Nearly Done. January Soon.

http://www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com/ for the official website for the A Graceful Death Exhibition coming to London in February 2010

http://www.antoniarolls.co.uk/ for my website

antonia.rolls1@btinternet.com if you want to contact me

This is a lovely photo by Eileen Rafferty of the A Graceful Death Exhibition. It shows the space and light and gentleness in which the paintings were exhibited. The next venue is in London in February, keep checking http://www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com/ for details. I will update it when I have more information.

So. We have all had Christmas and we are waiting for New Year's Eve. It is that in-between state of having done all the first half of the celebrations and waiting anxiously for the next. Anxiously for a couple of reasons.

• One - You don't have anywhere to go on the 31 December. It seems everyone else does, and they are all much happier and more successful than you because of it. And even if they did ask you to join them, it would highlight the fact that until they did that, absolutely no one else did
• Two - You have had enough of the jollities. It was a tremendous effort to get through the present-buying, over-eating, being nice to everyone and having nowhere to escape to. You fear it will all happen again, and it begins to feel like Duty. Inescapable Duty. You have empathy with the Queen and the Pope.
• Three - You do have somewhere to go to, but your partner doesn't like the people hosting your New Year's Eve Party. It makes you feel a bit cross on the one hand that Partner is raining on your parade, and a bit guilty on the other that it's all about you, and you are going to have fun whatever and Partner will just have to cope
• Four - You had such fun on Christmas Day that you are afraid the Human Body can't cope with more so soon after. However, you are willing to give it a try.

I had a lovely stress free Christmas. Everyone was calm and generous, and for some ungodly reason I did not overeat that much. What? You cry. How Come? Have you an un-nameable psychological disorder? Or were your hosts mean. Well, I will reply. My host (mother) was typically generous and wonderful. I just didn't want to overeat. It was OK to just have what I wanted and an bit more, and leave it at that. Ho! I hear you chuckle. I know what happened. You spent half the night before up and eating and are just not telling us! After all, who is Santa in your house? And Santa probably gets a Whole Roasted Ox from each member of your family so that is why you couldn't over eat on Christmas Day. What you mean is you couldn't Publically overeat. Sorted.

Now I am in the Studio. I have one little portrait to do, and one still life of flowers. This is good. I also have some pretty good prints of my Angels, so that will go down well.

Off now to the post office. Oh yes, I have been working hard this morning. I even have TWO letters to post. Oh the strain.

I Can Talk. I Am Alive. Day One Of The Rest Of My Life

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for the website for the A Graceful Death exhibition coming to London in February
antonia.rolls1@btinternet.com to email me

So, I Am Alive, And I Can Speak

And Breathe. My cold, bless it, is on its way out. I lost my voice last week and though I sounded really good, it was difficult to understand me. I thought that made me enigmatic, but others thought it made me irritating. They told me to Write It Down, For Goodnessakes.

So, in the studio as a Speaking Member Of The Human Race, but not yet a cycling one. I am feeling very wobbly (too much cake while ill, I hear you chortle. Not that kind of wobbly I reply huffily. I am weak, I am if anything, underfed. And I toss my brown locks and say Harumph.). There is much work to be done. I have agreed to paint a quick Angel for my lovely teeny guest who is only just 5' tall, and often comes to stay. She is in her mid twenties now, and my first meeting with her was when she was 8 years old and having a screaming temper tantrum on her mother's dining room table. Her older sister is even teenier. She is not even 4'10". I tried to give this sister driving lessons once, and absolutely nothing we did could make her feet reach the pedals. Amazing.

I am, as I say, doing an Angel for my eensy teeny weeny guest, and that will take up this afternoon, while she goes into town and has her next tattoo done. Creativity on all fronts. 16 Year Old Son, who is great friends with teeny guest, has gone with her. He is not allowed a tattoo, though he really wants one. What the tiny friend lacks in height she makes up for in volume and sense of rightness. She will bite his knees rather than allow him to talk his way into getting a page from Dostoyevsky tattooed onto his leg. 16 Year Old Son is 6'2" and so tiny tattooed friend can only get his knees.

