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I love Kandinsky's colour palette, from it I painted this picture in 2007 (now in a friend's private collection) using oils on canvas with a little texture in the paint. A couple of years later, while studying environmental conservation at Oxford University I used an image of my painting to highlight the denial and greed of the financial sector re climate change and the lack of acknowledgement about this in climate discussions. I gave it an edge and middle divider as if the scene was being seen from a market trader's window and the added caption: 'There's nothing left to bet on except the colour of the climate change storm!'

Keep Calm and have an ordinary day, boxed files with history are waiting to meet us. Yellowing papers carefully catalogued into a silence. Do Not Disturb the collection’s sleeping conscience. Leaders chosen, most carefully selected, to win at all costs and profit. Keep the home fires burning, it’s alright it’s a job maim and destruction shilling a week, yes, just a bob. You see, the most intellectual, honorary gentlemen have devised Royal Society chemical recipes to burn out their eyes. It’s alright it’s a job, TNT into shells without any protection, that costs too much mate, while the men on the front cost nothing at all, they’ll only last for four minutes, in blood, guts and squall, most terribly inconvenient a rifle shortage for a huntsman’s ball. Returning documents to archive, they have to be weighed just a few grams evaporating, that’s OK, but everything else must stay the same. The economy of despots and madness, still remains, our heritage, our history written and shelved quiet the pain. Please dismiss any attempt at researcher’s remorse, comments will be moderated and later stored, archived as sanity feelings ignored. These words are too heavy, please take them away. Keep calm, and I hope you have a most unusual day. Michelle Thomasson 21.03.14 Reading 'Archived': https://soundcloud.com/michelle-thomasson/archived-a-poem-by-michelle-thomasson-recorded-by-on-the-record On behalf of the research for CAAT and On The Record "Arming all Sides” and the Arms Trade in World War 1: http://armingallsides.on-the-record.org.uk/case_studies/shells-shells-and-more-shells/ Photo kindly supplied from the Cheltenham Local History Society: https://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/archives/starting-your-research/starting-to-research-the-history-of-your-area/cheltenham-local-and-family-history-centre/

We sleep with the economy of the truth corporate desire stoked in the furnace of whose empire? We sleep with the price of war; it rapes the conscience, covered in sores no redlines for those slaughtered by guns, bombs, tanks, missiles, drones. We sleep with our hysteria, redlines firmly nailed to a cloud of smoke, chemical outrage, formulas stoked in a media furnace, warmongers circus. We sleep with business as usual, no redlines for the price of war, our collective conscience is covered in lesions and sores. Michelle Thomasson (12 April 2018)

Travelling North I visited the beautiful National Centre for Craft and Design, on the top floor there was a thought provoking exhibition by Georgie Meadows (retired occupational therapist) about old age and the mental and physical disability that often comes with maturing years. Georgie used minimal thread to tell a touching story, here is Mrs Blake, in bed for many months, she is clean and tidy and well cared for "but she is lonely and frightened. She longs for someone to make her feel more than something to be dealt with. She wants a hug." Whereas Martin isn't clean or tidy, but his family loves him and makes him feel secure. "He still had his identity." Mrs Blake is a colourless outline while Martin has a ruddy complexion, simple colouring and a striking narrative that provokes empathy. Further information about the exhibition which is at the Craft Centre until the end of April 2018: http://nccd.org.uk/exhibitions/georgie-meadows-stitched-drawings

I visited the wonderful Fitzwilliam Museum and galleries in Cambridge, (UK) this weekend. I specifically went to see the exhibition ‘Sampled Lives’ in a gently lit exhibition space full of cabinets with embroidered and woven cloth dating from the early 1600’s. The panels were full of intricate work that sprang to life with the magnifying glasses provided, close up delicate patterns, made in the days of candle light revealed their complexity with layers of texture that surpassed anything I had imagined possible. Some of the embroiderers were as young as 10 years old. The samplers are stitched documents that tell stories about “female accomplishment, of a girl’s growing sense of identity, of a desire for education and the changing attitudes to, and opportunities for, employment in adult life.” The cabinets were arranged by theme from white work and lace making to the decorative and utilitarian, including the hidden messages in the pictorial symbolism of 17th Century samples and Quaker needlework. The detached motifs known as spots were full of flora and fauna, some organic in shape others geometric, many had no names but if stitched with high quality silk then it is likely that they were produced by girls from a prosperous background and if in coloured silks then the work was usually for an affluent family cabinet or other decorative panel. Lace work on the other hand could have been used by some of the young women to “pursue an apprenticeship”, displaying their skills for future employment – one of the few routes poorer girls could use into paid work apart from domestic service. Tellingly during the 18th Century the growing population of an uneducated ‘underclass’ were often taught needlework that was much less decorative, the emphasis lay in simple cross stitch, marking and mending to care for the clothes and textiles of the non-servile classes. Without these stitched records we would know very little about girls and women’s ordinary lives, if you were female information about you was not recorded unless you were one of the elite. This exhibition was an eye opener and a valuable social commentary, it is worth a visit! The exhibition has been extended to October 2018: http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/gallery/sampledlives 

