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walking and painting

Posted jane -->on 24th Nov 2020

a couple of weeks ago we came to this place, Crawford Priory, near Cupar. it was remodelled at the beginning of the 19th century as a Neo-Gothic “priory” (originally a 17th century hunting lodge on the estates of the earls of Crawford) by the sister of the last, the 22nd earl, Mary Lindsay Crawford.

she never married, but ran the estate and its coal mines with great competence. this was considered very odd in her day, especially as she had a wild roe deer as a pet, and you can see its gravestone in the wall. it followed her around like a dog apparently, and she had a great many other pets to which she left enough money to keep them all, and there is apparently a cemetery for them at the back. the epitome of an eccentric aristocrat ….

by the 1960’s the family could not keep up the building which must have been fairly neglected already, and it was abandoned.

what did not rot in the next 20 years was destroyed by a fire in the mid 90’s, so all the roofs, windows and floors are gone.

trees growing inside are breaking up the stonework. there is a separate stable block which has been remade into steading type houses, through the very fancy archway. and the estate is largely wooded.

we didn’t see it, but her mausoleum is slowly falling into ruin in one of the woods

it was raining that day, so we cut our walk short. sadly a lot of the weekends have been wet.

none of my paintings have referred to that walk yet, though there’s a poem I’ve been working on.

Tentsmuir continues to inspire

the light and the mixed ecology

reeds, the burn outflow across the beach

the alders around the various pools

the wonderful pine trees (I think the forestry commission planted Corsican pine rather than Scots, they are very similar, but the Corsican needles are about twice as long.)

I’ve also been inspired by bullfinches and other birds, blackbird, blackcap, on the sizeable rowan in the garden here, eating the wonderful crop of berries.

and a pair of stonechats along the field fences, between horse paddocks and arable fields, on the way to Spinkie Den.

in Lade Braes, the wildernessy park along the Kinness Burn which connects all these more recent housing areas to the old town centre, there is a heron

and Hallow hill is covered in 7th century christian pictish cist graves.

some have been left to show in the ground,

under the enormous Leylandii hedge that protects a big swanky house built there in the 70’s (that’s when there was a huge archaeological dig there)

all these paintings (and a lot more) have been painted using the bed as a table in the “guest” bedroom where I sleep.

I really feel quite liberated by gouache and watercolour pencil and thick watercolour paper.

goodness knows how this will turn out when I get my studio set up in Cupar and have canvases and acrylic to work with again.

 

 

Star Moss

Posted jane -->on 3rd Nov 2020

this sunday we went for a long walk around Markinch, near Glenrothes, a forty-minute drive from here.

it started with a stiff hill

into a wood at the top

with the brisk southerly wind blowing leaves up the path in front of us

once out of the wood we could see misty views of the Firth of Forth from Cuinin hill,

big rolling countryside, walking on lanes and tracks, and into the village of Star

then we arrived at Star Moss after a bit more road and track.

this is a raised bog, now wooded, which was extensively cut for peat in the past.

on its edges there are conifer plantations and arable fields, but most is reserved as a site of special scientific interest. I hope there’s not agricultural chemical run-off.

it occupies a shallow depression 2 km north of Markinch,

and it is of importance as the largest area of naturally vegetated peat in central Fife with a wide diversity of habitats, principally birch woodland, fen and grassland.


its centre is wet birch woodland (downy birch Betula pubescens and silver birch B. pendula) with a carpet of sphagnum mosses and soft rush Juncus effusus swamp around a small pool. the information sheet I found does not mention which of the 12 sorts of Sphagnum grow here, sadly.

woodland understorey species include narrow buckler-fern Dryopteris carthusiana, common cotton-grass Eriophorum
angustifolium, white sedge Carex curta, and marsh violet Viola palustris.

the north and south of the Moss has drier birch woodland present.