13 Year Old Son is mourning the loss of his hamsters. Both died, one after the other, a few days ago. They were dwarf hamsters and looked like tiny fluffy punctuation marks. He, Son, was devastated and managed to save one of them for an few extra hours by holding it in his hand, and giving it sunflower seeds and weeping onto it. This Is Good, thought the hamster, I'll Hold On. But yesterday, the funeral took place. A hole about 8' deep was dug in the middle of my lawn and both hamsters were placed into the hole, both fitting into a small popcorn box, and buried. Here am I doing an exhibition on death and dying, on bereavement and coming through it, and my 13 Year Old Son tests me with the deaths of his two fluffy dwarf hamsters. Lucky I remembered that grief can take hold of any of us about any kind of loss. So I was very quiet about the garden looking like a combine harvester has rumbled across it, and listened to his memories of Happy Times With The Hamsters.

Today then, I am painting an Angel. In January, I am painting my still life for someone who has waited a while for it. In February the A Graceful Death goes to London. In February I visit the next venue for A Graceful Death in the Midlands. In between I begin to paint portraits, really good perceptive and strong portraits. Oh , and in January I hope to meet some NHS people who are interested in the A Graceful Death exhibition.

Ha. Tiny friend and 16 Year Old Son are back. One is tatooed, one is not. Which one is which, is the question now.

Curses And Blazes Pass Me A Hanky

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for the exhibition A Graceful Death next coming to London in February
antonia.rolls1@btinternet.com to email me

Curses And Blazes Pass Me A Hanky

I still have a cold. I still feel dreadful and cough all night. I splutter and wheeze and drip and this is Not Good. If I lived in a house where there was nothing to do I could go to bed. But I have things to do, exhibitions to mount and publicise, commissions to draw in, Christmas to prepare, large hungry offspring to welcome and feed for the next two weeks and the hamsters need cleaning. Bah. And I, in keeping with my warm and sunny nature, need to keep smiling and being nice to everyone that crosses my path because if I don't, I may begin to melt and disappear into a puddle of whining snivelling self pity. If I do that, I will have to explain myself and no one will believe my cheery waves and jolly little greetings were ever real.

But. But last night I lay in my bed and thought a bit harder about this being unwell business. I lay feeling achey and weary in a clean soft bed with fluffy cushions and a tray of tea. I had access to a bath and lots of hot water. It was only a cold, a bad one, but just a cold and I am not used to feeling unwell. I have medicines, the kind requests for updates from my friends and family, and a kitchen full of food. All this must mean something. I am fortunate beyond imagining if I am able to care for myself like this. I did go to Brighton yesterday to 19 Year Old Daughter's flat for the day, and I went feeling weepy with headaches, body aches and so on. But when I got there, she had a pot of tea ready, and a small nest of cushions and rugs on the sofa, and the water ready for a hot bath, and breakast on the go. So look, I said to myself last night. Look at what you have. I didn't feel any less ill, but I did wonder at how life had given me so much. In London, Alan was working hard and has the same cold but can't stop. So if I can lie in my bed, with everything possible for my benefit at my finger tips, have I not, in a wider sense, a very good life?

I could not read so I lay back and thought I would just let my mind drift and see what happened. This is not easy, one is prey to all sorts of unwanted thoughts and unwelcome ideas but I decided I would stick with it. It couldn't be that bad, I was, as I had recognised, surrounded by quite a lot of good stuff. (I must add that the knowledge of being surrounded by Good Stuff was only intellectual at that point, because I felt so physically unwell. I was not suffused in a golden glow of Something Like Nivarna). I lay back and thought of whatever came to mind, and do you know, it was like a meditation. I felt very in tune with life and a little teeny bit touched by God. No. I had not had doubled my lemsip and was not on a paracetamol high. I had not had anything except tea. And no, 13 Year Old Son did not slip a bit of morphine into the milk. I do think that however it happens, often aided by all sorts of things (like a cold), we can have moments of deep meditation which is like prayer. I was very comforted by my moments last night. I wondered too if I was terminally ill, and these symptoms were part of something that would eventually end my life, what would I feel? It certainly changed my interpretation of how bad I felt. It was not an easy thing to think. I wondered how Steve felt as his body simply did not move on and get better, and how his symptoms started like this - with something relatively small. How would I feel? Would any of the wonderful hot water, full kitchen, nice friends and family, fluffy cushions mean anything at all? I could not reach any conclusions, except that I would certainly lose the ability to see the best in things.

