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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!

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.

 

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.

 

the vernal equinox

Posted jane -->on 21st Mar 2020

two days ago this thrush was singing so loudly in my garden I heard him over the Sibelius the radio was playing, and rushed out of my studio to record him.

now we are self-distancing, and in my case, being ten days off seventy, self-isolating, I am spending more time enjoying the spring light, and some of the time sunshine, in my garden and studio, as I’m not off to art groups and writing workshops. I’m very happy at home at this time of the year, the cowslips and primroses are coming up in the garden

I’m not restricting my dog walking;

we have these beautiful violets in the lanes

especially Clip street

and overflowing clumps of primroses, both in Clip street and our moss-lined road, and of course in Cakes lane

the fields have dried out at last, enough for tractors to be ploughing and harrowing on every farm this morning

there is a second later flush of blackthorn blossom

and some oak trees have thickening buds

the chiffchaffs are back in Cakes too, and a yellowhammer in ensemble in this clip, though mostly minus his wheeeze at the end of the classic “a little bit of bread and no cheese” song.

the sun strong enough to compensate for the blast of cold easterly wind today when walking, but not if you are just standing around,

and dazzling in and out of tree shadow

the primroses are not so obvious in the bright light as they are on a grey day.

the pond in the wood is still quite full – I love the reflections of the oak trees that surround it. a strange and spooky scene  ….

we have been walking at Holkham twice a week too – I should say galloping in Bims’ case – finding the western side quieter

yesterday there were heavy showers scudding in from the east

making theatrical reflections on wet sand

luckily we weren’t caught out by them. it was a refreshing and energising walk

they are fencing off the areas where oystercatchers and gulls nest now

but there’s plenty of room for us to keep away

on the foreshore and the dunes. Bims is more settled once she’s let those powerful muscles and long legs do what they are meant to.

I had the usual battle with this painting (don’t you love the pink chair! from an app which puts your picture on the wall of various unfeasibly smart rooms)

I think I’m quite settled on it now (Hilly with branches, 76 cm x 60 cm). there is something  female and landscapey about it which is all to the good.

now I’m not dragging all the equipment off out two afternoons a week I feel more committed to the studio and have been having a tidy up today. see the crap on the floor under the table –

well now you don’t! a wheelbarrow full of ceramics detritus gone into the grey bin.

and some paintings up here instead of in the “gallery” (my old office)

I do love this little one, it was very quick  to do but it’s enough and I managed to keep my paws off it somehow. Paintings which have got to the paws off stage are all for sale, just email me from the link on the website www.janewheeler.co.uk – I will have to be more pro-active about selling online, now that Open Studios is cancelled.

 

ways of seeing landscape

Posted jane -->on 1st Mar 2020

today’s walk in strong sunshine and stronger wind was from Kelling Reading Rooms up Muckleborough Hill,

chased by winged cloud shadows which flew out to sea.

it didn’t feel as windy up there as I expected, perhaps that was due to my own puffing after climbing up a bit over sixty metres.

in Norfolk it counts as a hill – in Scotland not so much – but it commands great views of the coast, and has a Bronze Age “bowl” barrow on the seaward slope,

somewhere in the trees and scrub. it shows on aerial photos taken in the 1940’s and 50’s. and there are awesome imaginary views of Doggerland, the area between Britain and Europe which was dry land until about eight thousand years ago, populated by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers who migrated with the seasons, fishing, hunting, and gathering food such as hazelnuts and berries.

after returning from time-travelling, and after contemplating the wind-farm turbines and the racing clouds we turned downhill, through oak woods, and crossed the coast road to Kelling Heath, via Weynor Gardens, a seventies housing estate with a permissive path behind it through to the heath.

the camera on my iphone flattens things out, and the budding honeysuckle that’s climbed up a small dead tree is hard to read in the way that my eye read it. there are tree shadows that are confused with the branches that cast the shadows.

there are many wonderful trees on these slopes, and I walked along appreciating them, partly thanks to watching every Idris Murphy video I could find on the internet.

