Paintings and drawings – MichaelAitken

Paintings of Lake District Scenes

Song: Silence Speaks Volumes

This song came out of a songwriting class at Mary Ward Centre London under Heather McClelland, a member of a Vintage Vocal Harmony Group called the Sugar Sisters. She gave the class a number of random everyday phrases and asked us to come up with something. At the end of the day she tried to record each songwriters song. Some really good songs too. I joined her in a small dusty room and began coughing from the dustiness because of my asthma and/or allergy. I have been planning to do a painting of her playing the Ukelele (which she also was teaching at the college), from a photo of her in the college prospectus. I was going to make the painting realistically but I got interested in an art duo from the 1940s called the two Roberts: Colquhoun and McBryde and came up with the drawing you see in this post. Well too much information you probably say.

Please click for an audio and pdf of song

Silence speaks volumes

sketches of river

Forgive us our debts

FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS copy

Painting: The Two Brothers

tiredness

Me and my new born brother 1961

I was about ten years old when my brother was born in 1961. I was glad to have a brother of course but the difference in years meant we never really got to talk to each other much. Here in this picture I have the expression of tiredness shyness, and happiness as I was given my baby brother to hold for the first time. We went on to have completely different lives.

Epping Forest

This is not a poem
but a picture that I see
of our trip to find a forest
but a sign we did not see;
but I did see a chaffinch
singing in the tree.

This is a road map
with the northern track
that continued into distant green
across the expanding green;
each road we tried in turn
returned us to our dream.

pencil drawing — A trip to find Epping Forest

And this, a picture of you
adamant to tell
was it under Bower Hill
where the horizon fell.
While I ask a stranger
walking through a door
where is Epping forest
but he wasn’t sure.
We climbed up Station Hill
searching for the town
finding a little bakery
where we settled down.

Conversing with two ladies
waiting for a bus,
they had passed it recently
in a kind of rush.
Behind where you were sitting
a mirror on a wall
catching my reflection
in the shadows growing tall.
Slouching in your chair
engaged in conversation
we’re looking for Epping Forest
we came via Epping station? 20190629_164839~2.jpg