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cockthorpe circular walk

Posted jane -->on 6th May 2019

 

At Easter I discovered that circular walks in Norfolk have been re-signposted and gated, with a blue circular sign that’s easy to follow. I have often walked down Cockthorpe common and wondered how to make it into a circle, so I was very pleased about this discovery. the first time I started down the dry valley of the common, but thought it would be better walked the other way which is what I did today.

this looks like round-leaved cranesbill, one of the few interesting flowers I found, where Bernard Matthews has attempted some native tree and ground cover blocks near the turkey houses – this walk doesn’t seem to offer much botanical interest at this time of year – there’s alexander and more alexander, waves of sweet scent coming off its flowers.

up high at Cockthorpe, on the edge of the Langham airfield, there are the most panoramic views of the coast, which is why I think it’s better to walk this way round.

a field full of ewes and lambs makes one think of the South Downs on this big rounded hill of short cropped grass with the surf along the edge of the Stiffkey sandbanks in the background. Where the trees are is the hanger wood above the Stiffkey river plain with its wetland grazing. we come back that way, so more of that later.

the path is quite sheltered along here, with a big unkempt hawthorn hedge, in flower, attendant whitethroats singing. this is a poor photo of a small tortoise butterfly which would not settle long enough for me.

the ewes have a bit of an attitude to dogs, I don’t blame them. B behaved perfectly.

nicely untrimmed hedges with great cover for birds

and more views of Blakeney point.

I could see boats coming through the channel and into the Pit, as the tide was on the ebb.

at this point you leave the track and follow a footpath trodden into the winter wheat. B kept a lookout for hares, but we saw never a one.

at the other side of the huge wheat prairie there are “free-range” pigs, very fat pink young ladies disporting themselves in the sunshine. I fear they will be ready for the butcher soon. these lovely black boars on the other hand presumably lead the life of Riley.

there the walk follows another very cobbly track with sugar beet just coming up on the left, and really only alexander and some nettles and docks. best to keep one’s eye on the views. all the way down “Love Lane” to the coast road, very busy on Bank Holiday Monday, along which one has to walk sadly, to get to Morston green

from there the coastal path is lovely.

Morston Quay

wide views of the salt marsh and the Point – the barge Juno’s masts out in the pit, always nice to see her there.

intermittent clumps of gorse all brazen with flower and scent and full of white throat and black cap song, chiffchaffs where there are scrubby trees at Morston Freshes. (I have heard willow warblers there but not today) and larks singing above the saltmarsh. (not very evident on the farmland but perhaps I just wasn’t listening)

the tide well on its way out here in front of Stiffkey fen

shell ducks and avocets here paddling about in the mud

we stopped to sit on the sluice steps for a quick rest in the cool breeze, listening to the reed warblers and reed buntings in the fen and the waders on the salt side of the bank. I had my coat off by then, it was warmer than predicted. two lovely Cockles moored along there.

then down the steps on the other side of the bank.

and along the narrow path by one arm of the river, between trees and flowering hawthorn hedge. it got hotter – sweater off too! a very busy spot for wildlife, with the willows, the reeds, the fen and the hedge. at the end a kissing gate and a pair of very noisy guinea fowl, they sounded like a whole flock. B was bemused. out over a path of paver type cobbles to the bridge and the coast road – here you only have to pop across it to the permissive path which takes you along between two hedges beside a field of conservation set aside, with opportunities for lots of insects. saw my first gatekeeper butterfly this year. but sorry to say I did not hear a cuckoo on this walk, which is really where you might expect to in this part of North Norfolk.

the path turns away from the road and then finds the Stiffkey, going downstream this time, through trees, with water meadows on the other bank.

highland cattle live on these pastures, which are allowed to flood, providing habitat for waders. I’m sure there’s a list as long as my arm of these sorts of birds using this environment. the river used to be dredged. now it’s not and there is less threat of flooding for the village upstream.