In the night I dreamt a dream again. I was in a car and was being followed by a car behind me. I stopped and got out, and the car behind me stopped too and out got Steve. Oh, I said, Where have you been? As I gave him a hug around his middle and he chuckled and said I've always been here, and returned my hug and kissed the top of my head. We stayed like that for a while, kind of catching up a bit before he got back into his car, I into mine, and drove off.

And now, back to the nitty gritty of day to day. My lovely Alan is not well, and he needs to rest for a good few days. I don't think he'll do the fluffy-cushion-let's-meditate-and-get-one-with-the-universe thing though. He is far too sensible for that, and he will do the lemsip and chesty cough medicine routine and so will not, as far as I know, have a visit from The Beyond.

I Have A Cold. Goddamit.

www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for the A Graceful Death exhibition website
www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
antonia.rolls1@btinternet.com to email me about anything. Relevant.

I Have A Cold Dammit To Blazes

What I am really saying is Pity Me. I expect I am one of a million billion who have colds at the moment, but that does not interest me. Only my cold interests me. It makes my head hurt and my face hurt and my limbs tired and I cough and sneeze. I have had to go back to bed after seeing 13 Year Old Son off to school and boy, that was good. But, after taking cold remedies that promised to relieve my symptoms and knock them on the head (but not if I have epilepsy or a heart condition or am swigging paracetamol cocktails), I am well enought to sit in front of my computer and Write. You can still pity me, because the medicine packet says that I will take a nose dive again after 4 hours and that is coming up quite soon. It is not often that I get a cold, or any kind of illness, so I am really noticing this one. I am making sure that my three children know so that they can be consumed with a nameless guilt about not being nice to me in the past and so guaruntee that they will be nice to me until at least New Year's Day. "Oh Mum" said the youngest one, "you are getting old". Need to work on him, not much practical sympathy there. "Aaarg" says 19 Year Old Daughter," Don't Die!" and she meant it. Good, that will do nicely. "Mmmm" says 16 Year Old Son, "I don't feel well either." I need to keep the spotlight on me, so I need to ignore all his symptoms and drone on about mine. He'll get the message sooner or later.

Now. Arty Stuff. A Graceful Death is finishing now, and I am back in the market for Jesus on the Tubes, Angels, Portraits, Still Lives and so on. In a day or two, I will send around an email to everyone I know explaining that Now is the time to commission a painting. I am free to concentrate on all their decorative and creative needs. I do have a lovely still life to do, in a kind of 16 century Dutch way. Flowers in an urn, which will be fun. I want to do a very focussed portrait, so go and look at your sitting room and see if there is a space for one, then get back to me. It is time you were immortalised.

The Medicine is wearing off, my days are numbered, the candle is flickering, the sun is setting, I feel flu-ey, so it is time to go and pose dramatically in the house so I can get maximum attention. I will call Alan who is also not well, and start my sentences with Do You Remember When We Were Young and Oh Oh I See A Light At The End Of A Tunnel....

Problem is my appetite hasn't gone, so I am probably around for a good while yet. I won't publicise that though.

Oh For Goodness Sake

www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for the A Graceful Death Exhibition I am putting on. Email me for the address
www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
antonia.rolls1@btinternet.com to contact me

Oh For Goodness Sake

Here I am. My home is turned into a gallery, my work of two years is on display. My 13 Year Old Son is ill and home, and I am in my studio doing Stuff before my mother comes and we have tea and open up the exhibition.

So why Oh For Goodness Sake? For one thing, my hands are cold as I type. Bah, the heater in the studio isn't hot enough yet. For another, it is raining and I have come across the garden in my new slippers to the studio when it wasn't raining. And finally, why can't I have a gallery where these works could sit in a designated place, profoundly profound and sensitive and glorious and I could show them from there? To interested and professional parties I may add, members of the public may not like to stumble on the issue of End Of Life without a bit of preparation.

