A Busy Week

'Paintscape,' acrylic on canvas, 42 x 33cm

Next week will be a busy one! I'm delivering two paintings for a show titled FLIGHT, which opens on Tuesday evening. Coincidentally, both paintings are blue-based, and images of the sea. I'm looking forward to seeing how the other artists have interpreted this theme. My smaller painting was inspired by the memory of a flight over Paphos (Cyprus) and the larger one is an abstract using the sea as a metaphor for life's struggles. I will post both images next week.

Meanwhile, I have been invited to do a PODCAST interview next week. The date has yet to be set, but the interviewer is an artist, Phillip J. Mellen, who lives in the US, and has interviewed a lot of artists whose work I really respect, and established artists. I am really honoured to be included in his list of artists!

The painting posted above is a recent one and it was inspired partially by winter colours, and the way that the sun suddenly comes out and you get wonderful golds and lilacs.

PUBLISHED!

'Nicosia Rooftops,' oil and acrylic on board.

Yesterday I finally published my novel on Kindle. This is the image I used for my cover, which I designed myself, with the help of the Kindle cover-creator. I was really pleased to be able to use one of my paintings on my cover.

My novel is called THE JAGGED GREEN LINE.

It was really thrilling to buy my book, and see it magically appear on my new Kindle Fire HD. It felt as if it was not written by me. Somehow the fact that it was readable on a different device instantly set it apart from any connections to my laptop, or the endless days of struggle over words and phrases! At the same time, my words still carried the impact I wanted, and that was wonderful to see.

This is the link:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jagged-Green-Line-Fiona-Stanbury-ebook/dp/B00IIOX92Q/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1392912258&sr=1-1&keywords=fiona+stanbury

The next steps are:
To get back to painting - sorely missed for the past 3 weeks (though I have begun 3 new ones) and this absence has made me increasingly frustrated.....
To continue the sequel to my novel, begun some time ago....
To see about getting my novel set up as a print version, and this option is now available to me.

Circles, excitement and anxieties.

'Thinking About Cyprus,' oil and acrylic on board, 30 x 40cm

As the torrential rain continues to fall outside, and with flood warnings and red weather alerts across the south of the UK continuously on the television near me, I'm attaching a painting that is now in sunny Cyprus. When I was there in January, I swopped paintings with Valerie Brennan, my Facebook friend. This is the one I gave her and it is now in her home. It gives me much pleasure to think of it being in Cyprus, enjoyed by her. I have not left any artwork in Cyprus since I left in 1998, though we hope to make a show in Nicosia in the summer.

I sat for some hours in Valerie's studio and saw her wonderful paintings, and we talked about our artwork. Facebook has created a wide circle of artists and I know many personally or through someone else. Valerie has met several of the artist friends whose work has inspired me on Facebook. From painting in much isolation four or five years ago, I now have the advantage of being able to check in on my friends' recent paintings, and can contact them in seconds by a few clicks.

My painting is from a memory of sunrise - when the Kyrenia mountains appear quite dark, and the sun turns the sky yellow. Grasses and rocks and the wide plain catch the early glow and my painting is a composite of experiences. Circles also seemed to embody my experiences.

My novel, 'The Jagged Green Line,' is now finished. I have been struggling to create something called an active table of contents and this is what has been delaying me. I hope to be able to submit my book to Kindle by Friday (Valentine's Day!). It is a time of great excitement and also great nerves! I have asked myself many times, How do you know when a book is finished? I have tweaked it for a long time and it is richer for this, I believe. But somehow the strings of attachment and anxiety have loosened, and it has fallen free from me. It seems to have its own life. So this is the point at which I feel it is finished.

I was given a Kindle Fire HD for Christmas. The first book I will buy will be my own. I can't wait to see how it looks on my Kindle!