 

its a chalk stream, now recognised as a rare and precious habitat. here in the brambles there was a dartford warbler singing, along with chiff chaff etc … you can just hear him on this video clip, although he’s back a bit on the path. a lot of fizzing with the odd chirrup.

the path crosses the floodplain between small willows, with lots of nettles. not a path to take in shorts. this little bridge crosses the more southerly arm of the river, and you come out onto Cockthorpe Common, with its high cliff features on either side

not actually in this photo, but further round to the left and away on the right, the hanger, a wood on the very steep slope. here pilgrims arrived by sea to walk to the shrine of Our Lady at Little Walsingham – the Stiffkey being navigable in the middle ages, before embankments along the edge of the coastal marshes were thought of.

the common, being quite chalky, has some special flora and fauna. at the moment the eastern side is full of cowslips. had I been with someone more expert probably a lot of other plants and insects too would have been pointed out to me.

in a wet winter there is a tiny  bourne that peters out in the grass up here. another chalk stream.

and you can see the substrata where it’s been quarried – a face of chalk with lines of flints in it, and some tunnelling at the base – human? I remember seeing a large den hole at the top.

the grassy track is pretty  – usually these big gates are shut. when I first came back to Norfolk in  2000 I rented this tiny barn

at the top of the track, for three months, over the winter and into the spring of 2001. it was a joy to walk the common. but then the foot and mouth epidemic arrived so I stuck to the roads. living there was a wonderful experience. a flock of pink foot geese would fly up the valley and low over the village, and you could see the sea from that velux window in the hipped roof.

I was looking out for swallows and house martins around the farm buildings, but there was not one. nor swifts.

five and a half miles, with stops for photography etc, two and a half hours. there are more circular walks on the national trail  website

 

 

hares, lambs, hannah

Posted jane -->on 27th Apr 2019

as good as the iphone will do with a moving target a hundred yards away …

first, with the wind coming from the south, and veering south-west, we walked along the bottom of the field between the rape and the wood (and currently I feel as though I inhaled pepper this morning)

I was expecting to get wet, but apart from an initial scatter of raindrops, it was fine and not even too windy at around eight-thirty this morning

we were dressed for it, but storm Hannah was still waiting in the wings, and the creatures were making the most of it. countless pheasants wove in and out of crop and wood, and we saw four hares.

in the green lane we were pleasantly sheltered. chiffchaff and black cap singing all the way along

and I am persuading myself that it wasn’t a blackcap with a sore throat but a whitethroat

blackthorn blossom is decidedly over now

all the trees except the ash are showing green leaves, or at least their buds are opening.

ground ivy which has had its soft blue flowers out for weeks now

is beginning to be overcast by hogweed and cow parsley

the very severely flogged hedge is slow to sprout again, but there are still primroses along here

and I could hear a lark singing despite the wind

all the ferns are beginning to uncoil new shoots. I think this is male fern. no sign of bracken here yet.

still some violets where the grass is short

and my favourite, bird cherry, strong scented, like a wild version of white lilac, though this bush was badly smashed by the hedger in the winter

in Clip street on the bank of Patch plantation there are wild strawberries flowering already. I had a good crop of these last year around my entrance, I’m always delighted to see them.

the oaks are just out

and in Clip street lane (left to turn into a green lane by the council) white campion

and a proper froth of cow parsley – this is a haven for wild flowers, later there is always a wealth of field scabious, st john’s wort (the perforated sort, the commonest, good for dye colour) more campion, dog roses, and more.

on the corner the gate into this lovely long meadow, with its new lambs

a test of Bim’s behaviour – she still sees them as an excitement

causing one stern ewe to stamp her feet

but that slow hare, encountered on the green lane, faltering and then out in the open, was more than she could bear, and she made more fuss about being made to stay by me on the lead than ever before. I hope it is not a victim of RHDV2 the rabbit haemorragic virus which has crossed to hares.

 

a little bit of norfolk squit from Bullfer Grove

Posted jane -->on 22nd Apr 2019

Gods and Goddesses

here I’m surrounded by little gods

the ones that don’t need me – wren

and thrush worship them, voices across

field and tree. My dog is inhabited

by them, her long glossy neck and

cocked ears tell me so, she’s listening

to them, head in the sun. The climbing roses

and wild ones that loop sharp stems

have them in their buds, just swelling,

and in their thorns. We meet them in the

green lane when there’s no-one about

dressed in bridal flowers and trembling

new leaves, in the wood they tower

tossing wild cherry blossom down

and on the ground they mist among

the bluebells, ringing hanging heads

heavy with dew.

abstract paintings

Posted jane -->on 31st Mar 2019

following on the from the photos of the saltmarsh in the last post, I’ll take you through painting developments in the last month or so. one has been a constant flow of painterly finds from my friend’s blog Breathing story

this is a work on paper by Idris Murphy, a well respected Australian painter of landscape, both in Australia and in Europe.

