Jane Wheeler's Blog - Just another WordPress weblog

more walking and painting and prairie gardening

Posted jane -->on 22nd Apr 2021

on Saturday mornings I drive to Bowhouse near St Monan’s to pick up a local veg and other foodstuffs order, so I have been looking for walks nearby. last week’s was one of those. this week I did a circuit of part of the coastal path and inland around the Balcaskie estate.

first along the coastal path above those rocky beaches with all their geology laid out

and the sloping cliffs covered in gorse with linnets singing in the sunshine on the top twigs

I think the footpath may follow a raised beach, where the land has been rising through the Holocene, due to the release of pressure from the weight of ice sheets.

and a clump of alexanders, so familiar in Norfolk, which knocked me back as I haven’t noticed it anywhere else here yet, this spring. it looked like the frosts has browned it off a bit.

the hedgerow plants really have not got going yet inland, though I did see a stand of jack-in-the-hedge at Kemback on Sunday.

Pittenweem and St Monan’s both have sea-filled swimming pools cut out of the rocky foreshore. all year round swimming has really become a thing over the last year, everyone seems to be doing it.

the pretty little East Neuk (Neuk being the Scottish for nook, or corner) fishing harbours all look a bit the same. this is St Monan’s. I avoided the Pittenweem one because of the steep steps down to it which my knee finds difficult at the moment. it is the most active commercially apparently, a small number of boats remain, nowadays mainly fishing for shellfish. several fish vans from Pittenweem deliver inland, blasting their horns as they roll up – one outside this house – but their fish will be coming from a central market I’d guess.

from St Monan’s there’s a not very exciting stretch along the road to Abercrombie and then across a couple of fields to the ruined church. Abercrombie, recorded in 1157-60 as Abercrumbin, means ‘mouth of the river Crombie’. The first element is the Pictish word aber ‘river mouth’. Crombie is a stream-name derived from the Gaelic word crombadh ‘bending, winding’.

with old gravestones to read and ponder over. a new plaque in the wall celebrates the lives of Tom and Ingrid Pevsner, he born in Dresden in 1926 … what story lies behind that I wonder. I completely missed five sculptured stones, showing Celtic ornament, in the walls, mention found online.

so why was this medieval church abandoned and allowed to fall into ruin, some time in the seventeenth century? something to do with the presbyterian movement? the graveyard is still consecrated, presumably, as it has more recent memorials, including the Pevsners.

walking on round the estate in the marvellous sunshine

over a formal bridge

past redpoll cattle with two young calves

and the very restrained house, no mad gothic stuff there …

the madness reserved for the lime trees, all pruned of their whiskers and skirts

and two clumps of snakeshead fritillaries rather isolated along the verge.

the button-push gates and the lodge with its matching doocots (dovecote in Scottish)

are quite fancy. from the right hand doocot you can just see Kelly Castle, under Kelly Law, another walk I must do.

I am taking my four winds sketch books on all my walks, I just started the sixth one.

very quick drawings, done on varied papers, some already drawn on, or patterned, bring a life and intensity to painting.

I also have a new tool, a brush pen, designed for calligraphic writing, specifically Japanese and Chinese scripts. it brings a broader more intuitive attitude.

the new book has some different papers

from envelopes (a Mina Perhonen invite card envelope, which is an art object in itself) and birthday present wrapping.

it already has some hints inserted

the first one only took me a few days to get through, but now it’s a couple of weeks. they are thicker, though, more signatures (book-binding term for the packets of folded paper in sections that form a book) sewn in.

meanwhile the new painting has been taking shape, a lot of green brush-drawing

then a coat of translucent yellows,

and something else started to happen, which will have to wait for the next blog

meanwhile ALL my little prairie plants are outside in the growshed, wrapped in wool liners to keep the night cold (and frost) off.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

painting, walking, drawing – and gardening

Posted jane -->on 18th Apr 2021

this week a lot of the seedlings which have been occupying my bay window seemed big enough to pot on.

