This month has flown by. I have had my birthday, a private view, moved into my new studio and built a pond!! And even painted a few pictures. The exhibition finished last Saturday, I was thrilled by the reaction to the show, (and the amount of sales!). Now I need to move onto other things but I am lacking motivation, I can't get into the swing of work and so I've been doing other things in the hope it will trigger a flood of ideas.

One idea I would like to explore is painting wildflowers with the sea and  small cameos in the background - I have done two and having put them in different galleries have had a good response and sold one already. I walked from Mousehole to Lamorna a few weeks ago with the puppy (11 months old now) and the flowers against the backdrop of a millpond sea was breathtaking, and I know if I can just get off my arse and work I could do some lovely paintings!!

The  other thing I've done is built a pond. I did it because I wanted to encourage wildlife into the garden and also I craved the  sheer graft of digging the hole. I love a bit of hard graft and I love that achy, exhausted feeling at the end of a day spent grappling with the garden. I can now be found most days peering into it in the hope of catching sight of a baby newt or tadpole. I've reverted to my childhood and it is a great feeling to just lose myself in this  self-contained world. The interesting thing that has come out of having this pond is that it has made me want to paint it - the way you can see on top but also underneath, and the reflections... it is a challenge but I might set my little easel up and do some studies of it in situ, we will see....