I think my best work so far is informed by my own landscape and still life paintings, such as this landscape I painted about a year ago.

I follow Lewis Noble on facebook, his working methods, and his paintings are inspirational, though I wouldn’t go on one of his courses in case I found myself painting just like him! but the collage under the paint on this and most of my abstract paintings is a direct influence, he tears up sketches and pools their information in a collaged work on paper, then uses torn paper to block out parts of paintings. what I’m doing is directly collaging torn abstract sheets painted with ink and water colour onto the canvas before I start, plus now, I’m tearing bits out of the newspaper, from topical articles, and pasting them onto the canvas, sometimes text from them survives, sometimes it doesn’t.

this one, Called, 70 x 50 cm on linen, I painted late last year, and the newspaper came from the sheets of newspaper I was using to protect the table, a couple of years old, before the Guardian became tabloid size …

another element – I bought some marble dust for texture, having investigated a big tub of black “earth paste” left over from early attempts to paint with acrylic. it’s very crunchy – this is it in the black door shape.

lured by hellebores I worked on a couple of still life paintings (this is 40 x 40cm)

and this 30 x 30 cm (painted the next day). both painted over last summer landscapes I decided weren’t good enough to keep. I like painting on these lumpy surfaces, it loosens me up. and I was pleased with this looseness, due to the under painting/drawing being done with a big brush. I was also very taken with the spiky seed pods in these hellebores.

the same afternoon I painted this, a small canvas 30 x 24 cm, and it has bits of the flower arrangement in it, and some messing about in the thick paint with palette knife marks grown on from the seed pods in the first two. other elements like the speckle of the vase and the lush pinks and greens are directly from the same paint mixed for the still lifes.

I decided I liked the size and shape of the previous one and have done a few more

hints of landscape in these two.

meanwhile I have things on the go in oils. I find it much harder to work with – suddenly the fluid acrylic is perfect and oil seems stiff and too opaque. this one had a lot of layers, but at last the slow drying time of the oil was an asset, as I went back the next day after working on it and scraped lots off! it’s a canvas 50 x 50 cm.

this one had lots of layers in preparation, and the last one under what you can see here was newspaper torn from the front page of the Guardian the day after the Christchurch mosque massacres. a small amount of text and parts of words are still legible if you look for them. the blue “door” or perhaps vase has marble dust in the paint. it’s another 50 x 50 canvas.

this is a 30 x 24 cm canvas, you can see “truth” emerging from the paint.

I have a crackle paste – well I tried it and it didn’t crackle, but it was very thick. also on this one are some gold mica flakes, and they have become a feature of the last few paintings. this one is 30 x 30 cm, on canvas.

after taking the photos of the marsh I should really have done some drawings – this is as near as I’ve come. again, many layers, newspaper I’ve managed to cover over completely, and gold mica flakes. 50 x 50 cm.

on the same day this one arrived. a vase? a doorway? nothing intended … 30 x 30 on linen. it’s currently my favourite. another thing to think about with abstract painting is the Japanese concept of empty space, the space between things, ma.

not so much emptiness in this one, it’s the whirling whirligig of the west … 30 x 24 again.

and then this is the last, finished this week, after much struggling and ghastliness. I went up to the studio shed at 6 in the dusk to paint over the whole thing with gesso, and found myself making new marks, with the black earth paste and then some scraping back and a lot of deep scoring with the palette knife. next thing it was looking quite cool and mysterious … and connected with some writing I’m doing, a palimpsest poem about Doggerland and old age, and so this is named from a line in my poem – “of creatures thawing” – it’s 50 x 50 cm.

details

scratching and scoring and fluid paint

and yes, those gold mica flakes ….