I decided to make my back garden a prairie – dog allowing – rather than a wildflower meadow, which she mostly ruined in Norfolk. there will be a bit of lawn, but not much. at the moment it is mostly very sad lawn, on clay with the topsoil removed, made even sadder by sporadic digging – she can’t help herself when she’s excited – and the classic yellow and brown patches cause by dog pee. anyway, I bought a lot of seed packets, for rudbeckia, echinacea and various prairie coneflowers, a few blue grasses and drop seeds, prairie gentians and clover. I am going to have an awful lot of plants. I have already used up 100 paper pulp pots and there are more needing taking out of their first nursery trays.

today was sunny and less chilly than of late, I felt a bit of a glow on my face after having lunch outside. this magnificent shield bug liked the colour of my chair.

I was given a grow shed for my birthday. there are no small greenhouses available to buy, anywhere that I can find on line, so this is a cheap substitute. it will give shelter and warmth to boost salad veg, harden off the seedling flowers, and hopefully give me a tomato crop …

if it doesn’t blow away. the guy ropes and pegs seem a little inadequate. I have tied it to the neighbour’s fence as well. though the main worry is that the frosts just seem to go on and on, so I can’t actually put any of the seedlings I have indoors out there yet!

Bims was quite ecstatic to have some outdoor sunbathing.

on Friday we walked around St Andrews’ main attractions, Lade Braes and the two dens, Spinkie and Lumbo. I heard a blackcap singing in Lade Braes, but mostly it was chiffchaff chit chat.

it’s been very dry, and the burn in Lumbo was so low we paddled (in B’s case) stepped on stepping stones (in mine) across to the other bank and the wilderness usually too full of nettles and crisscross brambles to bother with. interesting to see the den from a different angle.

it is the season of lambs, and the best place to see them is Kemback. also the bluebells are just starting there ….

last weekend I tried out a walk from Colinsburgh, just in from the coast, with splendid views of the Firth of Forth

a beautiful estate with much flower planting in semi-wild areas around streams and under trees, and a higher path around farmland

and a secret path starting under and through rhododendrons and over the burn

up to this gothic folly on the crag

overlooking a house of many gables hidden amongst trees, Balcarres, owned by the Lindsay family since the 16th century.

a week when drawing in the landscape

started this – it had its good points but not many

so it received some collaged bits and thinned down paint

and suddenly became this which was cloud shadows walking back and forth from drawings I did on the beach at Tentsmuir…

and another small diptych emerged from boxes, to have an airing

and a coat of satin varnish. I found a better way to turn the lefthand panel too, so this is actually finished, officially – it has a title, “The fence resolves/the rocks agree to run away”, acrylic on canvas 40 x 80 cm, and I’m very pleased with its balance of calmness against the energetic marks. I want to find more of that balance in my paintings.

so a new start in the studio with some drawing

and a new 100 x 100 canvas ….

 

 

 

the last day of march 2021

Posted jane -->on 31st Mar 2021

is when I’m starting this though I’m not sure I shall get it posted today. the last post was a bit of a cliff-hanger, I had started a painting and was not sure how to resolve it. somehow I strode into the studio a few days later and started in with a brushful of blackish paint and things happened … but I had stuck some ripped up painted paper on first.

I had made a drawing in my sketch book at the end of the day which was very helpful though

 

so I covered up the questionable black mark marks in what was the foreground, if there is such a thing in these abstracts, worked over the top of the rather neat and tidy first attempt, blocked out a large area in the middle defined by my black lines, scraped it off again with a toothed metal kidney tool left over from the ceramics studio

added more paint

turned the painting around

ending up with this which I am really pleased with. I think the months of painting with gouache on paper have really helped.

we made an expedition to the river, the Eden, which has settled to a quieter persona since I last saw it, when it had spread out over the surrounding fields (its flood-plain) and got into the kitchen of a house by the old bridge in Cupar.

the tufts of leaf and reed and other debris show high high it was. now this willow is showing the first signs of its new leaves.