Locally abundant species representative of the woodland understorey here include chickweed wintergreen Trientalis europaea, patches of raspberry Rubus idaeus, heath bedstraw Galium saxatile, sheep’s sorrel Rumex acetosella, sweet vernal grass Anthoxanthum odoratum and scattered narrow buckler-fern.


the eastern and western edges of the Moss support neutral grassland and fen with stands of willow carr.  as well as its scientific status, it’s one of those places which invites me to see it as a thin place, where the real and the unreal are close together. especially as we walked there on November 1st, All Souls Day.

then our route master took us through muddy tracks and larch and pine woods

all edged with stone walls, we walked through Lochmuir woods and over the mainline railway

and Emmet was very excited to find a pile of carrots, trundled off with one to eat. Bims never eats while walking.

we ended up in a big estate, Balburnie Park, avoiding carrot tractors.

and passed a small stone circle

the route master said, somewhat dismissively

“there are masses of stone circles in Scotland”

but this was my first,

I thought it pretty exciting.

the walk then took us through wooded parkland, in front of the golf club,

with a tumbling burn

and more steep slopes

gorgeous beech trees

up and over Moot Hill, the original Dalginch, or Island of Thorns, where in medieval times there would have been out door courts and fair days.

a six-mile hike, including some fair hills.

some procrastinating and cogitating and poem-writing later I made these drawings

they might be the start for some paintings later, when I get my studio.

I hope I’ll get the keys to the new house at the end of this month, but will have to have some work done – nothing serious, changes of flooring and decorating, and the garage lined out for the studio – before I move in.

 

east fife autumn

Posted jane -->on 22nd Oct 2020

I have been taking Bims to Tentsmuir beach for a good run. we’ve met hardly anyone on the beach.

the dunes are full of pools and there’s a channel draining some of the water out to the beach. the first time we walked along it a kingfisher flew out and along the channel.

the early light on this east-facing beach is very special

it shelves very gradually and there’s a big sandbank at the other end, visible as chop and waves sometimes, marked Abertay on the site map.

silvery and reflective

we walk along to the Eden estuary, the other way, towards St Andrews.

there are large posts in the sand at our turning point

there are plantations behind the dunes, and in the dunes a lot of interesting flowers

this is sea rocket

in the summer there are orchids – northern purples – harebells and grass of parnassus, and many other special and rare things. there is salt marsh at the other end, I will have to check it out.

this tiny red toadstool, exquisite, something of a mystery (a book that’s currently in storage) but probably a scarlet waxcap.

these are probably earthballs

some paintings resulted, more about the forest than the beach

the local heath habitat penetrates between the pine trees

and there are birch and ferns, mounds of moss and heather

I’m enjoying using the gouache, it’s more versatile on paper than watercolour or acrylic.

catching Bims in full gallop on the beach

has brought out the dog-painter in me (it used to be painting horses, when I was a teenager) and coincidentally I discovered basil Blackshaw – in the first place for a wonderful loose landscape painting I saw on facebook, titled the Headland, it is mostly some gorgeous brilliant green brushstrokes full of paint. so I bought this book, and discovered his dogs.

here’s another.

which inspired me to go back to drawing Bims

in my little A5 sketchbook

both from life and from the photos of her on the beach

it’s a wonderful challenge, to combine the exact balance of what’s going on in the photo, and make an expressive painting of it.

anatomically correct this is not ….

sometimes the gouache just works

this afternoon I had several goes at this

working from the photo can be a bit inhibiting

a lot more practice at this to get the lightness of her frame

and the balance of her legs and head

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

into the Cairngorms

Posted jane -->on 20th Oct 2020

on Sunday we drove up to Blair Atholl in Perthshire, in the foothills of the Grampian mountains, part of the Cairngorms National Park (since 2008). to get to it you drive past famous spots like Killiecrankie and over the Tummel river … and it’s only one and a quarter hour’s drive from St Andrews.