there’s more to come, I have 3 canvases in the shed with newspaper and stuff stuck on them …

there are more photos to incorporate

and a dog to walk

 

one hundred photos

Posted jane -->on 25th Mar 2019

last week my spanish galga Bims and I went to Morston for a walk out on the saltmarsh

I put the hipstamatic camera app on my phone to “shake to randomise” in the interests of exploring the many many filters and effects I’ve accumulated and this is a photo essay with the best of them. above Mabel lens and sequoia film looks like an ancient Kodak slide from the 1930’s.

it was particularly muddy because the tides have been extra high as the full moon (a super-moon) approached

and a beautiful mild and sunny day – a soft sky webbed with vapour trails

the plant life of salt-tolerant grass, sea lavender and suaeda maritima (sea-blite) still looking grey-brown and dry – a bit livened up by this picture

and the shrubby sea-blite, suaeda fructicosa, with its fleshy pink and green leaves, more colourful in some places.

I walked (Bims galloped and got very muddy) to Morston meols creek. Meols is a Viking word for the land between farmland and high tide.

(Hipstamatic: tejas lens, hackney film – this is the prettiest new combination, I think)

I have just bought a book with Godfrey Sayers’ record of the names given to the marshes, mud pools, sand banks and creeks by generations of fishermen

most of them are wonderfully evocative – I list them here, but they don’t relate to the photos – Blacknock, Billy’s drain, Stonemeal creek,

Patch Pit creek, Simpool,

the main lagoon of course known as the Pit, looking across it to the old lifeboat house on Beachway.

the Freshes where the Stiffkey joins the harbour, its course and the tides controlled by two big sluices,

Freshes creek, where the mussel fishermen used to bring their harvest

Agar creek and Dead Man’s Hole over by Blakeney,

Warham Hole, High Sand creek out on the sand bank,

on the spit itself, Stanley’s Cockle Bight, the Hood,

Wallsbeck, Tibby Head,

Scalpe Run and Blackwater creek at the head of Morston Creek (generally known as the Channel by contemporary sailors)

Garborough Creek and Lady Crick,

the Run, and Down Below, the channel out to open sea.

while I was busy peering at my phone, Bims got very involved with the sad flipper remains of a seal. she wanted to bring this greasy stinking object home, but it was too heavy. so she rolled her shoulders, neck, ears and collar in it. and her muzzle was pretty oily too. so she had a coal tar shampoo bath when we got home. I also did a stupid thing – due to my new varifocals I put my foot in a hole and came down on my side so that my fist, hanging onto B’s lead, punched my ribs. which are very sore. yoga is painful. one has to pay for art.

 

a february diary

Posted jane -->on 28th Feb 2019

so much has happened this month, I’ve been busy writing, painting, walking, and I’m going to attempt to squeeze it all into one post, or at least most of it.

most of my walks are mid-morning these days, after a writing session first thing, but a couple of times a week we get out early. on the fifth it was sunny but still frosty at eight-thirty, and we caught sight of four roe deer out in the sun on the rape field. these three went in one direction, and one more back into the wood. another early morning we saw seven just outside the wood. I’ve never seen so many together before. hares have been quite evident in the same huge field, despite the bird-scaring cannon which makes us jump. B is on the whole very good, she seems to have accepted that I won’t let her go and chase all these creatures, and merely stops and stares.

we have had several trips to Wells beach, so that she can run full blast, and one to Morston for mud-running.

through february it has been very pleasant to open the curtains just before dawn and catch the eastern sky colouring up.

different days give different colours

but this was the most lurid, halfway through the heat wave, presaging the three wildfires that have made the news in this last week after over two weeks of dry scarily warm weather. with very little regrowth, winter moorland can be extremely dry I suppose.

on the first two tuesdays I joined a group of writers and Dr Jonathan Ward for the last two in a set of six “writing outside” sessions based at Cley marshes NWT centre. on the last one we walked from Kelling village down the green track to Quag and the shingle ridge, which is marked “Kelling hard” on the map

here there is an interesting juxtaposition of arable, marsh, wetland pools, high dry sheep grazing, and the beach with all the old WW2 defences and the Muckleborough collection’s anti-aircraft guns sticking up ominously on the skyline. just to make the atmosphere even more threatening, a pair of military jets were grinding round and round above us, leaving thick grey vapour trails.

the old pillbox has at last been destabilised by wave and shingle and has come off its brick base. I wonder how long it will take to break up.

for these outings I have made my own notebooks, folded from thick cartridge paper and prepared with abstract watercolour marks. this obviously has an effect on one’s notes, which are made between brush strokes and in the interstices of the pages which fold back on themselves. more about these in another post.

