Turn to Face the Strange Changes

Urban Shore; acrylic on canvas; Birkenhead Park series; 2023.

Big plans are afoot for Birkenhead. Umpteen billions are to be pumped into the area, old stuff is to be demolished and new stuff is to be build in its place. Some of this has already begun in the town centre, where long-empty shops have been flattened in preparation. Two new glass and steel tower blocks are almost finished. One is for council offices, the other is earmarked as a mixture of apartments, with shops at ground floor level.

Do we need new shop buildings, when so many perfectly good premises have been vacant for years already? Peoples shopping habits have changed now so many of us shop online.

And what's wrong with the old council offices, where not so long ago £20,000 was allegedly spent on new carpet for the stairs?

One aspect of the planned changes to the area which really interests me is the intention to create a large public park stretching down to the River Mersey. Currently this area houses derelict warehouses, an ugly concrete fly-over and long-abandoned industrial units. There is considerable new housing planned, but this still leaves acres of post-industrial grot. This should change dramatically if the proposal to develop a large urban green space goes ahead.

The urban regeneration is a 20-year plan. A lot can happen to funding in that time. But I hope everything goes ahead as the area offers huge potential.

Meanwhile, here's my latest addition to my on-going Birkenhead Park series of paintings and sketches.

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A Cure for Aging?

"All that we profess to do is but this, - to find out the secrets of the human frame; to know why the parts ossify and the blood stagnates, and to apply continual preventatives to the effort of time. This is not magic; it is the art of medicine rightly understood. In our order we hold most noble -, first, that knowledge which elevates the intellect; secondly, that which preserves the body. But the mere art (extracted from the juices and simples) which recruits the animal vigour and arrests the progress of decay, or that more noble secret which I will only hint to thee at present, by which heat or calorific, as ye call it, being, as Heraclitus wisely taught, the primordial principle of life, can be made its perpectual renovator...." Zanoni, book IV, chapter II, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, first published in 1842. Oroboros keyring - Spooky Cute Designs The idea of being able to achieve an immortal life is probably as old as human life itself. Folklore and myt...

Remembering Richie Tattoo Artist's Studio

Richard in the street entrance to his tattoo studio in Liverpool. The vertical sign next to Richard is now in the Liverpool Tattoo Museum. Yesterday, my sister Evelyn, Richard and myself stood outside Richard's old tattoo studio and looked up at the few remaining signs, whose paint has now mostly flacked away to reveal bare wood. On the studio's window are stick-on letters which read, "Art", where once it boldly announced his presence as the city's only "Tattoo Artist". I can remember him buying that simple plastic lettering from an old-fashioned printer's shop. This was in 1993, not long after he'd opened the studio and before he could afford better signs. After he'd patiently stuck them onto the glass we realised that from the outside the sign read "Artist Tattoo", so we had to carefully peel the letters off the window and have another go, laughing over having made such an obvious error yet worried in case we spoiled the letteri...

Falling Trees and Blue Portraits

Birkenhead Park Visitor Centre, 7th April 2019, by Adele Cosgrove-Bray. My ongoing series of sketches in the park continues unabated, as is evident. On a few recent sketches I've added some simple washes of watercolour to bring another dimension to the scenes. I've long grown accustomed to sketching in public, and the few people who've passed any comment have always been encouraging. I've even unintentionally captured a tiny bit of park history:- I drew this lovely arching tree in February this year, and since then its own weight has pulled its roots out from the ground. Probably due to safety concerns, it has been brutally cut back so it's now little more than a stump, and the horizontal section, with all its vertical branches, has been removed. Hopefully the tree will survive this harsh treatment. "How can walkies please, when every step's a wheeze?" by Adele Cosgrove-Bray. Portrait by Adele Cosgrove-Bray; chalk and charcoal...

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