it looked very slippery dark and deep, and started me off on another painting, on one of these 100 x 100 cm box canvases, same as the last one

the usual beginnings – glued on ripped up painting and marks with a drippy brush

going on to stick brightly coloured tissue paper and some “gold” leaf I had in my stash. a lot got on my fingers, I’m too impatient to be a gilder

and then scrawly stuff about the river

another day and I’m back in there with more paint

but then I covered a lot of this up

and it became a very spring-ish painting

pinks and greens dominating

some things left uncovered

bits of the gold leaf and tissue paper, for “How the river shines today”

my next project is some deep mapping of the hills opposite

Craigfoodie is the first target

meanwhile I am tramping the by now well trodden paths tracks and lanes

around Ceres Moor and Kemback

I found a new track the other side of Kemback

and today on the way back from Cairgreen Wood I found a new way to get across to Owlet wood

without walking down the road as we had before.

this is a painting about, not of, Cairngreen. Today there were five roe deer on the field outside the wood

and a little flock of siskins flew past me and settled in a small gorse bush next to the path.

I found a larch tree in bloom. I never knew they showed off bright pink flowers amongst the tufts of bright green new needles in the spring.

 

 

and then it almost feels like summer

Posted jane -->on 20th Mar 2021

for one day, that is, the day before yesterday, the temperature rose to 17C and I sat out in the garden to have my coffee. but today it is 11C and the sun in and out. it’s a good sign though. There was a chiffchaff singing on the path to Ceres Moor, so that is definitely a sign that spring IS here.

on walks in the last week, snowdrops are still in flower and looking fresh, and the blackthorn is not out yet, though the buds are showing signs. in Norfolk I am sure it will be out and the snowdrops definitely over.

we walked round the loch at Kilconquar (pronounced Kinnocher)

last Saturday and came quite close to two herons. the snowdrops there were wonderful.

yesterday  I walked in Lade Braes in St Andrews, it’s full of snowdrops, crocuses and drifts of bright blue scylla, – heard a chiffchaff and saw a bumble bee. but for some reason didn’t take any photos, these are all of Kilconquar.

the day before yesterday we went to Kemback, climbed Jenny’s steps (there must be a hundred of them)

on the way I admired the Lomonds – I looked them up geologically, and their shoulders are sills of volcanic rock that flowed (when hot) through the horizontal weaknesses in the sedimentary sandstones, and their peaks are the pipes through which the molten lava rose to the surface and erupted as volcanoes. Largo Law is another such remnant.

not much sign of spring in the woods yet. I expect if I was there at five-thirty in the morning the dawn chorus would be deafening, but mostly it was quiet, with a couple of mountain bike enthusiasts zooming about.

I think in another month there will be bluebells.

another expedition to Cairngreen wood, walking round it widdershins/against the sun this time. you always see different things walking paths a new way.

the latest little pocket book/four winds book is filling up

the quicker the drawing the better it is

the top of Garliebank, the steep hill I can see from the house, has great swooping perspectives, and you can see the snowy Cairngorms peeping over the top of the local hills. I have a plan to walk round all the local hills which you can see from Ceres Moor and from Garliebank.

for now the newly ploughed ground with its scalloped edges and strips of green catches my eye.

in the studio new work on canvas has begun

things disconcert by going too quickly

so some collage disrupts that

but then this one took matters into its own hands

and became this

and then,  a small act but a major decision today, I turned the right hand panel upside down, which oddly enough fits well and makes the whole thing more dynamic. and finished.

whereas the square canvas has much to resolve, although it’s become very much more interesting

the black features at the bottom are the problem, I love the marks but it seems very unbalanced at the moment. the dark in the top half does have various purple-brown and maroon marks that you can’t see in this photo

but on the whole it needs something more interesting going on across it.

the reworking came from this very loose painting in my big sketchbook. which itself benefits from having two halves, like a diptych.

it’s always good to have a problem waiting for one in the studio, even if you turn it to the wall for the time being, and read a book, or tackle the garden instead, it’s working away in your brain.

