Jacqui Smith

Cabinet Meltdown as Jacqui Smith Heads Resignations.

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, dealt the most serious blow to the Prime Minister’s authority. It emerged that she will step down from the Cabinet when Mr Brown reshuffles his team after what Labour fears will be its worst performance at the polls for a generation.
She had been under pressure for weeks over expences claims made by her husband on her behalf, including for two pornographic films. However, the public disclosure of her departure before tomorrow’s elections threw Mr Brown’s reshuffle off course.

On a tumultuous and chaotic day at Downing Street, it was also announced that Beverley Hughes would move aside from her job as Children’s Minister and not stand at the next election and that Tom Watson, the Cabinet Office Minister and key ally of Mr Brown, would leave the Government.
With speculation intensifying that Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, will become the most high-profile victim of the reshuffle, and that David Miliband might also be replaced as Foreign Secretary, it raised the prospect that the three great offices of state could change hands.

At time too! Although where I come from fraud, stealing, means instant dismissal! I shall say no more. except I have little interest in the shenanigans of politics or politicians, as is evident in todays awful drawing. Sorry.

Tracey Emin

Tracey Emin: Those Who Suffer Love at the White Cube is a marking-time exhibition unlikely to seriously enhance or diminish Emin's reputation.

Tracey Emin's new show is the artistic equivalent of snipping the legs off an unfaithful lover's suits. While Britain's best-known woman artist is apparently comfortably ensconced in a relationship, a sense of traumatic break-up resounds through this exhibition, Emin projecting her feelings onto White Cube's pristine walls in terms strident one moment, forlorn the next.
"Christ I just wanted you to ---- me and then I became greedy, I wanted you to love me," screams a mass of neon handwriting. "You said I was beautiful," bleats a small scrap of hand-stitched calico.

If I was the object of these powerful affections I'd be hiding in a dark corner. For while Emin may intend this work as a general, even universal statement on the pain and vulnerability that come with love, you can never seperate what Emin the artist thinks she is saying from what Emin the woman is doing and feeling. You're left in no doubt that this is Emin herself speaking, from the heart.
A sense of isolation runs through this exhibition, finding an outlet in a frenzy of onanism, a theme graphically explored in a large embroidery, a series of monoprints and a computer animation. Yet the raunchiness and apparent edge of such images – not to mention the crowds of celebrities jamming this exhibition's private view – shouldn't blind us to the fact that far from being 'one of Britain's most influential artists', as her PR material proclaims, Emin is a kind of Susan Boyle of art, an idiot savant outsider who represents no one but herself. But that doesn't mean she isn't an interesting, even a good artist.

I like Tracey Emin, although personally, I have never appreciated her need to bare her soul and regale us with all the intimacies of her life, in her art. Each to their own, I guess.

Julian Smith

Julian Smith plays sax with soul, really tugs at the heartstrings, and I wanted him to win Britains Got Talent! I consoled myself with a drawing.
I've not got back into the swing of a face a day yet, sorry, hopefully I will soon.

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

D-Day snub to Queen: Palace fury as Sarkozy refuses to invite royals to 65th Anniversary.
The Queen and other senior royals have been 'snubbed' by the French over D-Day commemorations
Buckingham Palace voiced anger last night after the French snubbed the Queen over next week's D-Day commemorations.
Aides said senior royals had repeatedly made clear their eagerness to support the historic 65th anniversary events in Normandy.
But last night French officials crushed any remaining hopes, admitting they had never had any plans to invite members of the British Royal Family.
They said President Nicolas Sarkozy was focused on the 'main event' of hosting U.S. President Barack Obama.
There was also anger at the British Government for failing to secure a Royal invitation from their French counterparts. Protocol means they cannot simply invite themselves.
The failure to invite the Queen - who is head of state of both Britain and Canada - will be seen as an insult to the memory of the 17,556 British and 5,316 Canadian troops who died to free France and are buried there.
The figure does not include many airmen and sailors whose bodies were never found.
Ministers had refused even to treat the 65th anniversary as a major event until shamed into a U-turn by a Daily Mail campaign earlier this year.
Senior Buckingham Palace sources made no attempt to hide their frustration. One said: 'We have made it very clear from the start we were keen to support the Normandy veterans in any way we could. No-one is keener to honour their sacrifice.
'There have been several conversations with the Foreign Office but no invitation has been forthcoming.
'We have gone through all the normal channels and had conversation after conversation, but received no feedback. It is very frustrating.'
President Sarkozy's officials were dismissive of the whole issue.