I’ve captured a few images from his website. this is Riverbed Ross River, 44.5 x 44.5 cm.

Idris Murphy works en plein air in the rather wonderful Australian landscape on smaller boards, the size of these three, and from the experience of working on those (some of which are completed out doors, and others worked on in the studio) he paints his larger works in the studio.

Waterfall cloud bank river-front, acrylic on board 65 x 69.5 cm

Views Walking Killcare, acrylic on board, 45 x 45 cm

as he says, using photographs to paint landscape just does not work, as they look flat like the photos, which as I pointed out above, are very flat, and especially with the wide angle type lens on my iphone – it just takes all the interest out of the picture.

Black emu evening and hill-side, Mutawintji, acrylic and collage on board, 65 x 65 cm

Murphy brings his extensive knowledge of ancient Aboriginal cave paintings, a spiritual sensibility and awareness of the meaning and history of place to his landscape paintings, which have nothing to do with exact realism. as he says, it’s all about making a picture – it’s very interesting to see his process in  several videos on the website 

hipstamatic helps to make my photos a little more interesting

but they can’t do anything like a painting. Here’s a big one of Murphy’s – Luminous green waterhole, 120 x 130 cm

the abstract qualities of this are gorgeous. Murphy’s colours are true to the Australian outback, the reds and purples of bare earth, and then the sudden greens after rain. the white gum trees stand out in many of his paintings,

yes we do in fact have white trees in Europe, but only in winter do they stand out as here against all the dead bracken,

and old oaks have the feel of spirit guides in these sandy hills by the coast where the Neolithic and Bronze ages still feel accessible and you can imagine Doggerland out there under the North Sea.

but I M is right about photography it really does not hack it compared to what one sees and one did not have time to stop and draw as the dear Galga certainly would not like it! perhaps minus dog when the weather warms up and before the green begins.

meanwhile I continue to paint from somewhere inside my head. this was something I thought complete a few months ago. I got it out yesterday and skated some paint around on it so that what was underneath was partly visible .. and it IS a landscape but a composite of things in my memory, partly from walks in Fife, Scotland, and partly Norfolk.

these details show how the thin paint allows what is underneath to become mysterious and suggestive

and in some parts completely covered

painting-over is often much more satisfying than starting from scratch

on our walk the gorse beginning to look like spring

and as usual the steam train’s morning trip from Sheringham to Holt passed us

 

chuffing and huffing up the gradient deep in the cutting, so that you can only see the smoke and steam and hear the engine. nearly as much as my huffing and puffing to scramble up the steep path to the level top of Kelling heath.

up there large numbers of Mesolithic worked flints and waste from flint-working were recovered from in situ deposits. some of the flints are now thought to date to the Upper Palaeolithic. this landscape has a long history, not least in its geology, but without the timescale and continuity of memory that the Australian landscape has.

walking from Kelling

Posted jane -->on 27th Oct 2019

at last a clear day after so many rainy and very gloomy ones

this bourbon rose still flowering and beautifully scented by my gate; I am astonished, because summer rain turns the opening flowers of this particular rose into tiny brown paper parcels and they don’t open. it’s a climbing version of Souvenir de la Malmaison.

we were on our way out for a walk from Kelling reading rooms to Kelling heath and back, via Muckleburgh hill; a walk that involves two big hills and wonderful views of the sea.

Just B and I and the sunshine

Muckleburgh hill has low growing oaks around its double crown, stunted by sea winds and poor soil.

you think you have reached the top and then find there is another higher point

the view is better from the second one

so up we go

looking over and down slope to the North Sea. interesting to think that 10,000 years ago after the ice sheets melted, you would have been looking at dry land down there, low chalk and sand hills, chained by marshy rivers and lakes, wooded and full of wild animals, what archaeologists nowadays call Doggerland. a rich environment for a sparse population of mesolithic human hunters.

