111. Lighting up the sky

Watching fireworks in my pyjamas.

Nov 25, 2023

This post is the eleventh in my monthly ‘Art & Treasures’ series, in which I am honouring some of my past experiences in words and pictures. I hope that in time my altered book art journal – a homage to precious things and even more precious memories – will become something for me to treasure in its own right. NEW FOR NOVEMBER: ‘Artist’s notes’. You’ll find a brief exploration of my art for this spread at the bottom of this post.

Dear Reader,

I don’t respond well to surprises. I dislike the unpredictable and the loud, and I will jump out of my skin if I hear a sudden noise.

Fireworks, then, are really not my thing. Across the pond every July fireworks abound in Independence Day celebrations, where they stretch across warm summer skies, yet over here peak firework season is November through to New Year. In the UK fireworks feature strongly on Guy Fawkes Night alongside fire banners, torches and bonfires.

Remember remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot...

(Opening lines of a traditional English folk verse)

Guy Fawkes Night, also known as Guy Fawkes Day, Bonfire Night and Fireworks Night, is an annual commemoration observed on 5 November, primarily in Great Britain, involving bonfires and fireworks displays. Its history begins with the events of 5 November 1605, when Guy Fawkes, a member of the Gunplowder Plot, was arrested while guarding explosives the plotters had placed beneath the House of Lords. The Catholic plotters had intended to assassinate Protestant king James I and his parliament. Celebrating that the king had survived, people lit bonfires around London.
Taken from Wikipedia

Leaving aside this historical near-miss assassination as an excuse for a party, dark, cold, crowded confusion has never been the kind of social scene to which I have ever felt attracted.

Desirable characteristics of Rebecca’s ideal November evening:

Being at home ✓
Calm ✓
No people ✓
Comfy pyjamas ✓
A mug of tea ✓
Central heating ✓

Undesirable characteristics of same:

Leaving the house X
Noise X
Crowds X
Smoke X
Cold X
Dark X

When I was a very young child I would associate the flashes and bangs of local bonfire celebrations with my early November birthday, and once we even had fireworks at home. I remember standing at the front door of our house with my mum and brother when I was very small, watching Dad do something in the dark on the drive involving a match… and then some sparks… and then…

💥 BANG! 💥

I don’t remember much about it, just that the firework responsible for making me jump had been intended as a birthday surprise.

(Did I mention that I’m not keen on surprises?)

I had gone to school in Lewes, site of the country’s largest bonfire night celebrations. Townspeople and representatives from bonfire societies all over the county converge on the streets of Lewes every November 5th for parades culminating in the burning of effigies at six fire sites. I loved Lewes Bonfire Night, but only because we would get to leave school early that day. On our way home we’d pass council representatives erecting ‘Road Closed’ and ‘No Parking’ signs, and watch as sighing business owners resigned to the melée of the evening ahead boarded up their shop windows in a sometimes successful effort to keep them whole.

Many local villages get in on the act every autumn with their own bonfire celebrations, with Saturday nights between early September and late November seeing different communities taking their turn at hosting a parade and firework display. Buses containing members of far-flung bonfire societies cross the county on a weekly basis, with massed participants converging at each location dressed in their themed costumes to join in with the fun.

Our own village carnival took place this year on November 11, and with attendance just down the road at Lewes Bonfire the previous Saturday having suffered thanks to atrocious weather, large numbers of visitors were expected at ours.

‘Are you coming into the village tonight?’ Jim asked me, failing to hide the twinkle in his eye. He is always out in the thick of it every year, taking photographs to submit to the press portals overnight.

Now, although I love the spectacle provided by a firework display – the dazzling starbursts of colour and pattern shooting across the winter sky – as Jim well knows I am not a fan of the bangs and the blasts.

So instead of heading down into the village with him in order to stand in a group of people with heads tilted upwards, their loud ‘ooohs’ and ‘aaaahs’ filling the air just as thickly as the acrid fug of spent cordite, I chose to keep my distance.

And thanks to some decent double glazing, a pair of striped pyjamas and a nice cup of tea, on Carnival Night I found that our landing was the quietest, warmest and most comfortable location to watch the spectacle.

Reader, it was beautiful.

If only fireworks could exist without the bangs and the smoke. 🤔

Well, they can; or at least something similar can.

The late Queen’s platinum jubilee celebrations in early June 2022 had culminated in an enthralling display by SKYMAGIC above Buckingham Palace.

We watched the show on TV. I’d heard nothing about what to expect, and as the spectacular light show began I was confused.

‘I don’t get it – are these silent fireworks?’

But no: these lights were animated, three-dimensional, magical.

‘They’re drones!’ Jim told me.

‘Would that have been something you’d’ve liked to have gone to?’ asked Jim afterwards. ‘You know, in person?’

I nearly inhaled my cuppa in surprise. 🤣

‘Naaaaah’, I replied. ‘I’m much happier here.’

You see, I don’t need to be right in the thick of something to enjoy it in my own way. I’m not going to miss any broadcast events of national importance if I’m at home with the telly on, and as for my village’s Carnival Night, there’s nothing wrong with watching the fireworks in my pyjamas from the landing window, is there?

I’ll probably even have a cup of tea on the go.

Love,

Rebecca

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Artist’s notes

Although I’m working on broadening my subject horizons, I prefer to make art representing objects rather than scenery. However, for this post I had wanted to paint a scene that showed me looking out of the window in my striped pyjamas, and had set about mapping out my intentions in my tiny pocket sketchbook for how I’d wanted it to look.

I was pleased with the sketch but had been too daunted to work it up to a double-page spread in my altered book art journal.

‘Never mind!’ I thought. ‘It’s all about the fireworks! I’ll just paint those!’

I prepped my pages with gesso and then applied a blue-black mix of acrylic paint for the dark sky. I sponged four circular areas with white acrylic, then started adding coloured streams of light using first paint, then Neocolor II crayons. With what very quickly began to look like blowsy chrysanthemums blooming at night I panicked and added more and more streams, reaching for coloured pencils and then white gel pen in my efforts to render my chrysanths into fireworks.

The tooth of my gessoed substrate became clogged with too many layers; the ethereal quality of fireworks in a winter sky was gone, with not a speck of black visible through the spreading streams of light. What had already been looking more like flowers than fireworks were now morphing into jellyfish…

Reader, did I mind? No, not in the slightest. Over the last two or three years, art for me has become much more about the process and less about the result. I had an absolute blast making this spread, and that’s what matters to me.

But hey, I still hope you like it. Let me know in the comments!

Dear Reader, I'm lost

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