Fife and Perthshire are full of magnificent beech trees. obviously they are not native, but they certainly thrive. we parked in the village car park, as the walk-dedicated one was full,

and I am very glad we did or we’d have missed this part of the walk, alongside the river Tilt between mature beeches,

whose branches hung down to the river, and the river itself racing through a rock chute

then widening to pebble strewn beaches

we came at the best time to see autumn colours

maple trees are everywhere, obviously not native, but perfectly hardy for Scottish winters.

the walk was basically along the river, on a higher path, which took quite an effort for my lazy Norfolk legs to get up to, and then across and back along the other side. not to the furthest point as that would have been ten miles plus the extra from the village, so we walked seven altogether, crossing at Gilberts bridge.

small waterfalls and bridges on the path

once you are up the views are immense, and the landscape begging to be painted, not in the traditional way, but for me there were textures and shapes which made me think of Australian painter, Idris Murphy’s work.

the way the horizon and sky are often less present when you are enfolded into the hills

and the rock comes through the vegetation

and the trees are sparse and characterful, with their coatings of lichen

much to think about for the future

the phone camera doesn’t capture the brilliance of the colours – I’d call the overall impression orange-tawny, with notes of bright mustard and rust,

offset by the dark green of conifers

we stopped for coffee and snacks in a little grassy, sedgy spot just above the river where it raced through another chute

and trees cling onto the sides of the ravine

rowan, ash, larch

this dying trunk colonised by funghi

then not much further to Gilberts bridge where the river is much calmer and the tree colours perfect – more beeches too.

Bimba perfectly matches all these autumn tones

this photo looks like an English park

but soon we were out under these steep sheep pastures

walking downhill

through woods

of birch

and larch

these repetitive trunks surely are the food for paintings

I’m taking pictures on the march

always behind, never catching up

except when Lucy stops to photograph, and these larch turning golden-russet are a stopping point.

we slowed towards the end to pick sloes, and in the hedge were these rowans. I am sure I’ve never seen rowans turn this colour in Norfolk.

brighter than the Japanese maples which are quite a feature in suburban St Andrews just now.

how special it is to be so close to all this magnificence.

 

and now I am in scotland

Posted jane -->on 7th Oct 2020

I have chopped myself off at the roots and am starting like a new cutting put into a rich and strange compost. ok, it’s not that strange, and the only word in everyday Scots that jars slightly is when people ask where do you stay? instead of where do you live? but I will get used to it and it sounds nicely old-fashioned to my english ear. Scots in fact is a version of Middle English, which has held onto French, Flemish and Scandinavian words in much the same way as english itself, only they are often different ones.

meanwhile I am staying/living with my daughter and her husband while I look for somewhere to buy. their house is round the corner from Lumbo den, a ravine with a tumbling burn running through it, on the steeper side magnificent beech trees dominate, and on the other there’s hawthorn trees and damp scrub that reminds me of the wilderness in the film Annihilation.

(Lumbo ‘Bare place, piece of land with sparse vegetation’, probably alluding to sparse tree-cover at the time of naming. Den, wooded gorge or ravine.

‘fra the litill strynde of wattir that rynnis betuix the twa Lumbowis, gangand (walking, going on foot) west be the southfald dikis (dyke, wall) unto the marchis of Fedinche (Feddinch CMN), strekand (extend, stretch (in a specified direction or for a specified distance) est fra the marchis of Fedinche unto the marchis of the landis of the Kerenys (Cairns SSL), as ye done gais to the nether end of the said litill strynde.’)

