I find it effortless to combine utter delight when my work is appreciated with complete disbelief, um, when my work is appreciated.  I expect many people do.  Thus it was when David Knowles of Earthlines magazine got in touch to ask if they could include a couple of my pieces in one of their issues.  Could they?  Well of course, absolutely, wow, point the way.  Also why on earth me, when I would surely be so far down anyone's list of options that I'd be falling off the bottom?  However, that way madness lies, not to mention sitting in a corner with a blanket over my head.  And perhaps a small whisky.  Or indeed a large one.  So after asking anyway (though couched less pathetically), I eagerly clambered on board, and am looking forward in a few months' time to opening a copy and seeing my prints there, on the page.  Coo.

The world seems to have filled up with all sorts of fascinating magazines recently - by which I obviously mean that I have recently discovered the world to be filled with all sorts of fascinating magazines.  For this fact I blame the brilliant Magalleria in Bath (every time I go in there, there's something to intrigue) and social media, through which everything can be found sooner or later. 

Though I cannot for the life of me remember exactly how I came across it, I think Twitter was where I first discovered Earthlines.  It's my sort of reading matter, it comes optionally as a paper copy (sorry, just can't comfortably do the digital thing, even though I know it's greener) and also it immediately appealed to my sense of guilt that the editors and contributors are everything I'm not - committed, living their belief system, intensely in touch with their patch of the world.  Because they work at it.  Me, I like to read about such folk and think vaguely that I could be rather more like that if circumstances were different, but I know it isn't true.  I know that, though once I thought differently, I'm not cut out to be a rural person (I know, not a prerequisite).  I know also that the bit I truly want to match is the paying attention, and if I had any kind of commitment then I could practise that in, for instance, my parents' garden (tending to wilderness in parts) where there is an abundance of wild plants, insects and wildlife of various sorts - even if the birds irritate my mother by generally choosing to eat next door.  They might live on a housing estate, but it's one where they regularly used to meet badgers coming down other people's front paths when they walked the dog late at night, not to mention the one that holed up under their shed for a day.  For a while there was a partridge roaming about too - just as my father was wishing I could see it and I was staring out the front window, there it was strolling down the concrete drive opposite.  Beautiful timing, and its attitude was so utterly relaxed.  They have resident toads and plenty of slow worms, a wider range of butterflies in a day than I would normally see in a month, the usual range of small mammals perfectly designed for our past cats to leave as sad little corpses next to the milk bottles.  Less welcome local rats, too, for a while, scurrying or sauntering past the back door on their way from somewhere to somewhere else, but neighbours have probably put paid to them, they haven't been seen in a while now. 

Suffice to say that there would be plenty just there for me to study more closely if I truly wanted to, so doubtless the issue is, as usual, to do with insufficient will.  Maybe one day I'll get there, but meanwhile I walk with a friend round a popular local reservoir, where we delight in the chance encounters - goldcrests in the conifers, a stoat completely oblivious to us and weaving in and out of a low stone wall, deer, a dipper (only ever one, and that rarely), treecreepers, grumpy-great-uncle herons.  Though it's not the wildest of environments, we can still watch the change of season, year after year enjoy the butterbur, the first blossom, the orchids, the annoying tendency of the great crested grebes never to do their mating thing while we're around, even if they did once form a heart between them and we waited hopefully for, oh, ages.  For now, and perhaps forever, all of this is enough of a thrill, but it doesn't stop me having a sort of lazy envy of people who try harder, live deeper.     

Discerning Eye invites (relatively) small entries for its juried exhibition each year, limited to 50cm height, width and depth.  There were a couple of 3D works here, but the majority hung on the wall, and of those most were oils.  As a printmaker, I was a little disappointed by that, but I shouldn't be too narrow about these things, and there were some beautiful pieces - hover over pictures for the artists.  This time the weird angles aren't down to ineptitude but to a desire to avoid reflections - I did my best. 
    

The collection is being shown at Bridge House Drawing Centre, also home for Drawing Projects UK - the brainchild of Anita Taylor, current Dean of Bath School of Art and Design at Bath Spa University who returned from Australia to take up the post, and her partner. The house is an elegant building - as are many in Trowbridge, though somehow they're too easy to overlook (that could be baggage from growing up locally and, basically, dismissing the town - perhaps time to review my tired attitude) - and I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next, both at the Drawing Centre and with Trowbridge Arts generally.  Until fairly recently I hadn't even been aware that there was a Trowbridge Arts at all, though in fairness to me it's been a long time since I've been local.  Another wonder of social media, no doubt about it - I can be ersatz local to anywhere.  

I think I've worked out at least one reason why April is the cruellest month.  Nearly every day this last week, the sun came out at regular intervals and filled the world with enough glorious, encouraging light - and, in protected spots out of the wind, warmth - surely to tempt a slow worm out from under its stone (found a few in my parents' garden, sensibly hiding).  And, every single time, within ten or so minutes it was suddenly gone and instead we had hail or snow. And then back to the obviously-set-for the-day sunshine, pretending it never went away.  Repeat repeat repeat - crazy weather.  But the skies, oh! the skies.  As the heavens prepared to deliver the next icy shock, the sky would turn dense, dark storm blue, with everything startlingly spotlit against it, or it would be fantastically sculpted from deep indigo clouds, carved through to the lighter shades within.  The lighting has been incredible and made for some stunning colours -  as ever, the improbable acid green of ordinarily grass-green fields, but also a claret-leafed tree across the river valley, and (a favourite blend) the russet-red new growth of pollarded lime trees glowing against a background of pure white blossom in the churchyard - just gorgeous.

More prosaically, I was pleased to have a piece of work selected for the latest Bath Society of Artists' Summer Exhibition, though faintly surprised that, of the two I submitted, 'Gather' was the one that made it in. I'm not complaining, more intrigued at how these things go.

It's as fun as all the other summer (well, more or less summer, anyway) shows I've visited at the Victoria Art Gallery down the years.  As ever, I like some works, don't like others, know that most of this is purely down to my particular taste and (not knowing what's what, but not prepared to allow for that) feel that a few are just plain poor.  I liked some winners, couldn't get my head round others, frankly laughed at one or two (that's frankly laughed inside my head - I wasn't sharing my views).  I like that I recognise a handful of my favourite artists by now, and notice when others aren't on the walls.  One day I shall make the effort to put aside a fund from any sales of my own work throughout the year(s), then allow myself a painting.

Favourites?  As ever, I love Amanda Ralfe's chalky paintings.

Also works by Andrew Lansley, Rosie Mack, Richard Twose and many others.  Some are below - hover over them for name and artist.  I should probably point out that nobody's work was actually a not-quite-rectangle - any and all optical whatnots should be attributed to the photographer (sorry).

I always feel that I don't give the sculpture at the show enough space - I enjoy the 3D work, but if I'm not careful I find I treat it mostly as obstacles to avoid while looking at the walls, hazards that must not be knocked over.  Also, it's easy to lose sight of the individual pieces.  The walls might be richly full, but I find myself able to concentrate on the piece in front of me and ignore those around it.  With the sculptures, though, the busy-ness of the background makes that more difficult, for me certainly.  It's an odd sensation - I walk round, carefully trying to focus my attention on the sculptures, but as often as not it just scatters.  Nevertheless, I persevered.  Here's a selection I liked, but there might be others where I.  Just.  Couldn't.  Oh look, paintings! 

Next up, I'm hoping to see the Discerning Eye exhibition, which has rocked up in - surely one of the most unlikely places - Trowbridge.  I'll have to see what I can manage.