14th June 2026 – the day after the day before [with additional thoughts on the 18th]. And what a day that was! Friends from other lives, local artists, people who’d come for the coffee and cakes and took time to look at the art, and most notably, people who said they’d never been to an art gallery. One of the joys of such an informal setting was being able to let people touch the paintings, to feel the texture and get a sense of what you might call the energy of the process. It led to conversations (all ages) about what materials I use, what kind of media, and how long a painting takes to complete. I imagine everyone’s way of doing things is different and depends quite a lot on whether they have their works in progress within visual range most of the time or have to go and ‘visit’ them. Mine are off to my right when I’m at my desk and computer, where the writing happens, so I can catch a glimpse out of the corner of my eye, then maybe take a longer look. These glances are as detached as it’s possible to be about my own work – I catch them unawares, like a visitor rather than the maker, and thoughts about tone, light and dark, shapes that don’t make sense or emerging ones that do. I’ve just found a boat in my current WiP, and that’s helped frame the rest of the scene. Because of this, the metaphorical piece of string can be many lengths!

13th June 2026. And we’re off!

Closing photos taken by a visitor – thanks AM! PS who’s the bouncer?

12th June 2026. According to an assortment of weather apps, it seems it might be safe to leave home without a range of ‘just in case’ items of clothing tomorrow. Reuben’s coffee will be bubbling and let me tell you, I had a slice of peppermint brownie last time, and there won’t be much of that left if you’re not quick! ‘Crater Lake’ (below) is enjoying a bit of attention on YouTube. Jurassic vibes but can you spot the 21st century intrusion?

10th June 2026. Will you look at this! Leave the wellies at home, slap on the Factor 50, and drop into the cafe for some essential fluids and incidental artiness! See you Churchside 10:00 ish to 16:00 ish.

7th June 2026. Today’s weather is completely different from yesterday’s, leaving me with a vague feeling that yesterday didn’t actually happen at all. I’ve put out a call for photographic evidence, outwith my own camera which could just be part of the conspiracy. If you have photos of the day, and you’re happy to let me use them here, please send them to stray[dot]ffish[at]gmail[dot]com. Many thanks.

So, yesterday – totally wild in so many ways! Howling wind; flapping, shoulder-thumping polythene sheets; rain, more rain, sun and rain; paintings courageously hanging onto their moorings and visitors doing their best to hold them still so they could get a bit of a look. And with that came the realisation that these pieces of work have two identities, one with the light coming at them as per usual from the front, and the other a fantastical revelation of glowing backlit skies of brush strokes and clouds that don’t show up any other way. This was cinematic and I’m wondering if I can somehow replicate it with a more controllable diffuse source.

Visitors – you were brilliant. I don’t know where you were heading when you landed up here but I was really glad to see you. I imagine Reuben’s coffee and cakes might have had something to do with it!

If you missed this event, it will all be happening again next Saturday (the 13th June) when I’m hoping the current weather system will have gone off to bother an unoccupied hillside somewhere that will really appreciate its attention.

6th June 2026. Catch-up tomorrow; I seem to be in need of all meals since breakfast in rapid succession. Just disposed of a dish of sliced melon but I don’t know whether that was dinner or supper. Anyway, a good day despite howling winds and tropical rain. Reuben’s work setting up the cafe for the show is brilliant.

5th June 2026 and we’re packed and ready to go! A couple of pieces the size of a small wall are leaning on the car in the garage. I’d popped up to Reuben’s cafe earlier to see if I could help with the green rope and peg lights, but it turned out to no one’s surprise at all that I was superfluous to requirements. There will be some furniture shifting tomorrow to give space at the back of the cafe for people to walk along and look at the paintings. I’m not sure yet where the two very large pieces will go, but they’d make a decent defence from the promised (threatened?) rain. If I do anything like this again, it will be as a pop-up/hit-and-run with a WATCH THIS SPACE tag. Today would have been that day. For any cats looking in, no – there won’t be Dreamies. Soz.

4th June 2026. Might have forgotten to say that almost all of the pieces on display are embedded with augmented reality layers, so bring your phone with its free Artivive app. There was an actual signal there when I tried it a couple of days ago – can’t let that go to waste, can we?

Singer of worlds – volume up!