 

 

the hills around my town

Posted jane -->on 22nd Feb 2021

I forgot to say that the week before last I had my first Covid “jag” as they call it in Scotland. the Pfizer one. so pleased I didn’t feel slowed down by it in any way. it’s like a miracle. just shows what science can do if it’s given enough money. think of all the misery we could stop if governments and corporations really wanted to.

really I am feeling ten years younger after spending three months or so with younger people, who get up early, have a smallish breakfast and get out for a short walk, walking fast and up hills and then at weekends six mile walks with more hills, fast … I have lost inches around hips and waist and can move on up a proper Scottish hill in a reasonable manner. as in the path in the photo above.

I thought I was doing plenty of walking before, but there really are not any proper hills in Norfolk. from the top of Kemback you can see two big hills, East and West Lomond, still patched with snow on Friday. I have been to the top of West Lomond, about five years ago, but I had to stop and start, could not keep up with Lucy, some sort of breathing problem, I am not sure quite what it was, I used to get it a lot. it was a very cold day too.

at Kemback the woods are full of bluebell shoots, exposed by the deer I think

such gorgeous sweeping steep woods.

 

this is a view from my house. I have not walked quite up that hill, as it has sheep on it, but my usual morning walk takes me up to about that height.

on a rainy day this week, I walked up the usual hill then left into Owlet wood, taking a new little fourwinds book with lots of inserts sewn in, as a notebook

this is from India Flint’s online workshop

making these is an ideal way to keep up a practice which I have let drop, of making notes on walks,

since I stopped being able to take part in Jonathan Ward’s Writing Outside workshops, due to Covid restrictions

I took a red crayon and scribbled in the rain.

yesterday we walked up that. it is a short but quite hard walk, even Lucy found it quite tough. of course Scott was running about in front of us, making Bims want to run too.

it is the Hill of Tarvit, and it’s 211 metres above sea-level with tremendous views in every direction

you can just see the sea this way …. it was very windy up there.

down in the beautiful woods that surround Tarvit house there were spring flowers – crocus

and masses of snowdrops. I am waiting to hear when I can collect snowdrops from Cambo Gardens to plant in my garden.

snowdrops in the family mausoleum

with a very very sad plaque for Little Jim, who died at eleven months and ten days old.

starting a new fourwinds ( see @prophet_of_bloom ) notebook with a list of all the hills visible from the top of the Ceres Moor path, or rather from the higher place in the cut down wood that is the remnant of the Moor itself that isn’t under cultivation.

Letham. Lindifferon. Kilmaron. Kingask. Foodie. Craigfoodie. Myrcairnie. Torr of Moonzie. Kedlock. Colluthie.

Hoping that Scottish placenames on the OS map are less anglicised than Irish placenames. but there’s a website where you can look them up. Foodie, the translation is ‘Place of peats or divots’. Moonzie, formerly *Auchtermoonzie, is the name of the settlement near which the Moonzie Burn rises, and of the parish through which it flows for the first 1.5 km of its course. It is probable that the settlement-name derives from uachdar qualified by the burn-name Moonzie, ‘the upland of the Moonzie (Burn). I love all this – Assuming that Moonzie is in origin a hydronym, it may be related to moineiseach ‘low, inactive, diffident’ (a by-form of mainneiseach ‘slow, sluggish’, an adjective from mainne ‘delay, sluggishness’, according to Dwelly). This is apt enough for the Moonzie Burn, which is slow-flowing for much of its course, dropping only c.7 m in its first 3 km. There is a Moineiseach Burn in the Don catchment area. Alternatively, and equally aptly (see next paragraph), it may be related to  mòine ‘moss, bog’, with –es-extension. It could also be argued that the development of the stressed vowel in Moonzie is more likely to derive from mòine (cf Balnamoon, Menmuir ANG, for baile na mòine/mòna).