East across to Sheringham and Beeston bump

West over the saltmarshes and shingle ridge to Blakeney point, Salthouse church and Walsey hill

down again through woods on the Weybourne side, easy to get lost, until we find the gate to the coast road, along the road a bit and through a gap on the opposite side, through tunnels of low ivy and woody groves up to the eastern edge of the heath. here it’s not really a heath any more but a wood.

rather soggy traveller’s joy, old man’s beard, or whatever you want to call wild clematis

Telegraph hill is the name of this steep slope, perhaps it had a signal tower or pole at the top for semaphore communications, which were used during the Napoleonic wars by the Admiralty, though I’m not sure that there was ever a chain of them in Norfolk.

here we are climbing up the Holt-Cromer ridge, which is composed of outwash sands and gravels deposited by rivers at the glacier edge, during the last Ice age. a steep northward-facing slope which would have been the glacier margin. probably Muckleburgh Hill itself is a kame, like Beeston Bump, a steep-sided mound of sand and gravel deposited by the melting ice sheet.

bracken turning all colours, some very pale. looking out across the fields here I spotted the snowy white steam cloud from the local Poppy Line steam engine chugging hard to pull its coaches up the gradient to Holt from Sheringham

the footpath crosses another road, and then very quickly turns up Holgate hill to the railway line, the most punishing slope. at the top you are higher than the railway line which is down in a cutting. I think I sounded like a steam train puffing up the last and steepest bit.

 

lovely steam train coming past, hooting for the pedestrian crossing then slowing for the little halt at Kelling, downslope. I couldn’t see a thing through the screen because of the bright sunshine, so I was trying to watch and film at the same time, hence the wobbles.

before diving down the steep footpath to Kelling village again I met some people with a lovely basket of fungi; the main collector a German woman who couldn’t tell me the English names of what she had found. one was as big as a loaf of bread, slightly bigger than this. I’m waiting for a Collins fungi book to be able to name it. we agreed that the ceps are over. that’s about the only edible fungi I recognise apart from field and parasol mushrooms.

this brilliant and perfect fly agaric was a neighbour of the edible one.

this one a few days older and already beginning to melt back into the earth.  they coexist with birch trees, and like most of the fungi we only see as “fruiting bodies” in the autumn, have extensive networks of hair-like threads which tap into tree roots, providing minerals and taking sugars in exchange.

the landscape changes as you walk down the path

at first bracken hangs down from high banks

and the slopes are steep and wooded with silver birch

as the slope becomes less steep there are small paddocks and large grass fields, oaks and a lot of ash trees, none of which are very old, probably dating to the disuse of the heath for common grazing. recent rains, some extremely heavy – Weybourne recorded over seven centimeters in one afternoon, where in Bale we only had just over three – have scoured out some sandy gullies at the top, and dumped sand on the path at the bottom of the hill.

back home in my garden there is more autumn colour than I saw near the coast – this guelder rose is full of berries and the leaves are turning very pretty colours

the hornbeam which is only nineteen and has got quite tall now has a lovely display

and the rowan

all berries gone, a delicate and elegant garden inhabitant. I put a new one in on the other side this year. I don’t really have room to plant any more trees, there are too many already, but my garden is a little oasis of wilderness amongst more conventional spaces and the industrial agriculture which we need to feed the country. though I must say growing potatoes for crisps is not the best way to do that! nor are crops to feed intensively reared livestock.

a quick burst in the studio, to start base layers on some ready-gessoed panels I just bought. 40 x 40 cm.

it’s lovely to just slap on some colour with a brush

and then some coloured texture (marble dust mixed into paint)

last week this one emerged, also 40 x 40 cm

.

and then this, which is just over 60 x 60. I’ve called it the Rain’s Voice. probably those bright things above will need more layers, but I think I will try to keep them bright, a bit of cheer as we continue towards winter.