3rd June – or is it November? – 2026. The good news is that there’s 10% less chance of rain on Saturday than there is for rain tomorrow. The less encouraging news is that the likelihood is still 75%. Better come in your wellies then. Or bring a boat. Ahoy there!

1st June 2026. Nipped off down the road to see if I could press a poster on our local supermarket. Memory suggested this was a feature of their large windows. Memory was out of date – the windows are opaque to about head height – mine anyway – and there are no local advertisements for events on them. I did walk round the store but found no one to speak to. Two of the remaining shops in the square have pointedly uncluttered windows or carry specific designs which I certainly wouldn’t want to impose on. I have a couple more local options to try on *Monday, but failing that, sandwich boards and a marching band?

*Ahem – that’ll be Tuesday.

31st May 2026. Today is List Day. Lists of things to take, of things for the emergency fixing box, of weather mitigations (mostly sunscreen and all-contingencies clothing), of things I haven’t thought of yet, and of the actual paintings going on their first jaunt. Making sure the Leaf is powered up too – the cafe is only a couple of hundred yards away but getting myself, my exhibits, and my support team of extra drawing pins, a small chalk board + chalk, frog and bird cut-outs, masking tape for kids to stick the aforementioned onto the larger larger pieces (tried this out yesterday and found adults were quite drawn to the idea too!), a hammer, and four or five proof-copy Frog Fall giveaways up there will be more efficiently achieved with a vehicle.

30th May 2026. Popped up to put the big card poster in position at the cafe and leave some more flyers. Back later today with the lights so Reuben can think about where he wants to put them. He talked this morning about moving the seating at the back of the cafe forwards to give space for people to walk along the (washing) line of paintings, and also about hanging a large piece of fabric, maybe canvas, along the back so they’re not in silhouette. He’s turning out to be a much better contingencies planner than I am! Returned in the afternoon to hang out at the cafe and have whatever conversations there were to be had. There were plenty, and several of them began with a really nice remark about the painting which, at that point, the person didn’t know was mine. Yes, that’s me beaming like an idiot! I’ll be nipping up on Friday to assist Reuben with the ropes and the lights. My next visit with the poster painting will be on June 6th when I take the rest of the pieces to hang on the line. How did it get so close so fast?

29th May 2026. Stumbled over Hurvin Anderson via Instagram and these, people, are my colours https://shop.tate.org.uk/hurvin-anderson-jungle-garden/hurand2602.html?cgid=hurvin-anderson. Or they will be when I’ve stopped flailing lamely around.

28th May 2026. So how’s everyone’s hydration coming along? And speaking of which, my weather app is beginning to hint at rain next weekend, although a 50% likelihood sounds to me like it’s hedging its bets. We’re under cover in any case and probably open to offering refuge to anyone caught out in the wrong clothing should things turn a bit feisty. Bonus: watercolour rescue services will not be required as I have none. As you were.

27th May 2026 and ‘jolly hot’, so of course I took more cards out to deliver locally. Most of them had to be left gripped in the front teeth of the letterboxes with no chance of getting anywhere near the epiglottis, let alone the long oesophageal drop to the floor on the other side. My respect for our Posties is stratospheric.

26th May 2026. Took some publicity cards with me to leave with/at appropriate places. The cards are exactly like the leaflets – same image and same size – but more resistant to pressure so easier to access at least the outside of a letterbox. In the event, I was able to leave quite a few at our local community centre, which hosts everything from yoga to choir practice to toddlers’ groups, to Irish dancing and, from the sounds of it, sometimes martial arts. I’ve exhibited there in the past.

25th May 2026. One of the items on my list (see yesterday’s post below) is labels. While there’s a school of thought that puts the meaning of a painting into the viewer’s court, my feeling is that this is more likely to alienate than engage people not familiar with art, artists, and exhibitions. Most people have never been to a gallery, some go once and never again. But things are changing, and with them, the rather pompous and self-congratulatory labels, also known as tombstones because of their shapes. Seventy-five words maximum and the prize-fighter ring of curatorial one-upmanship. Mine will not be tombstones, they’ll be stories. If you’ve seen my book Frog Fall, you’ll know what I mean. My plan is to print these out and let visitors pick them up as and when, or to confine them to the website where they can’t become litter. Meanwhile, phew wotta scorcher!

