Sunday, October 19, 2008

autumn comes autumn leaves

It was really wonderful to have some time out this weekend after some fairly heavy weeks of work in hours and emotional engagement. Love my job as I do, I knew I was turning into a zombie towards the end of last week and that's never good for continuing to love my job!

So on Friday I took the well earned TOIL and began the chill down with a tidy of the house and some creative catering (Pork with gorgonzola sauce and stuffed mushrooms accompanied by a green bean and red onion salad with balsamic dressing).

Saturday we walked the dog and kicked up some autumn leaves (I even carried some home with me which is a perfectly normal thing to do - even if people do give you funny looks!) and then I went mad with some paint (some of it getting on the dog!!) and did a few pieces.


I also made Nigel Slater's chocolate cake (yumskies! Even better for being able to offer some to the curate this afternoon :oD ) and a batch of mincemeat. My best beloved and I had a great half hour contemplating what alcohol should go in the mincemeat from our eclectic store and have opted for a cointreau/pimms/cranberry gin combo - we wait and see how it turns out!

I'm most pleased with this picture here which is a kind of reworking of an earlier painting I did for my mate Matt (though he's not blogged in an ETERNITY!).

Funny thing about creativity. I find it quite difficult to recreate something that's like this. If it's a very figurative work I find it a lot easier but something really free like this, well it's just not right to try and recreate it. Recreating it makes it not what it was which was a free piece.

I find youthwork and church has the same feel sometimes. Often the things that work the best are those which didn't come about through a careful plan but have come together in a marvellous serendipitous working of the Holy Spirit bringing together some unique groups of people. You can't repeat that model elsewhere because it didn't start as a model, rather it grew and evolved.

In the end I abandoned my attempt to recreate the original painting and have ultimately ended up with something I think I actually prefer to the original (gorgeous and green though it was!)

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