Jane Wheeler's Blog 2018 May

most of the wild flowers in May are creamy white – cow parsley, guelder rose, bird cherry – with blues – the bluebells and the forget-me-nots – and red campion, although there are still plenty of yellow dandelions of course. but the fields are dominated by the strident yellow of canola, or rape-seed, through April and May.

accompanied by the sickly sweet smell, and much spraying of chemicals

however, I decided to make the most of it and managed a couple of paintings that are almost pure colour.

the first a small board, an old early painting gessoed over – lots of nice texture. starting with the horizon and my new regime of runny paint ..

I arrived at this, fairly free with marks and spots of balancing reds and blues

and scrapes and scratches

the brightest colours more or less hidden – cerulean just peeping through the yellow in a close-up.

meanwhile Cakes lane has been a froth of green and white

here is the bird cherry, almost like a wild lilac, with its own scent

although last year I was reluctant to engage with all that green in paint, I thought I’d give it a go this time.

starting with some drawing

all those wiggly branches and the blue sky …

hard to know where to start on the greens ..

but I used a lot of other colours and contrasts and textures .. quite happy with this. it’s a canvas 50 x 50 cm.

as for the bluebells – isn’t it frustrating trying to photograph them! the blue always looks so faded.

what I love is the wood with the pale green light between the tree trunks and the soft new beech leaves

I tried to paint them last year, and got an interesting abstract design but too dark and formal, not enough happening with the paint, so I got it out, threw various things at it and worked back in

I have so many more tools on my belt now.

all that blue called me back to the yellow, and a bigger version of the canola/rape field. more colour under it, bolder!

I really had fun with mark-making and with the colours I put back in over the yellow at the end

close-ups show you better

it would be an abstract if it wasn’t for the horizon strip

I saw this a week or so later when the yellow had abated

might be the next painting. meanwhile however I am trying to finish a load of pots I made last summer – have managed the bisque firing, and am glazing for a firing this week. then there will have to be another later, there are plenty of bisque pots up there.

somehow I have been too preoccupied and more than a month has gone by … so now I need to catch up

the April landscape looks so bare

and even now at the end of May this field is not covered by growth.

so this painting – the huge canvas I was talking about at the end of the last blog – reflects the bright skies and the bare land of April. here it is outside on a hot day, having paint thrown at it from the brush and paint pot. first of all Bimba christened it by walking about on the back of it, and the wind blew it over a couple of times, so it gained some soil texture – perhaps a worm cast or two

the hedge still has blue paint on it, and so do my old Whitestuff linen long-shorts

after that I took it back up to the pottery workshop and my studio easel.

Bimba got some blue paint on her too.

I had a fair old tussle with this over a few days. true to form I had the horizon too high and too dark.

so whatever I did it just wasn’t right

and I didn’t want it quite that realistic

so I started putting white back onto the horizon

and scribbling – sorry, mark-making – back into the sky with the water soluble graphite crayon

covering, or veiling the electricity poles and wires with runny grey paint, getting the right flavour and colour of italic scrawl

introducing lighter colours, and covering up the text I was unhappy with

so “touching” and “distance” are separated

the cloudy bits have scratches through them as well as the poured paint

and at this point I knew if I did any more I would mess it up, so I stopped. you can see this at Cley18, the exhibition that’s in Cley church and surroundings, on the beach and at the Norfolk Wildlife trust study centre from 5th July to 5th August. my painting will be in the south aisle of the church.