Making A Mark

As a child growing up in Ghana, one of the phrases that fascinated me most whenever I heard people arguing or asserting a point was...’you mark it on the wall and see...’, it seemed to be a threat, a promise, or a prediction, depending on the circumstance.

As I approach my 60th birthday this coming September, I find myself making little marks of promises to myself of things I want to achieve to mark this milestone year. It is not a bucket list, neither are they new year resolutions because I believe in carrying out tasks and events at the time they spring to mind. 

All of my thoughts seem to focus around my passion for painting, drawing and sketching and as I love to travel, well travel will be involved too. We already have a trip to Gibraltar planned and the decisions I am faced with? Deciding whether to take my pochade box and oil paints or a sketch book and some gouache paints which seems infinitely easier but I fear I might regret the decision to leave the oils at home.

The big one is a trip to the Bahamas, we’ve been planning this for a while and whilst we haven’t set a date yet, we already have accommodation sorted in the form of our good friend Cookie who now lives and works there.

The major project though (and one I’ve been thinking around for a while) is doing my own chronicling of scenes of my adopted home town of Northampton with rather apt theme ‘Out and About in Northampton’. I am hoping this with culminate in some show or exhibition and have asked my friend Minnie to buddy me on this so we hold a joint show together.

I thought by making my own mark on the wall and sharing it here, it would provide me with a way of being accountable, to myself and to my readers and collectors of my work, hopefully without the pressure. The idea is to enjoy the process and leave our own little mark; a record of the town in paintings, sketches and drawings... for enjoyment and maybe for posterity.

There is much to see here and I am looking forward to sharing it from my perspective.

What are some of the fun ways you mark your milestones?