I’m writing this in the second week of the UK’s lockdown, on 31st March 2020. Originally this was going to be a simple blog about why I wanted to be an artist on Chichester’s Open Studios Art Trail, but COVID-19 has other plans. Do you recognize that story? For me there is an incredible irony in this social isolation we are all facing. Let me explain. I’m a little unusual as an artist in that I don’t stick to one particular medium. I’m just as happy picking up my paint brush as I am throwing … [Read more...]

My son is sixteen and loves all things retro and analogue. Digital is dead. Oh, the irony! What I would have given for a digital camera, music recorder and laptop at his age.  He found in my stash of old cassettes, remember tape, my songs from when I was twenty-one. We used a device to turn them into MP3s and then put them on Soundcloud. Thirty-three years later I am launching my singing career?  No, but I am strangely proud of them and forgive me for inflicting them on you. They were recorded … [Read more...]

This photograph is Ben Dunk and me at West Dean Garden restaurant, exchanging memories of our childhood in West Dean. Ben has written and published his memoirs online at http://www.dunkantix.com/secrets/TOC.html When I began writing the Cat Competition, I realised that although I’d lived there three separate times in my life I needed more information to make my story specific to West Dean and not just any village. I wanted it to have a historical setting, with characters authentic to the … [Read more...]

An Exhibition of his work at the Oxmarket Centre of Arts, Chichester 24 April 2017 to 7th May 2017 Luke’s work for the Oxmarket Exhibition combines found items with a canvas background.  Playfully and imaginatively creating new roles for shells, drift wood and lobster tails. He loves to use naturally found items to represent everyday scenes, and turn the two-dimensional canvas into a sculpture.  He has also uses gold leaf to decorate and create illuminations.   “I once found a … [Read more...]

It was with mixed feelings that I saw Films and Fathers published.  It was my first novel and completing it was fulfilling a dream.  But I didn’t want to crack open the champagne and party. I wanted to reflect and recover.  After two and a half years the book had gone through many changes. The story I thought I would tell turned out to be quite different and maybe more serious than originally intended. Now the thought is, ‘what’s next?’  Not another novel, not straight away.  Novels are like … [Read more...]

“Would you like some blank Canvases?” by brother, Seb McEwen, asked.  He is moving and he’s given me his stock of canvases, as he has nowhere to store them.  My answer was an instant ‘YES’!  It wasn’t so much the money I’d save, it was simply canvas envy.  To have all those canvases to do anything I wanted.  Create anything, any colour, any time.  It’s like walking into a stationers and fondling the naked crisp paper, the multitude of eager pens and piles of empty note pads that need filling.  … [Read more...]

I entered a short story competition last year, let’s call it micro fiction. Writing limit, 350 words. One of my stories was chosen to be included in a compilation that was published on Amazon by Mary Papas. There was some prize money! But best of all, I had some fun. The drawings are by Ravenfeller, who you can find on fiver.com! My Mum Said Be Careful, Not Everyone is Nice We called him Mack. Mack the marrow.  I remember when we went to the store where we found him in his packet. We … [Read more...]

This is a little blog to celebrate my taking part on a creative writing course. I say taking part rather than attendance because it was very much a hands on course. We didn’t just sit back and listen or passively take notes, we had to create! Julia Homan is the lecturer at Chichester College for Creative Writing, although she does hanker for and lecture in the more serious side of the English department, in the field of linguistics and grammar appreciation. You can tweet her: @lingoes. She … [Read more...]

If we judge a film on its ability to make us cry and laugh, then Philomena surely surpassed expectation. The audience of 500 people I saw it with seemed universally moved. Yet how strange, it was not as though we could have fully comprehended Philomena’s loss or the injustice against her. I doubt if there was one person in the cinema that had suffered in the same way. No, it was the film’s ability to show clearly how the young and innocent are taken advantage off in our world and how much … [Read more...]