Birds listed, seen and heard this morning. a song thrush on the hill up to the Moor, a mistle thrush in Ceres, several larks, and two yellowhammers.

also thinking about Tim Robinson a lot ( noted Irish landscape writer and cartographer who so sadly died at the beginning of last April from the novel coronavirus) and the connections between place names and going really deep into landscape.

this is what my new studio practice will be about

here’s a stash of paints that arrived last week. some are expensive and some are inexpensive. but all are lush and exciting.

new canvases stacked up indoors

and in the studio, which has had the electricians in to put up a couple of good “daylight” lights and rather a lot of sockets.

now it’s just a matter of waiting for a couple of coats of white emulsion and some strong arms and backs to push the various plan chest/heavy kitchen dresser/ trestle tables around so there’s room to paint. I’ve also got a four foot by six foot shed coming to keep all my boxes of pots and old paintings in.

footnote

Kemback – G ceann + G bac

‘End of the bac’, which can mean ‘hindrance; bend in the ground’, from Middle Irish bacc ‘angle, bend; corner, especially of a field, used as a shelter for horses or cattle’. It can also mean ‘hollow or bend’, especially on the body (Angus Watson 2001). The element is not discussed in Watson 1926, but twenty years earlier he translates Bac nan Cisteachan in Applecross parish ROS ‘ridge of the chests’ (1904, 217). This word is not to be confused with the loan-word bac from Old Norse bakki ‘bank’, meaning ‘moss, peat-bog’. This is the first element in the Gairloch place-name Bac an Leith-Choin, which Watson translates ‘moss of the lurcher’ (1904, 228).

 

 

 

 

January walks in Fife

Posted jane -->on 31st Jan 2021

the weather seems to have been a bit colder than I was anticipating, the pavements have been lethal at times. most nights have been around or below freezing. obviously I have forgotten what winter should be like.

up the steep path to Ceres Moor there is a point where the snow is always heavier,

and the path to Ceres, which is well trodden, over the top has icy compressed snow and puddles that are hard to avoid.

the hills around are beautiful with their white coverings, sometimes you can see the Cairngorms.

trees and snow are studies in monochrome

the trees draw lines with their branches and trunks

that are irresistible to me

I have to try drawing with black paint on white cartridge paper

I have to learn to hold back, not do too much, but be bold with the gestures.

there’s never been enough snow to stop everything, just enough to make pedestrians feel insecure. and enough cold to make my secondhand electric car, a Nissan leaf, use more battery for short trips than I would like.

this steep lane to a farm up on the hill where a loop path from Cupar to Ceres takes you higher was an inconveniance to cars as well. luckily for a walker there are wide enough grassy verges.

then we have a few days when the snow disappears from all but the most sheltered spots.

on one of those I spotted this kingfisher, in Cupar itself. the river Eden runs through, like a rushing coldwater tiger, but these backwater pools are the remnants of a mill leat. in the river itself there are otters, a friend saw four yesterday, I think a mother and cubs, the youngsters whistling and tumbling off the bank. There are dippers and herons too.

last Sunday we walked out of the town along the river bank. the river was rushing along as usual, and the ground was frozen hard, ruts full of inch thick ice. we took the path where it gets very close to the water, and the land closes in to make a shallow gorge.

there had been a hoar frost, even the snow had fractal crystals on it.

we had to avoid some very slippery paths and some iced over floods

and clamber about between withered stems of reed and rosebay, amongst these crystalline gardens and under huge alder trees hoary with frost. it’s a beautiful place, and the river noisy, greedy, charging past.

eventually we climbed back up into sunshine and great tit song and green fields and golf course, to walk back into Cupar.

I’ve been taking Bims to Tentsmuir, except when the black ice is bad and the car park too dangerous and they close it.

this was ice on the beach itself, quite slippery.

the weather has been very calm and the waves tiny, which must be what causes these ripples in the sand, with broken shell like ice crystals lodged in between.

pink foot geese are as much a thing here as in Norfolk, they fly over us here in Cupar on their way from or to fields to or from roosts on the Tay estuary.

here is the Cupar heron, a very scruffy bird, under South Bridge in the middle of town.

Looking for kingfishers, another bird inspired painting.

