Introducing... The art of Helen Bradley

Oh dear, I haven't been on here since September! This is probably the longest I have been away from my websites since I launched them a few years back... 
The truth is, I need to raise some much-needed funds for Arcane Publishing and Arcane towers, and in order to do this, I went and got myself a "proper" job, only it's not really the 9 to 5 kind (more the 60-hour a week kind) and basically, it's taken over my life... Unfortunately for my creative pursuits and luckily for my bank account, it's a one-year contract and I won't be free from it until July 2020... I hope that this will enable me to complete The Right Place next year and publish towards late 2021; it is also my intention to develop my second-hand books venture, and go back to organising events... Watch this space! 
In the meantime, I'm afraid I will only be able to come on here sporadically to post a blog from time to time... 

This week, I would like to tell you about some lovely books I found in late August - I just had to buy all four of them as I felt I couldn't leave them behind...
They led me to discover an artist I had never heard about before, Helen Bradley. 
Hers is the extraordinary story of a girl born in 1900 in the north of England whose thwarted artistic ambition was finally achieved when she picked up her brushes at the age of 65 and became an internationally renowned artist. Some people have called her the female Lowry!  
For a student of English history and society like myself (Victorian to early 20th century), her narrative paintings of Edwardian childhood are intriguing and fascinating. Her paintings are populated with many characters taken from real life - humans and animals - and the colourful scenes are incredibly evocative. They describe the artist's Edwardian childhood through the eyes of a curious and happy child who observed the world around her with innocent and eager eyes. The paintings themselves could be described as naïve art and are accompanied by an autobiographical narrative written by Helen herself reminiscing about her life as a child in Northern England, a time of societal conventions, god-fearing family members, frequent funerals, amiable servants and pleasure derived from all the small things in life... Helen Bradley's four published books are a delight and have been a real discovery for me... They are now part of my own personal collection!
​You can enjoy some examples of her work below...  

---