I’ve been painting outdoors, in short bursts (there are a few midges) using a watercolour-gouache hybrid paint. it can be thin and watery or thick and opaque.

working on the ground. which is quite tough actually, I have to be careful of my neck.

the first thing is that it’s very difficult to get away from the beautiful and strange with trees, and hard not to just try to make representative paintings.

mark making can be inspired by their linear and limb-like qualities

and texture and colour can be useful information as well.

working on paper I find it hard to have a light enough touch.

but the gouache does allow some layering if you can wait for it to dry a bit. I couldn’t always, what with midges and running out of clean water. but tramped up and down to the burn a few times.

leaves are already starting to turn, but there is this amazing glow of green light under the beech trees.

bringing home all these wet paintings is awkward …

I have hot press (the smooth sort of handmade watercolour paper) Bockingford 300 gsm (the weight) and Sanders 620 gsm. you want a thick heavy paper to stay flattish and not buckle. most of these are quarter cut sheets from full size 22″ x 18 or 15″ so 11 x 9″ or 11 x 7 1/2″, plus an A3 soft cover stapled sketchbook,

a heavy watercolour not-quite-as-smooth spiral bound pad, and a concertina sketchbook.

this is the big stapled sketchbook. so I’m wobbling between quite abstract as here –

allowing the gouache to be quite watery, which it does happily –

and in the concertina book quick and loose seems to happen more naturally –

and then representational/abstract through simplification and a certain symbolic feeling about the trees and the light, influenced by Idris Murphy. this could be scaled up to a bigger painting when I get a studio again, and I’d like to find a way to have several ideas like this.

not getting sidetracked by detail is always important, best photographed and put into blog posts!

we’ve been taking the dogs to the beach in the early morning, at West Sands, in front of the big St Andrews golf course, a couple of times a week. last week on a rainy day with low cloud over the sea.

this is excellent for thinking about how to represent landscape differently.

just moving the colours around on the paper

and letting things happen

low cloud and wet sand.

after a lot of running, Bims spends most of the day on my bed, where the big window absorbs any sun heat there is and makes this room the warmest in the house.

she’s a bit of a pain with Emmett on the beach though

he’s too old and arthritic for games, and she can be a real bully.

the beach turns the corner into the Eden estuary and there’s a nature reserve there.

today the tideline was full of the rich and strange, probably thrown up by last weekend’s storm.

this piece of lignite (I think) with its decorative tiny shell and borer holes would make a great abstract drawing or painting. in the last few days I have been drawing and painting with my left (my non-dominant) hand. it’s a good way of loosening up.

here after drawing trees from observation with my non-dominant hand I was much more able to let go and practice mark-making with the gouache, while in the outdoor studio under the trees.

today I did something different – I have bought a different make of acrylic paint to try out, Wallace Seymour. acrylic is not something I want to mess about with on the ground, handling it is rather less forgiving, and it is plastic when all is said and done. so I occupied the wooden table at the bottom of the garden. really it was a bit windy so I wasn’t out there long.

quite pleased with this luminous offering.

tomorrow I’m going to put an offer in on a detached bungalow in Cupar, in the far top corner of an estate of nice solid bungalows, with wooden doors and windows rather than PVA, where you can see the hills that separate Cupar from Ceres, and the garage has an apex tiled roof and I think it won’t be difficult to convert it into a good studio. wish me luck!

losing the saltmarsh

Posted jane -->on 30th Aug 2020

walking at Morston again this morning, I reflected that this kind of landscape is one I won’t find in Fife.

there are sandy beaches with dunes and flowery machair

and rocky beaches

and reed beds in the Tay estuary at Newburgh.

at Tentsmuir there is pine forest behind dunes, with heather and ferns, more beautiful than Holkham’s pinewoods.

but there is nowhere as liminal,

where sky and land and sea segue into each other

with this very special mixture of plants – the sea-wormwood, the sea lavender, sea purslane, shrubby sea blite, sea beet, all the succulents that grow on the salty silt, especially the samphire.

soon to turn orange and red, their autumn colours, along with the mauve and yellow sea aster.

this morning the high wind was in our ears, echoing the surf thundering on the sand banks; curlew and redshank  loudly disapproving, although the nesting season is well over.

tide on its way out

and bladderwrack left behind, attached to its brick holdfast, all barnacled.

the texture of this place is extraordinary; pebble-studded, sometimes slippery with black silt; smooth clay deposits; loose sand;

stinging sharp marram stems; dry paths; wet channels and pools. always the pools that reflect upwards the light of whatever weather happens on the day.

