Celebration of blue; Pale Blue Eyes.

We are a couple of weeks away from the longest day, midsummers day, by the end of the month we will be heading back into darkness and another winter. It feels as if last winter has never left us. We have had a nice day here and there, sometimes even a couple of days, or at best a week, but then we descend back into the cold the wet and the miserable. A friend said to me we have lovely long summer evenings, and so we do, but long summer evenings are not the slightest use if it’s too cold to go out and enjoy them. I’m sitting here, at my computer, it’s a few minutes before 11 and it’s almost dark. If you look north you can still see the glow of evening light. Usually I love these long summer evenings but today I’m indoors, wearing winter woolies and turning up the heating. The song ‘Pale Blue Eyes’ has been playing over and over in my head all day. I’ve always liked this song. It made me start thinking about ‘blue’, I guess I’m a little ‘blue’ at the moment ( both literally and metaphorically). This lack of summer is enough to make any one feel ‘blue’.

But; ‘blue’ can be good too, here is a selection of the ‘good’ blues this melancholy mood has led me too. ……….

A collection of ‘Blue’ paintings.

 First here are the well known favorites’; the Blue Dancers by Degas,
followed by a couple of Picasso

and a couple of Monet.


The photo at the top of the page is of the American abstract expressionist painter and artist Helen Frankenthaler sitting amidst her art in her New York City studio. Photographed by Gordon Parks for LIFE magazine ca. 1956.

Polarbearprince by Sweedish artist Nils Dardel.
Nils Elias Christoffer von Dardel (sign: Nils Dardel) (1888 – 1943) was a Swedish post-impressionist painter born in Bettna, Södermanland, Sweden. After studying at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts in Stockholm, he was one of a group of young artists who went to Paris in around 1910.

In the Garden my Richard Emil Miller
Richard Emil Miller (1875-1943), American Impressionist painter, studied at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts, & then sailed for Paris to study at Academie Julian (1898–1901). Paris was the art capital of the 19th-century. Its museums, exhibition spaces, art academies, & the manner in which the arts were perceived as an integral part of everyday life drew painters, sculptors, & architects from around the world to the French capital.

The flower meadow by Lynn Rodgie
Lynn Rodgie is constantly inspired by her environment; the Scottish countryside around her gives endless ideas for paintings. As she says; ‘The soft rolling hills of the borders is perhaps not as spectacular as the rugged north or as picturesque as the Lake District, but it has a gentle pull that grows on you over time. The geometric shapes and colours of the ploughed fields, rows of hay bales in a golden field are visions that will get me itching to pick up a paintbrush'.


Farm Blue by John Piper
John Piper paintings are always in oils on board or on canvas. A restricted use of colour and an emphasis on line and form, set within the Cornish landscape dominate the paintings. John paintings often have a series of thin glazes applied one upon another. Sometimes earlier drawing is allowed to show through; whilst at other times the painting is deeply scratched and scraped, providing an intensity of depth and colour. At other times, particularly with smaller paintings, paint is applied more opaquely and with less over-drawing.


A poem by Anne Bronte
The Bluebell.

( watercolour by Clair Winteringham)

A fine and subtle spirit dwells
In every little flower,
Each one its own sweet feeling breathes
With more or less of power.
There is a silent eloquence
In every wild bluebell
That fills my softened heart with bliss
That words could never tell.
( Barbara Bagley)

Yet I recall not long ago
A bright and sunny day,
'Twas when I led a toilsome life
So many leagues away;
( Barbara Bagley)
That day along a sunny road
All carelessly I strayed,
Between two banks where smiling flowers
Their varied hues displayed.


Before me rose a lofty hill,
Behind me lay the sea,
My heart was not so heavy then
As it was wont to be.
( Barbara Bagley)
Less harassed than at other times
I saw the scene was fair,
And spoke and laughed to those around,
As if I knew no care.
( Anne Mortimer)

But when I looked upon the bank
My wandering glances fell
Upon a little trembling flower,
A single sweet bluebell.
(John Connolley)
Whence came that rising in my throat,
That dimness in my eye?
Why did those burning drops distil --
Those bitter feelings rise?
(Matthew Palmer)
O, that lone flower recalled to me
My happy childhood's hours
When bluebells seemed like fairy gifts
A prize among the flowers,
(Sally Stafford)
Those sunny days of merriment
When heart and soul were free,
And when I dwelt with kindred hearts
That loved and cared for me.
( water colour by Mulligan Greta)
I had not then mid heartless crowds
To spend a thankless life
In seeking after others' weal
With anxious toil and strife.
'Sad wanderer, weep those blissful times
That never may return!'
The lovely floweret seemed to say,
And thus it made me mourn.

And the music that began this tour of the blue………………Pale Blue Eyes