Actually, this week has been wonderful. I have met and talked with some very interesting people, and have heard other stories of loss and bereavement and hope. Possibly the most important thing to take away from a visit to A Graceful Death is Hope. And love. There is much love here. I am fascinated at who is coming, and what they say about themselves and about this exhibition. I am very interested that elderly people come, as they must have had more experience than most of friends and family slowly coming to the end of their lives. I wonder what they feel as they go around. Mostly, we can chat over a cup of tea at the end of a wander around, but some people don't want to. I wonder what they are feeling.

Actually the real Oh For Goodness Sake is because I am waiting for my lovely old mum to come and have breakfast with me, and I haven't had a cup of tea yet. Funny how simple the remedy is when I think about it. And what if my slippers get wet? And what if my fingers are cold? Soon, I will be back in the house, holding a hot cup of tea (make it a mug. A pint size one.) and wearing smart Exhibition Boots - so very soon, none of my grumbles will amount to anything at all. All sorted. Glad I worked that one out.

Exhibition Going Well At Home

http://www.antoniarolls.co.uk/ for my website
http://www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com/ for the exhibition A Graceful Death now showing
antonia.rolls1@btinternet.com to email me for details of the exhibition venue and any other
comments you may wish to make



Exhibition Going Well At Home




Here is a taste of the paintings. This is a "Loneliness Triptych or Where Did You Go."




I shows how I felt the total absence of Steve, who has simply gone. All I had left were objects that were his and had no life, and yet were still here. His slippers feature in a few of the paintings; they were a symbol of his being here and comfortable with me.




Now. The exhibition is set up in my sitting room and hallway, which have been transformed into a Homes and Gardens Gallery with Lillies In Vases by Maddy and her husband Alan (we both have an Alan. One each ladies, there is enough to go around) and Maddy's two younger children. They came on Sunday and washed my house. They washed the walls, the ceilings, the doors, the floors. They removed every item of furniture and put them under the stairs, in the kitchen, in the sitting room and on the landing. Maddy's son locked himself in the downstairs loo and washed and prepared it as if it were a finalist in the Ideal Homes Exhibition. It is so shiny and perfect and tastefully decorated I thought I may guide visitors to it to just have a look when they needed the loo, and tell them they could have gone here but it is only for looking at, it is too perfect to wee in and then take them upstairs to the family bathroom. Upstairs in the family bathroom, if only my visitors knew, if Maddy hadn't mended it they would have had to remove the cistern lid and put their hands into the water to find the gadget to pull so that the loo would flush. We all took it in our stride and said Oh Well, Mustn't Grumble every time we went to the loo. Maddy came and said Bloody Hell and phoned for a plumber. See how we need her?

There was a huge turn out for the Opening Night Party on Monday. I was very happy. Alan's dear son was with me to help and we had wine and nibbles ready, the house turned into a gallery, fancy flowers and fairy lights everywhere and the paintings glowing in the scented candle light. Furniture piled into every other space with a door to close on it and hide it, including the kitchen. Within an hour, I noticed that most of the fancy and up-market guests had followed 16 Year Old Son into the kitchen and were sitting around the kitchen table with pots of tea and spotty tea mugs and the Goodies Baskets from on top of the fridge on the table where they were tucking into crisps and chocolates and biscuits. It was a sophisticated affair till you got to the kitchen door through which were sounds of clinking crockery and cheerful jolly banter. It was like the Staff Were Having A Party while the posh evening was going on outside. It was true to form that most of us ended up amongst the piled up furniture, around the kitchen table, drinking strong tea from endless teapots, and laughing and chatting over mountains of crisp and Cadbury's Fruit and Nut wrappers. We are, it seems, sophisticated and deeply intellectual, but only up to a point.




