How did we get to the end of February so quickly? The days are getting longer and spring is thankfully in the air.
In a mass clearout, my mum deposited several boxes of my childhood into my flat. The mystery boxes have sat for too long next to my bed forming an anxiety-ridden mountain now known as Mount Koko. Over the past few months I finally took the plunge and found a lot of junk but also some gems. Most especially my old postcard collection collated into three scrapbooks when I was around my nine-year-old son’s age.
Most of the postcards had been given to me by family members and date from the 1960s through to 1990s. Many are from people who very much formed me but are sadly no longer around, like my dear Granny M. I have a lot of postcards to her older sister, my Great Aunt Joyce, who was a prolific giver and receiver of correspondence. I don’t remember her, so I asked her nieces about her. She was a nurse and was awarded an OBE for setting up a women’s healthcare centre in Birmingham. Joyce was a seemingly charming and thoroughly modern woman.
Deciphering the handwriting on the postcards is often a challenge and the words hark back to a simpler era. They’re sometimes poetic and at times mundane, with the weather often a hot topic - some things never change!
The turns of phrase are often quaint and funny.
Dear Joyce, Florence is overwhelming! One recoils and suffers from culture shock. Visited the cathedral, Palace Vecchio, Michelangelo Place etc. Traffic hideous, non stop noise and fumes. Chris & Sofia (May 1975)
There is also one from my paternal grandparents to my maternal grandmother saying they were thinking of her during a visit to her old town. They invited her to stay. A slow form of the still succinct text message but you had to carry your address book and remember to buy stamps.
My son and I have been looking through the postcards together. There are lots of French alpine scenes and Welsh beaches. I decided to jazz-up these landscaped images from a bygone era, transporting the viewer into a Huxleyian-like world, and the Vintage Postcard painting series was born.
These mini paintings were produced in small pockets of time. I feel like I’ve travelled back in time whilst making them. I hope the viewer feels a bit of this time travel from looking at them too! Let me know what you think via Contact page if you like. :)