chriswoodartist

Today’s blog post is shamelessly autobiographical – I am obsessed with sailing, art and books. For the last few days I have been moving desks, tables and bookcases, which has lead to hundreds of books and thousands of magazines being made homeless !

I thought it was bad enough when I moved into the house 30 years ago but since then I have avidly collected books on drawing, illustration, painting, printmaking, graphic design, sculpture, ceramics, typography, design, architecture, furniture, artists and art movements. In addition I have countless nautical books and every issue of Classic Boat magazine since the first day it rolled off the presses.

The room is where I do all my admin and consequently there are countless plastic boxes stuffed full of an assortment of paperwork spanning thirty years. Oh and then there are the portfolios ! All this stuff is piled high and moving bookcases from one wall to another has been quite a task but I am slowly making sense of it all. This was prompted by the fear that there was way too much weight on the ceiling below and the bookcases needed moving to the opposite wall, where the joists go into the party wall. At this point I should mention that my home studio is directly beneath the reading room and the thought of several tons of books making an unwelcome appearance on the studio floor below was just too much !

The image below is a painting that I did for Yachting World magazine in the early 1990’s. The watercolour painting was one of several illustrating a series of articles on Heavy Weather Sailing. This particular painting is of the infamous 1987 Cowes- Fastnet Race, where 13 yachtsmen lost their lives , when a ferocious storm hit the fleet. My reason for including this painting here was that the Adlard Cole’s book Heavy Weather Sailing mysteriously came surface today. I had been looking for it for months and the mega reorganisation is paying dividends already !