I counted twenty swans in the Stiffkey’s freshwater outflow

and in the marram grass were these tiny ghosts of crabs.

on Thursday there were these ghosts of Covid-19 – disintegrating latex gloves all over the purslane lawns next to the channel

in the sun and wind it’s hard to remember the pandemic, still a rising tide.

in this seemingly empty place, empty except for me and the dog, for half an hour, until we turn back and meet more dogwalkers.

it’s full of life, of course, birds, insects, fish, crustaceans, seals, even hares. I shall miss this place most.

but now I want to paint its looping shapes and its colours, its drama, now when my studio is all packed up and I am busy organising the move, the change of address, and the last skip ……

 

 

 

spoon in june or something like that

Posted jane -->on 30th Jun 2020

and I have not even posted until oh dear it’s almost July …

there are so many beautiful flowers in the hedgerows now

I hardly need to write much in between the photos

we have been taking some longer extensions on our regular walks (we being the dog and I) through Sharrington towards Brinton and then turning down a tiny lane with the most enormous hedges

and semi-wild pasture behind the big thorn trees

then turning up past Hill Farm through Swan Lane, a lovely green lane, back to the road that leads down to Bullfer grove. it adds an extra mile, and even more excitement for Bims when a hare crosses our path.

all the green lanes have been cut, some twice, so they are not hard to walk.

I hope the hedge verges don’t get cut too many times

I have been painting a lot, a slight worry, since I will be moving this year and I am just creating more stuff to take with me.

perhaps I will sell some, you never know.

just continuing the puzzle of how to make paintings work.

the garden is full of wild flowers too, this is woundwort, used since the ancient Greeks to make a poultice and stem bleeding.

knapweed is a favourite for insects, this red tailed bumble was foraging over the whole clump

hard to get a good photo

yellow rattle helps to keep the grass from dominating as it’s parasitic. the seed-heads do rattle!

more greens than ever in my paintings

this is one where there’s so much texture built up by successive paintings that in the end

I can achieve a complex abstract evocation of landscape with a few thin coats of paint and expressive brush marks.

and then this is quite different. again, there is considerable build up, but then I have glued on some already painted paper torn into shapes and then blocked in the dark brown and the grey, leaving some of the last goings-on to show, and suddenly it’s a still-life, “lustre cups on a table”.

this complex abstract is the final of three attempts at my Pool in the Wood theme. it’s so easy to over do it and make them too fussy. I’m pleased with this now, but my ambition is to keep them simpler.

a large box canvas, 100 x 100 x 4 cm, over a yellow painting I did in April. the yellow really helps everything going on over the top. again, a pool, The Last Pool of Darkness, a theme in tribute to Tim Robinson (see previous blog post), that’s the title of one of his Connemara trilogy. but also I have to admit to a big influence from Idris Murphy, the Australian landscape painter, who often paints waterholes and dams. it does mean the sky part of the landscape can be in the middle, or at the bottom of the painting.

back to the lanes and the hedgerows, a couple of weeks ago the grass was in flower, with these extraordinary red/pink colours

colour often surprises me

these luminous dock leaves

and the rusts and oranges

they are very bright

similar colours, yesterday I saw the first silver-washed fritillary by the wood. he wasn’t very cooperative and I couldn’t get closer. the females are paler and more leopard-spotted. I haven’t seen them this early before, usually it’s late July.

these are marsh thistles, should be good food for butterflies

another of my walk extensions is to take the back lane from Bale to Hindringham, then through Hindringham to Moor lane and back across the fields to the wood, and Cakes lane.

the footpath across the fields runs alongside a ditch

and it is full of wild flowers

scabious and meadow sweet, St John’s-wort (Perforate), white bryony, bindweed …..

