November again and time for Gillian's Annual Softstone Sculpture Exhibition. I begin to get some initial ideas about what she's been up to as I wander down the drive to the house... Where did all those leaves come from?

Now, Alan started having some fun training the trachelospermum a year or more back, but suddenly it's caught up in a burst of leaves falling from the tree above and quite magically transformed in the process

And there's a fine line between leaves and clouds and ....

I pass a small table and pick up my voting stone to leave beside a piece I feel really good about, never an easy choice,

and head down towards the side of the house. Some frangipani, from an earlier year I suspect,

and one of the beautiful tall heads, also from a year or so back.

Here the leaves/clouds have shifted again.

In fact there are several more pieces where the elements change and blend, come apart and reassemble, a little like a rather organic M.C. Escher work

The flower in this piece is only a movement or two away from

this piece, but what a transformation....

Which one came first, I wonder.

I've seen horses such as these in a thousand school exercise books, (and also in bas-reliefs around the Mediterranean)

but these overcome their limitations of space and depth to live and breathe. I stop for a few moments, caught up in the movement, and trying to get best use of the light and shadow to increase the depth of the scuplture.

I glance up and discover that I have an audience in the tree house

With some I am not certain whether they are from earlier years, or whether Gillian has picked up an old idea and used it freshly. There are elements I recognise from a couple of pieces I saw a few minutes ago.

I may be wrong but this is more like the earlier ones I remember from other years, a little stiffer, missing some of the suppleness which the last one displays.