Fairlie new to this

This is my blog. I imagine it like a gym, my fingers crossing the keyboard like little arms flexing and sweating. I hope that by encouraging myself to write, even to form sentences, I’ll work at some craft like a man with a lathe. To be frank I understand the depths of my own general uselessness. I feel like a dull blade in search of a whetstone, or a soft thrown pot with no kiln. So here we are. An archive of my interests and thoughts, to inspire interest and thoughts in no one in particular!

Here's a start: I came across this stirring work on tumblr, called The Morning Post by Fairlie Harmar (1876–1945. Yes, I’m a tumblr user, and while I’m admitting things I sometimes pick my nose.)

Fairlie Harmar, The Morning Post. Oil on canvas, c.1920s? Private Collection, image from tumblr.com/oldpaintings.

It’s a beautiful thing, even if the perspective is a little jaunty in the walls and objects on the table in the foreground. The mood is serene and a little unsettling, melancholic. The woman’s clinging, almost skeletal looking left hand adds to the impression almost of a mourning portrait. The unopened letters are so conspicuous as to feel insistent, the whole thing captures that foreboding air which can hang over grey mornings like this one.

 Harmar, by all accounts (mostly Wikipedia) was a Dorset born painter who trained at the Slade, later secretly marrying a Viscount Harberton. Here she is all dolled up for the coronation of George VI, go Fairlie.

Fairlie Harmar by Bassano Ltd, whole-plate film negative, 4 May 1937. National Portrait Gallery, NPG x152726.

Anyway, welcome. I’ll let you get on with your evening. I have some gooseberries to eat and then to figure out how to post this.

 -       Reilly