I’m not sure what this tall thing is, I will have to check again when those buds have opened more. some damp-loving thing – now I have taken the trouble to leaf through Simon Harrap’s very thorough and useful Wild Flowers, I’m pretty sure it’s a figwort. could be green, water or common. I’ll have to get in close and inspect it properly.

I’m quite surprised there are so many wild flowers in this narrow passage between a field of wheat and another of barley, especially as one is informed by a warning sign as one enters the wood, that these crops have been sprayed.

 

 

 

May she will stay

Posted jane -->on 31st May 2020

in the Simon and Garfunkel adaptation of the old country rhyme …

May is nearly over tonight

two years ago I had just completed this painting, for the Cley 18 exhibition, this year’s version would have been opening in late July, but it has been cancelled due to the pandemic. as commercial galleries are now going to open on June 15th, perhaps this was not necessary, but things being what they are I am sure the artists are happier with a safety first policy.

poetry readings are taking place on line. I have a poem in Finished Creatures, so probably I can do an online reading of it for the launch.

it was inspired by a visit to Cley beach but also by a chapter in the late Tim Robinson’s wonderful series of books on Connemara, explaining the milky blue plankton blooms seen there amongst other flora and fauna of the west coast of Ireland. very sadly he and his wife Mairéad Robinson succumbed to the coronavirus this spring.

the virus has also prevented one of the mainstays of my writing life, the writing outside courses run by Dr Jonathan Ward from the NNW education centre at Cley, so I have been making the best of my local walks around Bale, and taking part in some online workshops. but I have been painting pretty solidly as well.

over the last couple of weeks we have been penetrating further into the wood at the bottom of the green lane, through the deer paths, which are quite open at present, into a part full of huge beech and oak, tall hollies, and dead or dying elm. it’s one of those places that seems very secret when you are there, but it turns out most local people have been in there. there is a swing on a high branch of one of the beech trees, and recently someone has built one of those stick wigwams.

I was very surprised to find this pool almost full. it is highly temporary, depending on the vagaries of the water table and springs which fill or empty in many ponds, streams and pits where the gravel slopes of the terminal moraine, the Holt/Cromer ridge, peter out in this high part of Norfolk, and the mix of sands, gravels, clays and chalk surface and create boggy land in the shallow valley that this wood  occupies.

I have been here when there’s been no water at all, just an amphitheatre full of dry beech leaves

it is always a magical place, there are paths that lead to great fallen trunks, and archways of ivy, hazel and honeysuckle. this spring the sunlight splashes through and the birds – thrush, blackbird, wren, chiffchaff – are loud, ignoring one’s presence.

the reflections are quite mesmerising

it has been the inspiration for some recent paintings. I love the fact that the sky is reflected, so that there is no horizon, everything is upside down

I am not interested in painting realistic landscapes, but reach into memory of place for colour and shape

texture too

blessed with this brilliant weather

it’s best to get into the studio early and then late, to avoid the strongest sun.

happily, a gallery in Somerset that already stocks my ceramics, has become interested in my paintings, so these three

almost landscapes – Sloping Field

Blue and Yellow Field

and Green Field in the Clouds

are off to Castle Cary this week for an exhibition titled “Pastures Green” at the David Simon Contemporary gallery, which will open again on June 15th.