I’ve also been painting, mostly in acrylic and working on abstracts, with layering and collaging. but I had promised to give the art group in the village hall, of which I am a member, a demo and workshop with oils. I bought these anemones and put them in a beautiful georgian cut glass jug for the subject. the idea for the demo had come up last July when three of us had been inspired by the Winifred Nicholsons at Kettles Yard in Cambridge to paint flowers in oils in her manner, thick paint and loose mark-making.

the painting I did on the day was not completely successful – I don’t think anyone paints that well while showing others what they are doing! I had a lot of paint left over, so I painted this the next day. paint in its raw thick just out of the tube state. everyone had a small board and I cut down the anemones to give a small simple subject for a workshop that lasted a couple of hours.

some pleasing results

the anemones came home and adorned my table for a few days

outdoors, February is the month for snowdrops.  these were at Smokers’ Hole, a place where the footings of a building and snowdrops from a long since treed over garden adjoin a bridge on a footpath, over the river Glaven. I’ve always been puzzled by this place – the lane to it from Hempstead is called Mill lane – so was there a mill here?

the snowdrops in my garden increase every year. the warm weather has finished them off rather soon though.

irises and croci have appeared through the grass where I planted bulbs last year.

my distorted hazel has lots of magenta tasseled flowers – I always think of the nature lesson in D H Laurence’s Women in Love when I see them. will I get any nuts this year?

blackthorn – in the hedges a few blossoms – so many hedges have recently been flayed that there’s no chance of flower, but some small trees are smothered in white flowers. they are always very early.

on our walks we have been to Kelling heath, Muckleburgh hill, Wiverton Downs, Blakeney Downs, Cockthorpe common, Holt Lowes – any one of which deserved a blog post, but in company I hardly got my phone out for pictures. must try harder.

in the village I take a few on my usual green lane walk

this morning – but the warm dry weather has made so much of it look even more wintery and dried up.

Cakes lane has had its biennial haircut and is not very pretty; the primroses just starting to come out.

Bims caught in a halo of sunlight

so, a clutch of small abstract mixed media paintings. trying to allow the gestural. “land after”

“sleepless paths” with text and texture – the dense black is an acrylic paste of paint and particle.

“hidden guitar” all these are twelve by twelve inches. square seems a good shape for abstracts.

then this layer eventually ended up as this

“of breath turning” I used “super heavy gesso” for the white paint, which happily feels more like lead white oil paint than runny acrylic.

“thousands” this one is sixteen by sixteen inches, not quite so densely painted and allowing more gestural brushstrokes. the ripped newspaper collaged under the paint is parts of articles about the schoolchildren’s climate change protests.

“stooped” a late stage – this one might be finished, it has several layers, and is twenty four by twenty four inches.

then, the weather being so warm, I can work in my old pottery studio (originally my painting studio in fact) and I had a rethink on this large canvas. I’ve rubbed it down with a rag full of linseed oil house paint – very runny stuff – in a beige colour. just to see what would happen really. I think it’s better. this sort of painting is all about process really. there comes a point when it’s better to stop than go on! it was called “sun, stars, and constellations” at one point.

 

 

 

Scottish woods are different

Posted jane -->on 25th Jan 2019
(more…)

wandering in a winter wood

Posted jane -->on 19th Dec 2018

most of the trees have dropped all their leaves now but this oak still has plenty. it’s on the edge of the wood by the bottom of the green lane

the hazels have their catkins all ready to expand as soon as february or before if it’s mild

there’s a section of the wood that seems in a state of collapse. it is mostly elm and ash; the elms get to a certain height then the bark boring beetles find them and spread the fungal disease Ascomycota. the tree reacts by plugging its own xylem tissue with gum and tyloses, bladder-like extensions of the xylem cell wall. As the xylem (one of the two types of vascular tissue produced by the vascular cambium, the other being the phloem) delivers water and nutrients to the rest of the plant, these plugs prevent them from travelling up the trunk of the tree, starving the tree of water and nutrients, therefore, eventually killing it. but the roots are still alive and send up new shoots, so there is a continuous cycle of growth and death in the wood.