24th May 2026. I’ve been chugging along with making artwork, writing logs, hanging paintings up in my house and, more recently, negotiating exhibition space at a local cafe which suits my preference for informality, somehow forgetting about course requirements and even the fact of being on a course at all. This is an alarming moment and, checking with the notes, I find there are things to do. So I’ve taken screen snips of these and begun setting them against actions I’ve already taken, those still to complete, and the odd one or two not yet begun. My course ends on July 3rd, but formal Assessment doesn’t come around until September, which presumably means I have until then to assemble my pieces de resistance. This focuses primarily on the physical work completed since beginning this final unit back in April 2025 and not the digital layers – the AR and filmic components – which I’ve developed since beginning the course; these are not part of it. The first challenge, though, will be to identify something described as my ‘primary focus of investigation’ because I may have forgotten what that was.

23rd May 2026. I was full of good intentions this morning. Ok, I’d spent half an hour coaxing them out from under the bed. There was a new canvas on the easel, a square one this time because I like to surprise myself, and I was ready to make magic happen. Until the heat hit me as I opened the studio door. 30 + and rising. Which meant my paints had gone from frozen solid to something resembling colourful gravy, and I had moved from putting on my apron to removing as much as possible without causing anyone undue alarm. Today is a day for sitting still and being grateful I’m not expected to be somewhere in a suit.

21st May 2026. Keeping an eye on the weather forecast as both temperatures and humidity levels are due to rise over the coming days. At times like these, my Northern roots, which include not dealing with heat very well because we never had any, take precedence over my much longer-term experience of Southern conditions, such that sliding gracefully down any available wall isn’t out of the question. Twenty-five C is about my maximum, give or take humidity levels. So if this is likely over the exhibition dates, they will be postponed on the grounds that the paintings should take centre stage and not their wild-eyed, dribbling, puce-faced originator. Notice will be given. Thank you for your attention etc etc.

14th May 2026. Thought I might do some leafleting but abandoned the idea when I realised modern letterboxes, including my own, are incompatible with less modern hands (definitely my own), and some are almost at ground level. Those pigeons might have come in handy with a bit of training and rather more feathers. The paintings are still aloft on this and other windows. Anyone wishing to see them in a more dignified setting should pop up to Churchside cafe on the 6th and 13th of June. I can probably tell you what they’re about, if you have a minute. One definitely concerns that enormous yellow crane that came to site the new bridge, but there’s another that’s more cosmic. That night we all came out looking for an aurora and got something more like a sky full of pincushions, remember that?

12th May 2026. For the purists, look away now; for everyone else, this is what the back looks like with drawing pins and gaffer tape. Everything is still hanging and nothing has lost its moorings. The garden, meanwhile, is full of very vocal, newly-fledged starlings.

11th May 2026. Today’s agenda included checking via curation all the paintings I’m thinking of including, taking out all except one that isn’t on canvas and hanging the rest up so that I see them frequently. This also tests the security of the drawing-pin-and-hammer strategy for securing the raffia string. But then this happened:

Two baby pigeons on the ground in the garden, flightless and defenceless, and with no concerned parents but plenty of cats in sight. They’re safely boxed up now and waiting for the local wildlife rescue service to collect them. This happened a few hours later which meant close supervision in the interim to ensure they were still alive and that my cats found no way of changing that status. In consequence, not a lot else got done. Sorry, Else.

So where was I? Ah yes, swinging on the raffia. Eighteen paintings equipped with the wherewithal for aerial display; last stage – gaffer tape to stop the pins escaping.

10th May 2026. Posted a video made yesterday using the AR (augmented reality) app, Artivive and for some unknown reason, while it registers as Private in WordPress’s edit mode, it seems to be live on the published page. Maybe let me know if it’s not showing up there for you.

9th May 2026 and I’ll be off to do some poster-sitting at Churchside Cafe shortly. Sun’s up, the bird feeders are full of starlings, including my one-legged visitor who’s been coming since at least the autumn with its gang, and the ambient temperature has reached something approaching could-do-better. Anyway, if you’re heading for the river via the steps by the church, give us a wave (then call in for a coffee on the way back)! What3Words: hedge.into.loudness

Back home after a couple of stints at the cafe, trying to judge who might not mind being interrupted to be told about the painting and what it was doing there in the middle of the cafe like that monolith in 2001 Space Odyssey, but with cats. No one minded. Interested faces appeared, familiar faces came in, dogs brought their owners in, but probably more to hoover up crumbs than indulge in a bit of art appreciation. It’s quite an art in itself, this interruption business. Back to hammering drawing pins into canvases tomorrow.

