A very happy New Year to all friends, family, followers, readers, and also the much-appreciated owners of my work. (Many people have kindly sent me  photos of my work in its new home, and I cherish these.) New art is made and  in the pipeline – see above.

Owing  to various crises in the Wolf household I’m behindhand with the greetings, but here’s a belated link to the Christmas Wolf at the Door/Jill Tattersall newsletter. However, now the bogeyman has led off all the naughty children to heaven knows where,  it’s time to think ahead and plan.

Brian Eno has written a thoughtful and positive  article  suggesting that 2016 marked the bottom of a (post-Thatcher) trough. This makes sense to me; the decline has accompanied my working life.  So,  just maybe, 2017 will mark the beginnings of beneficial change.  As an operating philosophy, I’m going along with that.  We need to  be constructive, collaborative and optimistic for the future’s sake.

Ok, we’re enslaved by our screens and phones, but we’re also revolting against our Kindles.  We long for something tactile, something we can feel and touch and smell and feast our eyes on. Art and craft in all their forms.  Look how beatiful and innovative book design has recently become.  What a pleasure to pick up one of these supposedly endangered species!

On a personal note, just befor Christmas I showed work for the first time at the exquisite Amanda Aldous Gallery near Basingstoke.  We delivered paintings travelling through a mysterious, misty landscape to a beautiful light-filled barn in Tunworth.

It felt like an allegory!  We also ate the delicious local Camembert-like cheese, baked, and visited the restored George and Mary Watts Artist Village nearby –  fascinating and strongly recommended.  If you ever wonder how much volunteers can achieve, here’s your answer.

I have just done  the basic entry for 2017 May Artists’ Open House – i.e. paid the dosh – so now I’m committed. (I always think, never again….)  But then, I meet so many wonderful visitors, exchange all sorts of unlikely and useful information, work alongside lovely colleagues –  and usually shift a fair number of paintings. Which has to be good, or we’d have no room to sit down in the house.

More about concrete plans in newsletters to come. Meantime, warmest greetings to all.