 at the moment there seems more death, and rafts of dead trees block the old paths.

on the other side of the wood the spring-fed pools are still dry. at the end of the winter last year this was a large pond. the water bubbles up from the bottom when the spring runs.

the bare branches catching low sunlight. there were long-tailed tits, and then another bird I wasn’t sure of, possibly pied wagtails, running along the high branches, with a “plink plink” call.

oaks

and beech predominate – there are some monsters

holly in the lower storeys,

making domed hallways

while hazel grows in these bushy forms, flexible and sometimes trapped into archways

and ancient carcasses sprawl across the woodland floor. but no ash in this main part of the wood.

the wet nature of this land with its springs, sumps, swamps and little stream 

means it’s not suitable for agriculture, though I worry the owner may want to exploit it for growing trees for biomass – hopefully the expense of draining would prevent that. terrible idea anyway.

it’s quite easy to get lost in here, paths entice and bring you only to bramble patches and more fallen trees

as there are so many deer – red, roe and muntjac – I wanted to see if young trees were growing. I recently read an extract of Oliver Rackham’s book on the ash tree, in which he said that woodland oaks were not reproducing due to oak mildew, and hazels due to squirrels. deer nip off young growth too.

I found several young beech trees but no oaks, and plenty of hazels. 

our hedgerow oaks had bumper crops of acorns this year. most oaks grow from forgotten jay stashes.

I’m standing in the soft peaty earth and leaf litter of the dry pond.

there are many standing elms, some dead and some alive, protected by the other trees. 

down here in the almost forgotten centre of the labyrinth I try to find my slow way home.

the colours of the land; Orkney part two

Posted jane -->on 26th Nov 2018

some people assumed that there would not be much in the way of leaves to dye with here in Orkney towards the end of November, and that the weather would be too awful to get outside much. but in fact the weather was mild and open; some days the sun shone all the short hours it was up.

the low lying islands make the sky huge, and there is light reflected from the surrounding and interlocking water of sea and loch.

at the bottom of the garden at Woodwick House the island of Wyre is a low hump across the sound, and the sea constantly changes colour

  

and the bare trees form a patterned screen – in this case

Rousay is the pink land under the pink cloud on the horizon, caught by the setting sun.

in George Mackay Brown’s book Magnus he describes this group of islands, ten including the mainland which he gives its old name, Hrossey (horse island) “the islands shift their places around the firth, Hrossey, Eynhallow, Rousay, Gairsay, Shapinsay, Wyre, Eday, Sanday, Stronsay, Egilsay” as Magnus and his men sail/row across the sound towards his martyrdom on Egilsay

on the beach there is a thick wreath of seaweed, coloured from ochre to rust to deep wine-purple, amongst stones that are lighter versions of the same colours, and at low tide, fine grey sand, ripple marked.

from the beach you can walk back up beside the burn, as it pours over the rock steps and pools in treacle brown depths

on a path through shrubs and trees

with secret spots to hide and read a book or draw,

leant over by tree branches. from the name I suppose there must always have been trees here.

quaint post and rails – the seabird skull my addition, a find from the beach –

snow drop bulbs everywhere in bare earth and humous, already starting to sprout green horns.

at the top there’s what they call in scotland a doo-cot – a dove cote

with compartments for all the pigeon nests, providing baby pigeons for pies. whether this is a genuine really old one is hard to say, but it’s been made into a sort of pagan chapel

a quiet contemplative place

beside the sound of the rushing burn

at the gate before the bridge

and at the other side of the house there are castellated turrets – a late Victorian fancy. the gates are missing, anyway, and the path down the to the sea is public.

the hens are the rightful owners of the garden, six of them, and with no foxes they don’t have to be shut in at night.

this one is the boss, she’s twelve years old. one day they laid four eggs!