8th May 2026. Tried out an idea yesterday involving drawing pins, rafia ribbon, and a string of lights where the lights are working pegs. The plan now is to wrap the lights round the luminous green rope for better support. Passed the Boss’s inspection today (aesthetics and mitigations against unexpected gravitational events), so now it’s all systems go for fixing rafia onto the backs of the paintings by hammering drawing pins into them. May contain expletives. Canvases are very light.

6th May 2026. Yesterday, I was mostly making bird silhouettes and cutting them out for my paper bird ‘aviary’. They’re all painted black on one side for dramatic effect, but I’m considering a brighter colour for the other side so children have a choice. I believe pink is rather popular.

5th May 2026. Made a quick AR layer for the painting below. Fire up your Artivive app and point it at the photo for May 3rd.

May the Fourth be with you. It had to be said.

3rd May 2026. The last few days have been taken up with curating, known in the writing world as murdering your darlings. This is where you go through your work ruthlessly assembling candidates for whatever the event is. In this case, there are essentially three: the first comprising a dedicated webpost describing the in-person exhibition and marking the end of the course (July 3rd), the second a digital show to support that and to entertain co-travellers on the OCA trail at a talk in June, and the last to actually submit for a final assessment at the beginning of September. Many of my darlings are refusing to go quietly and today, due to my elderly cat taking umbrage at something unknown and squirting wee at the first available vertical surface, I found a quantity of them in a portfolio I somehow hadn’t checked out. Rabbit hole.

I had some ideas about the exhibition at the cafe which seem to have gone down well and involve varnishing the pieces to be shown so that children can stick silhouettes of birds and frogs on them without causing damage in either direction. Stay with me here. Birds are a bit of a theme for me, and frogs certainly have been (see Frog Fall). Accessibility, inclusivity, getting kids on board early by letting them stamp their own mark on a painting with a bird or two and getting a photo. So now there’s a bird silhouette production line on the flat easel.

The secret’s out now; Facebook general, Facebook local, and Instagram wherever, are all carrying the message.

27th April 2026. Moving from one extreme to another, we’re leaving palaeolithic times and coming (almost) up to date with the local road bridge. A local history page tells me the brick-built version, which is still here today, is around 240 years old and that it had a steel footpath structure added to one side of it in 1926, separating foot traffic from vehicles. It had been there in one form or another, mostly wooden, since ‘at least the early 11th century’. Critically, it crosses the river Adur, allowing easier access for populations developing on either side of what has, at times, been a wide waterway, and at other times, a banked-up and fast-flowing river in the middle of an historical flood plain. This last is where the You Are Here arrow is currently located. So it’s old; it’s seen a lot; there are carp and mallards, swans, and kingfishers; gulls of various kinds, the occasional seal, and for many years the most unruly annual boat race you ever saw in your life. And the tide crashes up and down beneath it four times a day, every day of every year.

26th April 2026. The more I looked at those deep water creatures, the more I wanted to animate them. The inserted clips are from an earlier video I made on the same theme, and the audio is a manipulated edit of a track via Freesound. Lower and slower!

25th April 2026. Voila – a pair of swamp fish as yet unclassified by science. Anyone wanting to give it a go should know their skin is made of paint-soaked paper towel roll and I’ve no idea how they breathe. The water here is wilder than we would usually see it and the tree line much more extensive and further away. Have you spotted the contemporary element though? Even better, do you recognise it?

24th April 2026. Hayfever is not a friend of creatives and probably isn’t much help to locksmiths, paramedics or supermarket delivery drivers. But here we are, and out of this episode emerged a ‘name that palaeolithic swamp fish mega blighter’ competition [no, not really]. It began as one of the lakes in the new nature reserve down the fields below the green bridge that’s actually called the White bridge, but that place does have a sense of time hanging in the air, waiting to pull you back into its history.

