Great Thoughts.

I have passed this wall so many times over the years and have never seen it the same way twice. Some time ago I did a painting of this in the middle of summer when it was covered with little flowers and moss and all sorts of growth. I painted a large bold painting thinking of how nature can take things that look bleak and dead and restore it to something new. Nothing is ever an end always a new beginning.

That first painting is still in the ownership of friends made through that painting. 

Some four years or so later I passed it again. The rain was heavy and the summer growth almost entirely died off exposing more of the brickwork. The ironwork underneath could be seen and the nuts and bolts and hammerheads picked out.  

Once again the wall called out to me and again it brought happiness and memories that stirred the inner being. So I have painted it again and this time called it, "A Brick in the Wall." I have tried to keep it very abstract but defined some of the bricks. On them, I could read, "Lochside"  the name of a not too distant brickworks sadly now gone.  My father-in-law worked there man and boy as a blacksmith so he had a hand in the making of those very bricks.

Memories. it is a time of the year when we think more and more of families as we prepare to purchase gifts. Our thoughts fill with those still with us but those now gone return. Some of the cranky things people did that seemed annoying in the past now fill us with little warm glows and smiles.

These are the real gifts. The gifts that go on giving. Those are the things that make even a bleak wall speak happy words. 

How often at this time we say, 'it is the thought that counts not the gift" just how true that is. 

The wall will next spring come flooding back into colour but nature in its wonderful way made it a thing of beauty again and filled my heart with joy.

What more can we ask for than those who surround us and make memories with us?

Have a wonderful day. Black Friday? What a nonsense it seems like a beautiful colourful day to me.