inside we had been hard at work stitching on paper, watercolour, or other special paper – some hand made. I had brought heavy weight watercolour, and it was brutal to stitch on, so mine was quite minimal. others filled up their three pieces with masses of abstract stitching and pieces of fabric.

then we made folded books, into which we inserted leaves/and seaweed

wrapped them into parcels with cloth

and after a brief cook

opened our little treasures, at the same time adding to our drip-sheets/abstract paintings (Japanese inksticks ground on beach stones and peat from the burn-side, using sticks and home-made brushes, and yes, fingers)

they looked gorgeous when wet

though this lovely rusty brown

dried to something a bit duller.

the drip-lengths were made into something very exciting on the last day.

when you work with leaves and stitches your eyes get tuned into all the fine details of the landscape

things you might walk past before, suddenly shine out at you with their beauty.

 

sister stitchers in Orkney outlands: part one

Posted jane -->on 23rd Nov 2018

another magical place in the space of four weeks – Orkney – and a wonderful retreat led by India Flint and Alison Mountain of Big Cat textiles in Newburgh (where I have been for several really good courses, taught by the likes of Michel Garcia and Larry Thomas as well as by India)

arrived in the dark after a flight from Aberdeen to Kirkwall which caught the last of the light with views of the Moray Firth, Caithness, the Pentland Firth (complete with ferry ploughing a pale blue wake) and the interlocking islands, sounds and firths of Orkney, so when I parted the curtains at seven am and saw this out of my window I was in love with the place.

we stayed and workshopped in Woodwick House, an Edwardian very Scottish looking country house with a kind of tower attic and stepped gables and crenellations wherever possible. it still has its beautiful but draughty sash windows, but also bits and pieces of more contemporary text and some quite good paintings, in a simple plain decor that felt comfortable and un-posh, not imposing anything except an awareness of the Orcadian tradition of ancient and contemporary art and poetry.

the fact that there are quite tall and old trees in two shelter belts running down each side of the garden to the beach of this little bay (“wick” means bay) is unusual on these bare and windswept islands. they are mostly sycamore, salt-hardy and tough, a non-native tree which thrives all over the UK. the pool in the photo is part of an installation of sculpture and poetry (not sure when this was made) and around its rim are words written by George Mackay Brown, one of Orkney’s most famous poets. some letters are sadly missing, but part of it reads –

drink here voyager about to depart
on the salt sound
Eynhallow

Eynhallow is one of the smaller islands in the group just off the main island here.

we began with a fancy-restaurant-standard supper made by Alison and India, setting the ball very high for the rest of the week.

the next morning down to the serious business, working on paper with Alison, splashing vegetable dyes about on paper,

and continuing to layer up with pastel, oil pastel, gesso, more paint until the whole thing a bit soggy, then we folded our large sheets into books

put more onto the nicely reduced and framed sections

I discovered that pastel in layers with the translucent dyes and also darker ink-depth mark making

and then working over the top with more pastel

gave very pleasing results. I am wondering about a bit of fixative when I get home though.

for the first textile phase, led by India, we were given a strip of old wool blanket to stitch and add more fabrics to.

I was really quite minimal in my stitching compared to most. one had no idea where this was leading, by the way!

by the end of the morning however far we had got, our rolls of blanket went into a pot or rather a huge fish kettle of burn water (a burn runs down under a bridge at the entrance to the garden and along its edge, the water a coppery clear caramel from the peat) and a little “iron water”, to steep and relax in some heat.

we had the afternoon to wander, and bring back leaves, seaweed, stones, twigs and anything else we found to add to the stitching.

bundles duly went back in the kettle for an evening boil-up

identified by tied on additions which make these little objects full of character before you even start

by the morning they had cooled down and we had our christmas present moment of unwrapping, with many oohs and aahs, much excitement.

as India fished them out

starting to unwrap mine

then they all dripped on the line

you can see how much of the landscape is imparted

eventually dried in the boiler house

we made bags. here is mine, a tsunobokuro bias-stitched envelope or sack on our expedition to some of Orkney’s ancient sites later in the week.

the stones of the Pictish broch at Gurness

their lichens and weatherings

echoed in the colours and textures we were able to obtain with the dye processes and the pigments and paints on paper during the week.

 

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