Memories of Childhood Summer Holidays

I am currently taking on the role of tutor in my art group. We are a class of 4 and our Irish Tutor has rotated each of us in turn to specify a project; to guide and advise and to then critique (not criticise) our student’s work. This has been a great experience and I applaud Spanish Lady, French Guy and London Dude for fun and challenging projects set by them. They have all remarked how enjoyable and educational it has been. In the creative world, a good tutor stimulates, challenges, encourages the student to bring forth all that is innately there waiting to bloom. A good tutor does not direct, influence or manipulate.

My project is to illustrate childhood summer holiday memories in their own homeland through any medium. 100 words to accompany the work.

I would love to show you the amazing outcomes. Insights into childhood family holidays in a different age to nowadays - all different but all strangely expressing similar thoughts and feelings.

French Guy told us about holidays in Normandy. Picnics, promenades, elegance always. He cited Jacques-Henri Lartigue ‘The Beach at Villerville’ and he recreated this photograph using predominantly charcoal but making the umbrellas brightly coloured using stuck on pieces of fabric. For the man’s beard, French Guy cut some of his dog’s coat off and used it as the beard. What genius. Please read up on Young Man Lartigue here

https://amp.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/mar/29/jacques-henri-lartigue-portrait-of-the-photographer-as-a-young-man

(Google also Beach at Villerville)


Then Spanish Lady told us about Sorolla and his seaside paintings. She is also from Valencia and described family holidays with laden picnics, light and shade, sociability, splashing in the waves, the fathers dozing, the mothers directing operations. For her artwork she filled a blue basin with water, covered the surface with white light cotton fabric and adorned the surface with a string of fairy lights in the shape of seashells. She had a recording of waves breaking and children laughing and shrieking. It is a sight to behold. So magically creative. Please look at this

https://youtu.be/AeTlrOaEi8U


London Dude told us about Ramsgate and his family holidays there. Deckchairs, sandwiches, flasks, seaside, buckets and spades, long languid days on the beach, the 5 Find Outers, slot machines, fish n chips and amazingly The Hugin Ship

Read here

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugin_(longship)

So London Dude visited Ramsgate for this project. Picked pieces of wood and other debris from the beach and reconstructed the Hugin Ship. It is marvellously done and a clever and skilled creation

Round of applause for all my students.

For my own contribution I visited Newcastle Co. Down where I had many great caravan holidays. But that is for another day

*****


Today is The Blessings of the Graves in Shanganagh. I am going with my friend Margaret whose husband is also buried there. We bring deckchairs and sit in walkway near the graves. I will tidy up the grave and put fresh flowers down. And weirdly wonderful talk to the family whose loved one is buried beside my husband.

There is a mass said and singing and we remember our loved ones. Then the graves are blessed. My husband was not religious but I love this social, very Irish custom. So my husband is well remembered and a spray of holy water thrown over his grave whether he likes it or not. Always loved, never forgotten.

Have a lovely blessed Sunday you varmints