of the heart and the inescapability of death, to the depths of human emotion. Told from the perspective of a poetic naturalist, Bruce shares her appreciation of the wild, illuminating the profound in the mundane while chronicling the natural world as both an observer and as an irrefutable part of it. Her poems focus strongly on image and locality, conjuring the imaginations of readers and celebrating the beauty in the follies of the human condition and its capacity to grip the soul.

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