 

 

 

October colours 2

Posted jane -->on 19th Oct 2019

I wasn’t entirely happy with the last painting, although close up bits of it work really well – I think I need to simplify.

I went back to the kind of thing I did in the last folded book

where I used watercolour pencils in combination with the new handmade watercolours I’d bought

 

making myself allow this clean simplicity which is easy to do on paper with these materials

when the watercolour granulates and runs it does the most perfect things all by itself

so I took this one as my preparatory drawing (it is a section of a painting)

and worked off it in acrylic. there’s lots of texture because under the gesso is an old landscape painting I’d done about three years ago and decided to delete, so to speak. it’s 60 x 70 cm.

various bits of it look like good starting points for more paintings

using the watercolours for colour reference was interesting. I don’t mix the watercolours much because I bought a range of about 6 greens.

now I have to think up a good title!

the same day I put these final coats

on two small paintings, 30 x 30 cm (that’s 12″ x 12″) also basing them on sections of the watercolour.

I have this one to think about

here’s a pretty crucial watercolour, mostly using the pencils, in a square Khadi paper sketch book (it’s stitched, flaps right open, which is very useful, and its spine is about and inch or two cm thick.)

the marsh is a pretty good source of ideas too

these simple shapes of creek and tide

and reflection

feeding into the pencil gestures

as well as the textures of seaweed and stones on the mud

something about paper standing in for light

and windblown grass in stabbed lines

and lines coming through

so here is this one, as far as I’ve got it today, maybe it’s finished. a bit bigger, 60 x 82 cm   – perhaps “Wind through the Marrams”

using a graphite stick that is water soluble

thinking of these marks on paper with crayon

and much scratching with the point of the pointy palette knife

this pale pink reminds me of pink plaster

under this was an abstract painting with lots of blues and I have allowed them to come back under the paint around the edges and in this corner

now I feel I have a stronger language to explore, that’s related to landscape. we shall see.

 

 

 

 

 

 

October colour

Posted jane -->on 19th Oct 2019

firstly I have to squeeze in a succession of photos from the last day in September, really worthy of a separate post, but I put it off, so this is a catch-up

on Monday 30th September we arrived early at Morston knowing it would be a big tide, but after an overnight blow from the north-west the water had not got out of the lagoon behind Blakeney point between high tides and had risen right over the marsh

giving an impression of how things may be in a few years? decades? when more polar ice has melted

even the coastal path was impassable without waders or a boat

and B got several cold wet surprises leaping about in the long grass

but it was peaceful and very beautiful

and I took a nice clean dog with me on my taxi run for my good friend who has just had a lung transplant.

only two days before

I was taking photos of autumn on the edge of the marsh, where the samphire has turned all sorts of lovely colours, from maroon to shocking pink.

the sea asters are over but the sea pinks survived the inundation

inland colours are mellowing. here is an ivy bee, a specialist wild bee species that’s become more common recently

a little bit of bracken bronzing

and early leaf fall – at Holt Lowes it’s mostly the birch

of course Bims is a nice autumnal colour herself

the dartmoor ponies will stay out all winter, they have great resistance to cold and wet and are able to stay fat on very little

pools reflecting sky and leaves

as for painting I found these colours in a book of Diebenkorn paintings, this abstract done in 1951

and happily tried to transfer them

but my painting seemed so dull when I got it indoors I went back into it

with lighter versions of these early autumn shades

these details give me points of departure for new paintings

in the meantime I visited the original church of Edgefield, near Holt, in the 1880’s most of it was taken down and incorporated into a new church in the centre of the village. they left the Saxon octagonal tower

and some of the doorways and windows

the churchyard is full of hawthorns, bloody with haws – our visit on 1st october, the anniversary of Mary Tudor’s coronation – and some late tombstones

in heavy rain I took this photo of the biggest remaining window arch

which inspired me to add the shape to my painting

 

 

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