Disgraceful!

Something new for me, scribble drawing, in ink, inspired by Aliaena, a brilliant, exciting artist who has just begun blogging. Go see for yourself, because I love her work, but you have to make up your own mind. I did it this way today because I have to stop fiddling. I found it totally liberating, firstly, to make marks, lots of them, with little thought, and, second, to be unable to erase. Beginners luck, maybe, but it isn't a bad likeness, either!

Thank for your visit. Happy painting!

Tustin Mains

Boy, 6, Takes Wheel After Dad Passes Out.

A six-year-old boy grabbed the wheel of his family's pick-up truck and stopped it from crashing after his father became unconscious in the driver's seat.

Tustin Mains told police in North Platte, Nebraska, he was in the back seat with his three-year-old brother when their dad Phillip slumped over at the wheel.
He had been driving the family home from a restaurant when he suffered a low blood sugar attack and suddenly passed out.
Brave Tustin leapt into his father's lap to steer the Chevrolet Avalanche for several blocks, even turning around when he entered an area he did not recognise.
Although Mr Mains' foot had slipped off the accelerator, the vehicle continued to travel at 10-15mph with the boy at the wheel until it was spotted by police.
North Platte officer Roger Freeze ran up to the moving truck, reached through an open window and slipped the gearstick into neutral before rolling it into a park.

Bravo, Tustin! I love stories like this, much preferable to the interminable saga of the goverments' fraudulent expences, here in England!

I see I have made Tustin look older and I vow to leave a drawing for an hour, then take another look, before I post. I'm always in such a hurry.

Also, apologies for missing yesterday. I FORGOT to draw. In my defence, I was unpacking boxes and moving furniture, which has to be done!

Sir Ranulph Fiennes

Sir Ranulph Fiennes has reached the summit of Everest on his third attempt at conquering the Himalayan giant.

Arriving at the summit just before 1am BST, the veteran explorer became the first man to cross the north and south poles and climb the world's highest peak.
At 65, he also becomes the oldest Briton and the first British pensioner to climb Everest.
The record-breaking adventurer, who hopes to raise £3 million for cancer charity Marie Curie, had a triple heart bypass in 2003 following a heart attack.

Well done, Sir Ranulph! I love that trait in folk where they don't give up. Some call it stubborn, but I think nothing would ever be achieved if we didn't keep trying. Whatever the goal!

Happy painting, thanks for your visit.

Saint Fabiola

A gem of a one-woman show.
Francis Alÿs: Fabiola / National Portrait Gallery, London WC2

Francis Alÿs's images of a 4th-century saint raise tantalising questions about the power of the portrait.

It would be hard to imagine a more startling show of portraits than the 300 heads now assembled, with barely an inch between them, in Fabiola at the National Portrait Gallery. The spectacle is overwhelming. It is not just the critical mass of so many faces, floor to ceiling, nor the fact that some of these works might not ordinarily be found in a public gallery. It is that they all show exactly the same woman.

The same woman, what is more, in exactly the same pose: facing right, her head in profile, hooded in a red veil against a dark background. That she is a cult figure is obvious, even to those who have no idea who she is; that the cult is religious becomes apparent from the veil. But beyond that, what strikes over and again is the paradoxical sense that no matter how alike these images are - how alike they aim to look - each is tellingly different.

To read the whole review, go here.

I find Karin Juricks' DSFDF blog endlesly fascinating, so this review had an immediate pull for me. Overwhelming, yes, I would agree, and somehow ....... very weird. Anyway, here, I add my version of Saint Fabiola. Not the best drawing I have ever done, I feel, but I was in such a hurry to post something! It is good to be back.