PINKTOBER - DAY 16 - AND WHAT A DAY!

After a great service at Church this morning, we went off to look around some of the paintings being done as part of Swindon’s first live Street Art Festival, “Swindon Paint Fest” - and what a treat we had.

We started at the top of the town, looking at some of the paintings we had seen yesterday on hoardings surround the new Premier Inn Hotel, which is in the process of being built.  According to our local paper, “This 5 storey, 195 bedroom hotel will be built to the highest construction standards and be fully heated and powered by grid energy generated from renewable sources, and by on-site solar panels and it is the first “all electric” hotel to be built by Whitbread.”  

All around the new building site are large hoardings and these have been painted purple - which just happens to be my favourite colour - and it is on these hoardings that the various Swindon Paint Fest paintings are being, or have been painted and on other blank walls around the town.

We spoke to several of the painters when we went to visit yesterday, and I was thrilled to speak to Ed, who company The Visual Drop was responsible for the painting that I blipped back on the 17th June 2017 - and you can see it HERE.

We stopped and spoke to several of the painters and found that they were all very keen to chat about their art and were so friendly.  The first person we spoke to today was Harrie Dearing, who was doing a painting of Ella Fitzgerald, but this wasn’t quite finished and may not be finished for a couple more days, but we assured her, when we chatted on our way back to the car, that we would be going back to see the finished painting.  

As we made our way through the town centre, we were struck by the friendliness of all the painters, all of whom were happy to chat and paint at the same time!  I wanted to make a large collage of all the paintings so that the talent of all the painters could be seen - whether it was done by spray painting or by brush - and I think I have managed to convey that - see my extra collage.  When I told one lady that I loved her painting and that she was very talented, she told me I had “made her day” - so I told her that all the painters around the town had made our day today!

Having taken over 100 photographs, it was very hard to choose just one for my main shot, but this one, done by Peter won the day.  I asked him what was the significance of the owl and he said that he often goes out to Royal Wootton Bassett at night and sees barn owls flying around and on this particular occasion, he was “blown away” not only by the fact that they were so quiet when they flew, but also by the flight path, which was almost ethereal, which was what he was trying to convey.

It looked as if he had stuck on little diamonds to show the stars, and to depict snow on the tops of the mountains, so I looked closer.  Peter said that he had made a stencil for this, which hadn’t worked out quite as he had hoped, but they were actually little dots of silver paint, which were painted through the stencil.  Very clever!

This fitted in with the Pinktober theme and you all know what to do by now - please click on this LINK, so that those who cannot afford to pay for a mammogram may have a free one - and many thanks to all of you who are clicking every day, and some more than once a day.

We treated ourselves to a toasted sandwich and coffee at our favourite coffee shop at the top of the escalator and watched the world going by - and wondered how many of them had seen the wonderful paintings that we had seen.  However, hopefully, these will be in our town centre for some time so that many others will be able to see them - but the joy for us was to see many of them actually being painted and to speak to the artists themselves.

“When we long for life without difficulties, 
     remind us that oaks grow strong in contrary winds, 
          and diamonds are made under pressure.”
Peter Marshall