Sunday's spotlight - The left and right hands

By guest blogger Pete

Year by year the Chairman of our Lincoln U3A has expected the Art Group to put on an exhibition of their work at the AGM. Thus in January of this year our convenor cajoled us into producing examples of our potential exhibition talents by the first week of March. One member of the group raised the question, "What will happen if any of our pictures are stolen overnight?" He was soon silenced by the truthful reply from another member stating, "We should be so lucky!" During our coffee break last week I asked a group of members what they did with their finished paintings. One was brave enough to inflict them upon - I suspect an ever decreasing? - circle of friends. Most said something like, "Put them in a box, throw them on top of a cupboard and then forget about them."


It was at that point that I remembered this was what I had done a few years ago. I decided there and then to have a look and see if I could find anything to inflict - exhibit - upon our fellow members at the March AGM. Thus I came across the enclosed long forgotten pieces. My favourite art medium used to be pastels - you can do so much with them and they don't trap you, as watercolours do, into drinking your paint water whilst supposing it is your coffee. They do have one LLAARRGGEE snag, though. They create dust everywhere and I've noticed that the female of our species has a strange reaction to dust. We have a summer house in our garden and many years ago I supposed that I might try my pastels in there. The trouble is that in the summer the aptly (?} named "summer" house resembles an oven whereas in winter it becomes a walk in fridge. You do get a month either side of summer when you can use the summer house but the pre-summer slot is usually spent waking the garden up from its annual sleep and the autumn (fall) month is often spent putting that same garden to bed ready for the winter.

The pictures this week are two of my early pastel efforts. Hope you like them.

Oh! I nearly forgot. Yesterday the convenor informed us that this year the Chairman didn't want an art exhibition. You can't get chairmen like you used to. Just as well this fellow isn't standing for re-election. Surely, this is a case of the left hand not knowing what the right is doing!!

Have a good week.