 

 

moving in

Posted jane -->on 31st Jan 2021

on the 5th of January my worldly possessions arrived in Scotland. it was a day of thick black ice everywhere, pavements and the cul de sac road impossible to walk on. I can still see the fibres stuck to the pavement where the removal guys put their blankets down. so then my house was a chaos of boxes, furniture, bed in pieces, the usual. Luckily for me I am in an extended household with my daughter and her husband, so having spent another night with them, we arrived at the house in the early evening the next day and a lot was unpacked, the bed put together (but where were those special bolts? – never turned up)

the view yesterday morning from my kitchen window.

At the same time I was trying to get the studio sorted out (also chaos and desolation, especially as a full pot of acrylic gesso fell down in the lorry and broke open) and the joiner has turned out to be very slow and not exactly perfection when it comes to laminate floors. so I have gaps around the edges in the bathroom, hall and back bedroom, and he has to redo them and take the skirtings off in the process, but not until lockdown is over and I’ve been vaccinated – which could be months.

very very slowly order is being reimposed. the wonderful thing is that I have these big blank walls to hang big paintings on. the studio now has to have the electrics redone (it was the garage) and then a couple of coats of white emulsion over the OSB board it’s been lined with (over kingspan insulation on floor, ceiling and walls) so a lot of paintings are indoors or in a garden shed, as there had to be space to work in there, though luckily the joiner and his mates got the walls, ceiling and floor done before everything arrived, though not the front wall completed. the garage door is still lying in the drive, too big for the skip.

having the paintings indoors has given me the opportunity to reassess, in one case quickly splotch a few brushfuls of paint on – and that may happen to others.

I made an unexpected discovery – the intense deep blue walls in my kitchen enhance this large oil painting, painted I think a couple of years ago. and the painting enhances the kitchen, makes it a conversational space – my long table is underneath it, so I have a dining area with a bit more dignity to it.

I’ve hung this painting in the front bedroom, opposite another big oil abstract, which was

started in 2003 but finished about the same year as big blue. it’s the first one I put up, it’s a natural for a bedroom, sunny and light. lots of texture and craquelure, and thick paint pushed about, then a top coat partly rubbed off, of very runny Swedish linseed oil outdoor house paint, which gives it some almost watercolour-ish runs of barley-coloured paint.

this is the huge painting I did for Cley 2018, and I have ordered a low storage unit from Ikea to go below it so that there is room for it to hang. the pigeon-hole shelves came out of my old studio, but there may not be room for them in the new one. a lot of things are still not sorted out in the living room, the audio equipment for one thing!

this diptych is a good example of how different things look when you bring them into a new space. I had not thought of putting these two paintings together, but I need big pieces in this room, and they speak to each other.

Idris Murphy, one of my favourite Australian landscape artists, talks about the effect of a 5th edge in a diptych, the division between the two sections. it’s very interesting.

so I ordered a frame, the widest I could get, luckily the painting is exactly the right size, four feet wide.

this one is just slightly smaller – “The path holds tokens of waking” 120 x 75 cm – and although the two paintings started off separate, they came together early on into a diptych. It hung in my studio, but really not a great setting. put here, it’s wonderful, it springs to life!

then this part of the wall, next to the bay window, has become somewhere to photograph smaller paintings

the light is very good and the pale grey walls show off paintings very well

I like this one best

in the hall, which is the same grey, I’ve made a monochrome arrangement.

the smaller bedroom is a reading room, with an Ikea version of a traditional Swedish farmhouse sofa bed. I love this green so much I am going to paint the rest of the woodwork with it. but probably not until the flooring has been sorted out.the painting I think still needs some work, but I definitely like it there. Of course, technically all these paintings are for sale. it would be nice to sell them so that I could paint new ones for the spaces.

on Friday I went to have a look at this waterfall in Dura Den in Kemback, which really reminds me of the painting.