Yesterday I had some serious people come to see the paintings. Dear little 13 Year Old Son is off school with a bad cough and cold, and is upstairs in bed. At certain points during the day, as I showed my visitors around the exhibition and talked of Death, Dying and Reincarnation, we could hear a soft flop flop flop sound coming towards us. Through the door comes 13 Year Old Son in his bare feet, long, white bare feet like a Hobbit, and his tiny Harry Potter pyjamas I bought when he was about 8 years old, and his red dressing gown with a hood pulled up over his head. In silence he plods across the exhibition and out through the french windows into the wild Outside and disappears. My guests don't know he has just popped over to the heated studio in the garden to use the computer. They don't know that he has very little idea of how to dress and also that he is deaf in one hear and misses quite a few Audible Clues around him. They don't know that he doesn't feel the cold and never wears slippers or shoes if he can. They see the Mad Boy I Keep Upstairs come down and make his way, like a mystery, throught the house and back into the garden, where he probably will spend the night in his wild nest under a hedge. It is even more dramatic when the darkness has fallen and I am talking in the exhibition room with my erudite guests when the french doors open and a creature of the night, in a red dressing gown with the hood up (it is raining) and bare feet (he is just like this) and tiny Harry Potter pyjamas comes into the room and neither looking left nor right plods across the room and disappears into the House. We all stop and watch him and I say Oh That is Just My Son. He is Not Well, But He Is Normal. And we continue the guided tour of the paintings.

Every Woman Should Have These

http://www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com/ for an account of the exhibition of the End Of A Life that I am putting on here. Email me for venue details
http://www.antoniarolls.co.uk/ for my website
antonia.rolls1@btinterent.com

Every Woman Should Have These.

As you all probably know, life has not always been easy. Exciting, yes. Challenging, yes. Downright pooey, yes. And I keep going and I keep doing my Thing, and I keep managing to follow my heart, my dreams and my wild schemes no matter what monsters try and derail me (many of them my own fault, not thinking things through and not really wanting to give up on anything that I set my heart on Paint Wise, as they say)

What should every woman have? What is it that I have? Friends. Friends, my dears, friends.

Let us start at the beginning.

• Alan. Alan is my partner and has a hugeness of spirit that is hard to describe. When we met, I was in a total meltdown over losing Steve. We decided (quite rightly) to start a relationship, and what do I do? I compose an exhibition in memory of Steve. Add to that family difficulties, a personality that is so different to his that it is actually funny. What does Alan do? He remains Constant, Supportive, Truthful (ouch), Real, Generous and always able to listen. Alan is a Brick, a true friend, and has made "A Graceful Death" Exhibition work under some very difficult circumstances. I am so lucky to have him, and am beginning to do something I never even considered possible with Alan, to understand American Football. Steve would have thoroughly approved of him, and I thoroughly approve of him too. So, thank you to Alan.
• Eileen. How can such a small and modest person with such extraordinary intelligence, be so wise and resiliant? Eileen is a photographer www.flickr.com/photos/eileen_r for some idea of her talent. Eileen keeps a top quality job going during the day, is taking a degree in photography at night, is so very busy despite needing much peace and quiet. She had a genuis for photography, which is just as well as it is her passion. Please look above at her flickr website. And yet, yet, Eileen is always there for advice, comfort, a working-things-out-kind of conversation. Eileen never says No, Go Away You Bore Me or Oh Not Again. Eileen always gives me all of her attention when I need her advice and opinion, which is often, and on top of that takes all the photos of my paintings. It is becoming a fact, sadly, that Eileens photos of my paintings, are much better than the originals. That is because she is so clever. So thank you Eileen.
• Maddy. Hello Maddy! Maddy is my very sane very wise cousin who looks as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. It would melt. Let me tell you. Do not, just do NOT, underestimate Maddy. Maddy has a genius for putting the Under Dog on top, making it the Top Dog. Maddy has a sense of justice, a sense of fair play and an insight into all kinds of human behaviour that is borne of raw experience and her own difficulties. Did she lie down and die? No. Like the Dalai Lama she put it all into a box labelled Compassion and Forgiveness and Dangerous Deceptively Intelligent and got on with raising her three children, smiling, and putting other people first. So. Maddy is full of wit and when half a bottle of wine is involved, fury. And what fury! She is articulate, witty, razor sharp and oddly self effacing. Maddy has been here for me with such practical worldly and effective comments and advice on my life that I think that she must be the dalai lama. With attitude. And now Mr Pook and she are married, there is not a happier bunny anywhere. Good. So thank you Maddy
• Jemima. Maddy's baby sister. Min, to all of us. Min lives in the USA, miles away, with her husband and three children. Min is a font of calm and measured response. The fact that she is a firecracker, a whirling dirvish, makes her wisdom even more amazing. Min has involved herself through the goodness of her heart, in my various dramas here, and has had two of my Troubled Teenagers to stay with her. Needless to say, they prefer her to me. I prefer her to them. Only joking. A bit. So thank you Min
• My Three Children. 19 Year Old Daughter stands up for me with aplomb and verve, and is a wonderful terrifying wit when her old mum is being dissed. 16 Year Old Son, when asked, has extremely insightful and clever observations, when I am down. He is very good to his old mum really. He is very good at making quick judgements when needed. 13 Year Old Son gives me such hugs and kisses. He reminds me of all the lovely things he says I do for him, which makes me go gooey and garuntees more lovely things in the future. He is very loving and kind.
• All the Others. I don't want to name you all without checking if you want everyone to know who you are. My Scottish Friend in Dublin, an angel and a wise, dependable, deeply creative and intelligent, funny and loving old thing, she knows who she is. She needs a Thank you. My brothers, my friends here, my sister in law, all these people need big thank yous and so I do. My London friends (Cecil and Lucy...can I mention your names??)