 

in May he’ll sing all day

Posted jane -->on 31st May 2020

or in May his song is true   – sadly I can’t tell as I’ve not heard a cuckoo at all this year. Last year I heard one at Holkham at least once a week, walking back from Lady Anne’s walk to the Wells car park on the landward side of the pine woods, and a neighbour has heard one passing through here. I’ve heard willow warblers a few times too, but not from the same spots, so I presume they too were passing through.

the lanes around the village are just beginning to get their summer clothes on

chervil instead of cow parsley

the bracken suddenly up  and filling previously grassy patches

alexanders fattening up seeds – they will turn black over the summer

white campion or bladder campion in the dry hedgerows

wild roses in the hedges, and creamy honeysuckle too but I forgot to take a photo –

a few poppies

plantains and knapweed

a photo of the lane from the cemetery to the village which really could have been taken any time in the last 150 years – if you take away the pole holding up the telephone and electricity lines.

we took the shady scramble along the edge of this big “prairie” field (it did have several hedges and was at least four smaller fields before the sixties) it was early and there was dew blueing the blades of grass, jewelled with buttercups and ground ivy

today the sea was a faint smudge – sometimes you can see the wind farms ten kilometres out

we saw a couple of hares, to B’s intense frustration

I never get the chance to attempt photographs, with her taking up both hands under these circumstances

the winter wheat starting to show ear spikes already, but along the edge of the wood here the deer have been nibbling it down and the ears are emerging through the shortened leaves/stems

bare patches along the edge too – is that where germination failed due to the wet winter, or did the deer eat it as it was germinating?

the soil structure is pretty poor here at the edge too, there was a lot of run off in the wet winter and the years before have seen potato cultivation with irrigation and then intensive crops and nothing put back into it. it’s like concrete now.

there’s still some cow parsley in the shade of Cake’s lane

or there was until this weekend, it’s just had a cut down this narrow part.

we walked another green lane last weekend, Swan lane in Sharrington

everywhere is pretty at this time of year

but the last week has seen things looking much drier. we haven’t had significant rain for about ten weeks, or even longer, since before lockdown, and higher sunshine hours than ever recorded.

I have planted so much in my vegetable patch it’s overflowing

here’s a new little space for extra broad beans

some more broad beans popped into tiny spaces. currently I am harvesting salad leaves, though I am plagued by something tunnelling in here which has ruined some of the new salad area and the seedlings are pushed around. I had to put the plastic tunnel over them to keep the birds off.

and lots of protection for the climbing beans

the roses are marvellous and very early

irises and peonies

in the wild part the guelder rose is very pretty

just now the oxe-eye daisies stand out

and the rambling rector rose is out-competing the dog rose to scramble up over the old plum and into the sycamore behind.

April come she will

Posted jane -->on 17th Apr 2020

and so she has with all her early flowers and leaves, which are two weeks early by my estimation.

we are so lucky here in the countryside that self-isolation means (for me) a closer look at where I walk – now voluntarily restricted to not going in the car to close places, but to the two very beautiful 3 mile-ish loops I can do from the house. and lucky that it is spring, and dry  weather with a lot of sunshine. of course my experience of the pandemic is incredibly privileged by my sex, age, financial standing, retired status and all the other things that have me here in North Norfolk in a quiet village with super-helpful neighbours. In fact as everyone is around all day, every day, and doing my shopping for me, I don’t feel at all lonely, and I have more time to write and paint.

wood anemones, not in a wood but in a bank of primroses in the lane below Bullfer Grove, whereas I have not seen any of these flowers so diagnostic of ancient woodland in the actual wood. I have managed to establish a little patch of them in my garden, under the hazel which I coppice (I just sawed off some young poles to support the runner beans).

Bullfer is locally famous for its bluebells which are certainly very early this year, and it is full of birds

there is a less obvious path that takes you to the full glory of the bluebells.

a path which seems to have been maintained better this year, around various fallen trees and bramble patches

a little scan of one part of the wood this morning, in the chilly east wind.

Bimba patiently follows me around, hopping over the fallen trunks. on the lead of course.

I made this little video clip on the 11th, of the very loud thrush in the wood, with wren accompaniment, and the wild cherry blossom which is lovely here but doesn’t last long. I always trot out A E Housman’s poem –

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

with its memes of youth and beauty and loss

there is just one early purple every year. last year I saw so many of these in Fife, in Scotland – in the dunes fringing Tentsmuir beach, even in my daughter’s lawn, and in the wilderness near her house, Lumbo den.