It is difficult to step into the shoes of the women and girls who bravely pressed for the right to vote, even with the current celebrations marking the centenary of the Representation of the People Act in 1918 which gave a limited number of women the right to vote - how could I really comprehend their ordeals, creative opposition and perseverance? I decided to read up on some of their history via recently published books and access some of the valuable online information from The National Archives and The Women’s Library at LSE in London as well as visit The Keep, my local Sussex Archives. In the UK from 1832 attempts were made to create legislation that gave women the right to vote, thirty years later the first Woman’s Suffrage Committee was formed in 1866 by Barbara Bodichon, but it then took almost another 40 years for the suffrage call to be loudly present in the public consciousness due to more militant cries from the well-known Pankhursts and the women who joined them to form the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1903. Members of the WPSU were considered radical and were first called ‘Suffragettes’ in a newspaper article in 1906. This label was chosen because it had a derisory meaning, as a compound of suffrage (casting of a vote) it was given the suffix ‘ette’, as a trivialising diminutive and like leatherette “signalled the idea of imperfect imitation, as well as inauthenticity” (Oxford Dictionary blog 2015). Whereas the ‘true women’ (as described by anti-suffrage writers) were called ‘Suffragists’ because they preferred the use of concessionary, constitutional methods such as those of Millicent Fawcett who formed the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies in 1897. The two labels may place a divide between those who were more or less radical but many shared membership between groups during the campaign years, some taking less direct action than others. Buildings may not have been burnt by members of the Women’s Freedom League but they did have a mass boycott of the 1911 census. In The Keep Archives I saw a copy of a 1911 census that should have been completed by Mary Hare an active suffragette and Hove resident who wrote across the form “Women don’t count therefore they will not be counted”. While other ladies belonging to the Tax Resistance League avoided paying their tax with the slogan ‘Taxation without Representation is Tyranny’. Opposition to their cause resulted in many women suffering intimidation, violence and brutality, especially when some of them where force fed while in prison, to see archived accounts of their ordeals please refer to the references. To publicise their cause. There were centres of political action all over the country but they usually had little funds to rely upon for their advertising campaigns. They applied their own talents and some of the women specifically contributed to the design of regional art work, for example Mary Lowdnes, a stained glass artist and important member of the Artists’ Suffrage League designed many of the county banners, there are over 200 watercolour designs online at The Women’s Library and Mary created many of them. Design for the NUWSS Banner by Mary Lowdnes Source: The Women’s Library (LSE) They also used creativity to reach those who would not listen; in October 1908 they used a printed poster which was pasted onto cloth and mounted on bamboo sticks at the top and bottom. The suffragettes then smuggled the rolled up banner into the Ladies Gallery (part of the House of Commons) by passing it through a grille that covered the window, once inside they unfurled it into the debating chamber (Parliament UK). Making Banners for a WSPU rally Source: The Women’s Library, LSE Stitching for freedom Each woman had a treasured skill that was usually regarded as a working class craft, used to make do and mend or bring beauty to the home – their embroidery. The banners were not like those used in trade union demonstrations which were manufactured, each of their flags were hand sewn. They linked a catchphrase and picture with imaginative use of mixed media, combining highly skilled embroidery techniques with textural stitches such as stump work with collage, patchwork, applique and paint. Their embroidery, not usually considered as high art was worked in solidarity and to publicise their noble cause in a resourceful, artistic, innovative way – so appropriate for their trailblazing cause. Suffragette Handkerchief, Holloway Prison, March 1912 Source: Sussex Archaeological Society As well as banners, life size posters of leading suffragettes, postcards and pamphlets were also used, they ran national campaigns such as the ‘Bugler Girl’ who stood on a parapet and trumpeted for woman to make the country a better place. They sold literature, lapel pins, badges, jewellery, flags, playing cards, decorated parasols and some household goods e.g. packs of tea, which were often decorated with the WSPU colours - purple for dignity, white to symbolise purity, green for hope. Sylvia Pankhurst and her break-away East End Federation of Suffragettes also included bright red to signify their socialism. References: Term Suffragette: https://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2013/05/02/woman-or-suffragette/ The Women’s Library Banner Suffrage Collection: https://vads.ac.uk/collections/FSB.html NUWSS banner: https://vads.ac.uk/large.php?uid=78681&sos=3 National Archives: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/womens-suffrage/ Banner Smuggled into parliament: http://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/electionsvoting/womenvote/unesco/suffragette-banner/ Suffrage handkerchief: https://sussexpast.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Priest-House-suffragette-handkerchief.pdf