Celia's diary: Writers and Artists

Celia's diary: Writers and Artists

Writers and Artists

Yesterday, I went to the Opening of an Exhibition of paintings and photographs by my friend, Chris Lock at the North Wall Gallery and Arts Centre in Oxford. Chris and I taught together a very long time ago at Binley Park School, Coventry and we have stayed friends ever since.

A lot of my friends are artists. I admire and envy their facility. Art attracts me enormously, but I have no skill. I could blame being badly taught, or left handedness, but I have never been able to draw or paint or take a half way decent photograph.

Nevertheless, I feel a great affinity to visual artists and feel that we have lot in common. Our ways of expression may be different, but I can identify with their single mindedness, their interest in certain images, symbols and motifs that they will return to again and again to the point of obsession. They see things that the rest of us miss and look differently. I always feel I can learn a lot from them and that we are just dipping from a different stretch of the great and mysterious stream that is creativity.

For details of the Exhibition go to:
http://http//www.thenorthwall.com/moreinfo.php?ref=194&type=x&start=0

Churches and Gardens

I've spoken in all kinds of places: classrooms, school halls, libraries, theatres, tents, even on the deck of the Cutty Sark, but never anywhere where the audience were sitting in pews and up in a gallery. This is St George's, Edinburgh, and it used to be a church. I was there to talk to students from various schools in Edinburgh. The space took a bit of getting used to, but it worked very well. Viv French, friend and fellow author, introduced me. I was there to talk about Fool's Girl. She's acted in Twelfth Night several times so I was really pleased when she said she loved the book.

Sunday, May 2nd

On Friday, May Day Eve, I was filming for a podcast in the garden next to Shakespeare's Birthplace. Flowers and herbs from Shakespeare's plays were all growing there - violets, pansies for thoughts, rue, bitter herb of grace, and rosemary. I was reminded of my mother, these were plants we had in our garden.

There's rosemary, that's for remembrance

pray you, love, remember.

- Hamlet

Today is her birthday. She loved Shakespeare. She named me for Celia in As You Like It and introduced me to his plays through his flowers, his songs and his verse that she could quote from memory. People ask where do ideas come from - I don't know, but sometimes I think that that come from a very deep place indeed.