Bullfer grove, with its dog mercury and wild garlic  is maintained by its owners, the National trust, in a way that produces great habitat for wildlife. the neighbouring landowner, Albanwise Ltd, has more commercial priorities and has recently cut all the mature oaks on its local estates, including a few on the fringes of Bullfer. they won’t regenerate on their own, as oaks do not grow from acorns dropped/hidden by jays and squirrels under the canopy, they don’t get enough light, and are further inhibited by oak mildew which affects seedlings and saplings much more than fully grown trees.

in contrast Bale wood is untouched, and browsed by deer to the extent that there is no underwood to speak of. recently I prowled through this part, which is actually overgrown wet meadow, looking for a little patch of primroses amongst the hazels.

the floor of the wood is so curiously bare and dry, all dead leaves and sticks. on the edge there are a lot of small ash trees that are badly affected by die off.

deer paths everywhere. the next section is full of elm and ash. the elms get to a certain size and then attract the beetle that allows the fungus that stops them being able to transport water up the trunk and so they die. then regenerate by cloning. so the wood is full of fallen elm that is all smaller trunks and branches. it is quite honestly a mess. but from it in recent years, hatch the most wonderful butterflies – the silverwashed fritilliary. the caterpillars live on the leaves of dog violet, having hibernated in rough bark crevices over the winter.

and now the oaks are pushing out their leaves and flowers

ash flowers have been evident for a couple of weeks, but birds/ squirrels? something has been ripping them off.

at home the garden is full of wild flowers – the cow parsley is just out, and the cowslips are still looking good

a couple of weeks ago I found this unfamiliar shiny black bee whizzing around a patch of cowslips. I looked it up – a carpenter bee, solitary, just out of hibernation.

pear blossom out early as usual, I wonder whether any will get pollenated, it’s a very young tree, and there was no fruit last year, after a lot of blossom. it is Moonglow, a fireblight resistant variety. I may have moved to Scotland before I get a chance to find out what its fruit tastes like. or on the other hand, I probably won’t have, considering the future eighteen months or so of COVID-19 disruption.

I found this painting “Pink Garden” by Elisabeth Cummings, an Australian painter (for me mostly it is Ozzie painters I find most inspiring at the moment) and so I sat in the garden and tried to draw an impression of its burgeoning blossom and leaves.

pen and ink and then acrylic

here’s the bee

another  sheet

and now I’m finding working on paper quite a nice change from canvas

this is on fabriano paper, the lovely tough creamy paper I bought in a ten metre roll for making folded books. it does need stretching on a board with gummed tape, which is trickier than you’d think.

having such large pieces of paper means I can work as large as some of my recent canvases. this is 74 x 82 cm. I had to stretch it after I’d painted it (pencil, charcoal and acrylic) as I hadn’t taken it very seriously until I’d finished it. expensive to frame of course, mount and glass as well as frame. and decent glass which gives you accurate colour, is really expensive. it would probably cost twice what I’d ask for the painting. but there is that freedom from the surface you are potentially messing up not costing £ 40.

and the brush slides around nicely on the smooth paper

however I did invest in three Italian-made nice box canvases with deep sides 70 x 70 cm before the virus got hold. (now you can’t get them, I suppose the factory has been badly affected and Jacksons have no stock)

so I have a trio of landscape abstracts finished

all three have ink and paper collaged under the acrylic, and some oil pastel and charcoal drawing  … the top one is from the field at the top of the road with the view of the sea at Blakeney and on a bright day the wind farm masts poke up from beyond the horizon.

the one in the middle is the pond in the wood, and this last one the huge prairie field that my friend Henry Carter sold to Albanwise, which has winter wheat making a shallow triangle if you are standing at the top of it from the road, and spring barley just coming through as a green veil,

here a veil of paint.

 

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