23rd April 2026. Added an augmented reality (AR) layer to the poster. This involves making a video layer of some sort, in this case a music track and a shower of spring green leaves, and applying it in an app called Artivive to the target image – the one I want to activate the AR. I use a variety of apps for this. MotionLeap* (Lightricks) is good for animation – creating movement like flowing water or swaying foliage, as is PhotoDirector by Cyberlink, both of which can make other adjustments such as saturation, hue, light/dark and so forth. Sometimes I use this as it is, but more often I take it into a video editing suite such as PowerDirector, (also by Cyberlink), or Movavi where I can cut, clip, lengthen and shorten individual sections and also add an audio track. I often use recordings I’ve made outdoors as sound effects but sometimes a piece of music is called for. For this, I use Freesound where music and odd pieces of audio are hosted for composers looking for exposure rather than cash. Artivive also gives creators access to a range of still and animated images and models but you have to keep the total file size to a maximum of 300MB. AudioDirector is good for editing your own sounds or copyright-free tracks where changes are permitted (always read the small print!), but I’ve found Magix Music Maker,which sounds like a toy but is actually quite heavy duty if you’re hovering on the edge of pre-professional quality, excellent for rearranging and merging tracks. Well, that was quite the schoolday, wasn’t it! The video is below. Or you could download the Artivive app to your mobile device (it’s free) and point it at the poster on-screen. But if you’re a local, you could nip over to the Churchside cafe and point it at the one upfront and centre in the cafe while Reuben gets you a coffee!

*MotionLeap. I’d post a link but bringing it up on my PC shows me a product I barely recognise. It’s primarily for use on mobile devices where I never see such material, so maybe try accessing it from there.

2nd April 2026. The posters, flyers, and cards just arrived. Might have to open them. Did. They’re wonderful and some are out in the wild now at the Churchside Cafe for which another big thank you is due to Reuben. I may have left him some extras …
So now there’s one in my porch window which means there’s no backing out. Deep breath.

20^th April 2026. The two sets of butchers’ hooks I ordered arrived yesterday. One set looks as though the hook, while being fine for the painting end, may not be so suited to the pole. The others are absolutely big enough and could easily stand in as weaponry in a horror film.  COVID booster today which means I’ll be semi-comatose for at least one day followed by two days of confident but incoherent babbling. Believe nothing until at least Friday.

19th April 2026. Spent a little while looking online at display easels so I have somewhere to put the painting (still) titled ‘Transience’, then realised I already have one. It’s light and transportable, although not necessarily cooperative when it comes to staying upright. It will need to go in a corner. The rest will be canvases which already have a built-in hanging facility – the wooden frames over which the canvas is stretched. A bag of butchers’ hooks should do the rest. The next little while will be all about selecting the pieces of work to exhibit. There are three criteria. They have to be suitable for a family audience, my best work to date (no barrel-scrapers), and, critically, dry so no one goes home with half a landscape on their jacket sleeve. Here’s one candidate, a tiny thing weighing in at 20x15cm.

18th April 2026. We’ve settled on June 6th and 13th. Both Saturdays, so lots of passing traffic. Poster on its way. Stay tuned! Here’s the proto-poster. Changing the text box fill was problematic until I found the hidden toolbar in Paintshop Pro! Signed off now by Reuben.

Venue below. What3Words: hedge.into.loudness

17th April 2026. This is planned for early June. The venue is an outdoor but covered cafe that sits on the end of the community hut (Bevan Hall) belonging to the church just opposite. The covers come off in the summer. At this point, I’ve made an informal approach to Reuben, the owner of the cafe, received a very enthusiastic response, gained permission from the vicar (via Reuben who did this almost overnight and before I’d even asked, for which a massive thank you), and now we’re into the nitty-gritty of dates. What3Words: hedge.into.loudness

The run-up: I’m an art school drop-out. Started the Foundation year at Brighton College of Art the same year humans first went to the moon. Massive cultural mis-match between Bradford (Satanic mills and smog) and Brighton’s total hippie Flower Power peace n luuurv baby. Went home. Did other things. 2026 and just as NASA takes people back to the moon, I’m on the verge of graduating with a BA (Hons) in Painting via the Open College of the Arts (Open University), hashtag:nevertoolate.

© Suzanne Conboy-Hill 2026