NEEDLE AND EYE

Talk about passing through the eye of a needle! How about a needle in the eye? The left eye in this case. Tomorrow morning a needle will be inserted in the retina of my left eye to inject medication which treats worsening macular degeneration. There's a wet and a dry type of Mac DeGen, wet is the bad type and that's what my left eye has, the treacherous twit! Apparently the NHS nurses who perform this procedure are highly trained so I will try to keep all my fingers, toes and brain crossed and calm, serene and trustful that the Cosmos and every benevolent angel in it will stop whatever they're doing and focus their loving attention on my left eye (the right one too, just in case) because I need my eyes. These eyes still have loads to do and the Cosmos needs them as much as I do. It would be great if y'all would send in my direction whatever waves of natural and supernatural benevolent power you happen to have on hand tomorrow.

Many thanks, grazie tanto, muchas gracias, merci beaucoup, muito obrigada!

BIRTHDAY

This is what I did today which is the day before my 94th birthday tomorrow the 7th of August, obviously. Went to bed at 2am, more or less my usual bedtime. Slept soundly. Got up about 11am. Breakfast. Then up on stepladder, leaning out of bedroom window managed to clear the gutter of debris, including alien plant life, that was blocking the water flow and affecting the ground floor resident's flat. Asked her to come up and see my ingenious (genius) DIY. Did some more household-type activity. Then went upstairs to my studio to put away some things and prepare other things that need more work. By this time it was becoming evening-ish and there was food in the fridge that needed cooking. A small pack of diced chicken breasts that I put in an impro marinade yesterday: red wine, honey, garlic, spices, olive oil and left-over vegetable-cooking water. After quickly stir-frying the chicken with vegetables I put the whole thing in the oven, including the marinade,and let the dish cook for about an hour. It was beyond delicious, nectar of the gods! Now it's almost midnight which is and was my actual birth-time in Paris 94 years ago. But please ignore the age number, it's merely bureaucratic data. If you congratulate me let it be for who I am (whoeverthat is) and not the fact that I'm still alive here and now.

FACES EVERYWHERE

I'm standing in the bathtub taking a shower,the hose pipe kind of shower. I look down and what do I see? A face. What do I do? Turn off the water, step out of the bath, find my camera, get back in the tub and shoot some pics. The first photo doesn't look quite like the face as I first saw it, there was less space between mouth and nose. So in the second picture I shorten that space. In the third picture I add some black in the eyes and around the head. Voilà! Another apparition!

IDEAS AND PIGEONS

Whenever I have artwork that must be finished within a definite time period, other ideas fly in like pigeons landing on a windowsill. If I ignore them they might fly away or just sit there gurgling. More often than not I postpone the urgent work and play with the pigeons. Here's the latest word-painting, just finished.

LOVE, COMPLICATED

Acrylic, gouache and paper on canvas. 16 x 12 inches. Natalie d'Arbeloff, July 2023

TEXTUS EXHIBITION OPENS

Because legendarily wonderful Torriano Meeting House space is so small, they had to restrict the opening to the exhibitors only. Therefore we couldn’t invite friends, families, admirers or otherwise on Saturday but the show is now open from 9th July to 3rd September, as previously announced.

Address: Torriano Meeting House, 99 Torriano Ave, London, NW5 2RX< TEXTUS EXHIBITION: Weekends, 11am-6pm and by appointment in the week.

Every Saturday afternoon there will be a workshop led by an artist or poet (one of which I’ll be doing with Kezzie Florin-Sefton. Date to be confirmed.

Sundays in August : Readings associated with the exhibition:

Sunday 6th August TEXTUS reading: between text and textile Sunday 13th August TEXTUS reading: between text and textile Sunday 20th August TEXTUS reading: between text and textile Sunday 27th August TEXTUS reading: between text and textile

I took a few photos at the private view but most of them vanished from my old camera, I don't know why or where. Here are those I still have.

APPARITION

Yesterday while washing my hands over the bathroom sink I noticed that the nail brush I always hang over a metallic (no longer magnetic) soap-holder looks just like a mouth with teeth bared. Of course I had to draw a face around it to accentuate this discovery. Unbelievably, I had never noticed it before. Here he is, made even more believable by the cast shadow which gives him a beard. You can't see it properly in this flat photo but in three-dimensional reality he is sticking his silver tongue out at me, probably for revealing him.

ASHES TO OCEAN

This morning my niece Selene Guerrieri with her husband GianLuca Martinelli and their two children, Mariam and Emanuel, will be sprinkling my sister Annie's ashes over a small part of the Atlantic ocean. This was Annie's wish, expressed many times to Selene, who has gone to infinite trouble to find the perfect spot for this ceremony in honour of her mother. It is on the coast of Brittany, in the Morbihan area near Nantes.
I cannot be there in the flesh but my spirit is with them. It's still difficult for me to believe that my sister really left this world on the 15th of October last year. I am convinced that her indomitable spirit is capable of persuading any cosmic Authority that her aller-retour ticket to earth is valid for all eternity. But perhaps she has chosen to stay wherever her restless non-material self now resides.

TEXTUS EXHIBITION NOTICE

Take note of the TEXTUS invitation and if you're in London be sure to come and see how textiles and text, poetry and patterns can play together and enhance each other. I've become good friends with the two curators/creators of this project, Lottie Marie Mc Crindell and Kezzie Florin Sefton and it was their inspiration which prompted me to make 'Patterns in the Mind Endlessly Repeated' for the exhibition.

NEW COMEDY TEAM?

I have a suggestion for Boris and Donald on how to spend the rest of their lives: Get together as a comedy team. Tour the world making stuff up and repeating lines you've been using for decades. You'll be a huge success or a tragic failure.

HARRY TAKES THE STAND

Bravo to Harry for having the guts to take on the scandalously intrusive media and for demonstrating that it's possible for a Royal to go public with actual human feelings expressed in non-royal normal human language without the sky falling down. He will be hated by many for doing this but count me among those who are giving him a standing ovation.