Thanks all of you . You can all come to my 50th Birthday Party.

HOOORAY.

I Have A New Phone And I Belong

www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com an account of the A Graceful Death Exhibition I am holding in December. Email me for details, address below
www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
antonia.rolls1@btinternet.com to email me

Antonia Rolls can sit at the hairdressers and read her emails on her phone. She is very much At The Cutting Edge and must be contacted and informed 24 hours a day. So she has a new phone that has a touch screen and permanent internet access and she can even do Twitter on it. Yes. Move over Yoko Ono, Antonia Rolls is the Artist now.

I did go to the hairdresser today and I did sit with lots of brown goo on my head and a plastic covering on my shoulders, and use the new phone as a jolly old office computer. I have only just worked out how to stop the keypad making twinkly fairy noises each time I touch it which I have to do to type out messages and make choices. It did sound like a tiny electronic fairy dancing in electronic rain. I knew at the hairdressers that I needed to be fully in control of this wonder gadget, and it wouldn't do to make tinkling noises every time I touched it. So I sorted that. How? I can't remember. Then, after the nice hairdresser had made me some tea, and put some cold brown splodge on my head, I was left to Be Someone. " I can't talk today" I said "I have a controversial exhibition to put on and people may need to email me". So the phone rings and I drop it. Tinkle tinkle splatter and the battery slides under Stout Middle Age Lady With Tints's chair. Because I am In Control and Important I get up and crawl under the Stout Lady's chair assuming she has seen me coming and knows I am getting my battery. But she was reading Hello! and was oblivious to the rest of the salon, until she sees me under her chair keeping my head high because of the Brown Goo on it. "Just getting my battery" I say with exaggerated confidence. She is of the generation who don't have phones and was astonished that I needed a battery at all. For your Heart? I thought she may say. But I held up my New Phone and said from under her chair Ha Ha, for my phone. It was good that I scuttled back then, because I could see her wondering why my phone was under her chair and how could I answer it if it was there?

Back at my seat I read my emails. All from Facebook and from my 19 Year Old Daughter. No matter, I look busy. Then on to Twitter. That is over in a few seconds. Then I got a phone call! And it is from the BBC which I am expecting. I leap out of my chair and go into the washing area (for some reason. It is busier there, and quiet where I was sitting waiting for my brown goo to cover my white hairs) and say Yes! so enthusiastially that everyone looks up thinking Ooh good, she has won the lottery. Let's be nice to her. However, I have to admit that I am at the hairdressers and will have to call back later. The nice man at the other end says OK and I am driven by madness to say And I Will Be Beautiful Then, to which the BBC man says Oh. I am sure you will. And he must put down the phone and say to the other journalists in his office I think that Antonia Rolls is having plastic surgery, not a hair do.

I did call the BBC man back, nothing except work was mentioned, and my hair does look good. The Stout Lady With Tints didn't seem to be affected by the battery under the chair incident, and left the salon looking lovely. She is probably glad she doesn't have to have an all singing all dancing twinkly tinkling phone to do her work on. It probably reinforced her decision to stick with the land line and the postal service.