My monsters in the snow

More snow reducing the UK to shambles. All calm in my garden.

Homage to the Beatles in Kilburn

I saw this this the other day in a bleak part of north London on a bleak winter day.

Hoar Frost

Ghastly cold but gorgeous to look at. My field in the hoar frost.

Snowed in Frog

The snow has caused chaos throughout the UK. This my frog sculpture, a metre or so high, in the snow.

My garden in the snow

Unusual to have snow in November in Wiltshire. The view from my bedroom.

Monstrous Tree

I am planning a sculpture park with three other artists in a country estate. This is an enormous Found Object which with the addition of an eye will make an excellent monster. There is ice on the pond in this photo but normally there is a double image in the water.

Sink Face

This sink came from a nearby building site and easily became a face.

King's Place London

King's Place is a newish arts centre behind King's Cross an area going up in the world. This is a sculpture about four feet high by Abigail Fallis.

Autumn Colour Stourhead

On a perfect autumn day what better than to go and see the autumn colour at Stourhead Gardens in Wiltshire. The place was heaving with happy photographers.

Pavlova dancing

Waiting for the bus at Victoria in London I noticed this dancer on top of the Victoria Palace Theatre and wondered why I had never noticed it before. I clearly had not been that way since 2006 when Wikipedia tell me it was installed as a replica of one erected in 1911 and taken down in World War II in case it fell on somebody in the bombing. It shows Pavlova. What fun they had with buildings before the dread Puritanism of the Modern Movement in architecture infected the world. The modern National Theatre sites like a grim Atlantic Wall bunker with it back to the Thames.

The Dancer for TVE

I have donated this table top sculpture The Dancer to be auctioned at a charity dinner at the Kuwaiti Embassy on November 10th in London in aid of TVE Television for the Environment, a charity specialising in making and distributing films about the environment across the world. The sculpture was made from a an old lamp stand recovered from the town dump. The coating is black copper slag, the head a piece of driftwood from the beach near Weston-super-Mare, the hands are old bottle openers. I might have called him The Skier.

Kingston Lacy Tree Root

I snapped this tree root appropriately in the Japanese Garden in an old quarry in the grounds of Kingston Lacy House in Dorset. It looks like some crouching monster.

Blue Bird

I have added a blue bird to this tableau as well as the small figure facing the camera. It is rather a sinister bird, some sort of vulture.

Monster Hedge in Indian Summer

I took this two days ago in my garden in the Indian Summer which now seems to be over as it is quite chilly. The hedge is beech. The yellow flowers are Rudbeckia good for late colour.

Imber Ranges

I exercise my terriers on the edge of Imber Army Ranges. They used to bark at helicopters but take no notice now. Squaddies with huge back packs still send them demented. The mound is a prehistoric one. The Army looks after the numerous prehistoric sites very well with markers (which you can just see in this photograph) to keep out tanks and other heavy vehicles. The sites are all preserved but never likely to be excavated unless universal peace breaks out one day. The helicopter flew over me after I took this and maybe because I had. They are all rather twitchy up there - on another occasion the byway was blocked by a crash barrier. I parked before walking the dogs.. On leaving I had to drive my car briefly towards the barrier to reverse. The squaddie, with whom I had chatted earlier, pointed his very big gun at the car. Well I suppose they were on high alert and terrorists come in all forms including local dog walkers. Would he have shot me or just my tyres if I had continued?

Indian Summer

It has been a glorious Indian summer despite bouts of heavy rain. This part of my garden springs to life in October after being dull for a couple of months. The stainless steel sculpures are made with industrial lamps from a recycling centre in north London. I can do abstract.

Pond restored

My ponds totally dried out it in the long dry spell in the summer. The water is back and I have cut out a lot of vegetation - literally with a saw through the matted roots. So my frogs again sit by water as frogs should.

Somerset Open Studios

Still two days to catch Somerset Open Studios and see this dragonfly by Fiona Campbell and the centaur by Ian Marlow along with other sculpture by them in their intriguing gardens.

Siege of the Wall

I have added one last piece to this tableau - the snake and painted the stone monsters in the crevice. Here anything blue is sinister.

Newport Wales

Newport in South Wales, no longer an industrial powerhouse has interesting artworks on its streets as an element in its attempts to rejuvenate itself. It works as it is fun to around.

Mediaeval wall painting Imber Church

Imber Village on Salisbury Plain, normally closed for army training, was open at the weekend and I went to see the recently restored traces of mediaeval wall paintings. The presence of these in such a remote tiny village in the Middle Ages points to their ubiquity. These images are said to represent Avarice. The man with a horn on his head is the Devil.

Powerscourt near Dublin

I recenly visited this world famous garden. My parents honeymooned here during World War II so I have always had a certain romantic feeling about the place. Laurence Olivier and others were filming Henry V in the park at the time.

Giant's Foot and Giant's Causeway

Nature is the best sculptor. Above a giant's foot some eight feet high near the famous pillars of the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland.

More stuff for sculpturemad garden

Paul Boswell and Rachel Macleay came over and added some paintings and sculptures to my garden. The insect was made by Rachel from a cat's eye. Paul painted on a piece of metal. I have turned an arbour into an art gallery.

Hedge monster

I have been busy cutting my hedges. An alien has landed on this pyramid - the New Age people believe pyramids were designed to guide them in from space.

Micra Monster

I recycled an old Micra bonnet and two dustbin lids to create this monster on my lawn. The bonnet was irretrievably dented when I drove into a towbar - at very slow speed -at a roundabout.

The Art of Recycling Petersfield

I took part in the Art of Recycling Day in Petersfield. There was a man dressed in old cans. The wasps were very attracted to the smell of dregs in the cans and he had been stung on previous occasions wearing this coat.

Decorating the old woodshed

Paul Boswell and I are creating a jungle scene with sculpture and painting. Work in progress.

A man fighting a crocodile

I have recycled some old sculptures and changed them a bit to create this tableau on the wall of a sort of man fighting a sort of crocodile. The crocodile has the gun in its mouth and it is not clear who will win this battle. Perhaps the man has run out of bullets and the crocodile will have him or he will kill the croc.

White Owl

I finished a white owl with a black face to sit near by black owl with a white face.

Odeon Cinema

I walked past the Odeon Cinema in Salisbury for decades assuming it was mock Tudor until showing some French guests around I wandered in. The foyer is actually an original late mediaeval Hall, the Hall of John Halle. These are some of the furnishings of it.

Crop Circle White Sheet Hill Wiltshire 2010

The media were a bit coy about what exactly is conveyed in this creation. You can see it from a public car park. Fun for us but less amusing for the farmer especially as romping couples will probably add to the crop damage.

Art from the New World

This was the installation made by Mike Stilkey with 2000 books, mostly the memoirs of Terry Wogan, which would otherwise have been pulped. It stands in the foyer of the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery to advertise the exhibition Art from the New World on until August 22nd. Brash, surrealist and fun.