I painted this one last week after walking along the river Eden. subject of another blog post to come. it’s called “How the River Shines Today” – gouache and watercolour pencils over acrylic on heavy watercolour paper 28 x 38 cm, for sale £90 unframed including shipping, as part of #artistsupportpledge a generous culture and dynamic economy between artists and clients needing no gatekeepers dreamed up by @matthewburrowsstudio to help artists continue to make a living during the pandemic. here’s the link to my big cartel shop should you be interested.

 

 

more walking and painting, under tier three

Posted jane -->on 20th Dec 2020

I’ve been very busy making a new Big Cartel shop where my paintings can be bought with a couple of clicks and a credit card, uploading the images onto my website and in parallel with the shop. I had a couple of issues with scammers trying to catch me out through the website, so the shop feels much safer, as well as easier if you do want to buy something. plus it allows gorgeous large images of the paintings! the link is here

we had some snow at the beginning of December, and some icy mornings. this is from the front windows of my new house in Cupar. the line of trees at the top marks a footpath that goes all the way over the hill to Ceres, a two mile up and then down, and there’s a café there, for better times and weather. I have to edit out the houses, I’m not used to being amongst so many and such similar buildings, but it’s rather lovely having this view. the hill continues further over to the right.

at the top there are sweeping views across to Kemback

and towards Tentsmuir, which is about the same distance from Cupar as from St Andrews. I have bought a season ticket for their parking. as we are to be in Scotland’s Tier 4 on Boxing day, I am crossing my fingers it will stay open. during the first lockdown it was closed, as were the car parks for beaches in Norfolk.

there are small woods either side of the footpath full of long-tailed tits and other woodland birds; this small painting on paper is On winter’s edge/long-tailed tits/black plastic – they have covered the sloping field next to it in the plastic, with straw on top, and a banner of it had got caught up in the trees on the wood’s edge. I’ll be interested to see what is under it in the spring or summer.

the wood is called Owlet wood, so I named this painting On winter’s edges/owlet wood/muir road,

but one area has been cleared, I think to take it back to heathland, or muir/moor, as in Norfolk where so many old heaths have been overgrown by silver birch. it’s a bit of a shame as in the last month or so they have cleared the last strip of it through which a path ran, mossy and heathery.

it’s very wet after the continual wet weather we have had, and water runs off the pasture fields and the woods

making a little rushing burn down the side of, and across the path. there is an old limestone quarry about halfway down, overgrown with trees, which I thought might be pleasant, but there is a marooned shopping trolley and a lot of bottles lying about, so it might be a haunt of teenagers trying things out away from adult eyes.

it’s certainly a good walk, it will keep me fit. there are plenty of walks around Cupar, the local ramblers society have produced a folding A1 sheet of them.

the fields at the top have a fairly gentle form of agriculture, very mixed, so in better weather I’m hoping to see meadow pipit and lark, maybe curlew.

meanwhile I am still in St Andrews; this is the view from the Duke’s Old Course on a wet day. it’s called Braw View, twenty minutes walk from this house via Lumbo Den.

my furniture and studio stuff will arrive in Cupar on the 5th of January (Tier four allowing), by which time the bungalow will have had its makeover, new boiler and all, and the garage should be ready to receive the studio things, forty odd paintings, two tables, a plan chest, etc. I hope there will be room to move in there. but I will probably have to wait a while for an electrician to change all the lighting fixtures very much not to my taste.

the Duke’s golf course is rather wonderful, full of bits of woodland and gorse scrub, and a big artificial pond surrounded by trees,

plus that view.

usually you can see Tentsmuir beach and forest, the Eden estuary, and the West Sands beach of St Andrews.

all these small gouache paintings on paper express a feeling of place, and I suppose it’s stronger when you first come to a new landscape to live.

I have thirty three paintings for sale in the shop, and there’s more.

all painted on the guest room bed. I run out of paper and have to order more. it’s beautiful thick watercolour paper made of cotton rag that doesn’t curl up or develop buckling when it gets wet. even the cartridge paper is a bit special. Making art is expensive and one needs to sell it to be able to make more.

 

 

 

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.

 

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