April, still cold but new life

Early April and a morning frost on the grass, but the sun melting it quickly. A kind of pinkish light.

The view from my bedroom window between the houses to Owlet wood where the path to Ceres moor runs steeply up from our valley here in Cupar.

At the bottom of Kemback wood the ewes are busy dropping lambs – this one has two up and sucking, the third just slithered out and is feebly kicking its long wet legs through the caul. A wobbly black head appears and attracts the attention of its triplet. Mother is busy clearing up the puddle of birth fluids in front of her.

A few days later I see a ewe needing the attentions of two shepherds. One lamb is pulled out and swung upside down the ewe still apparently held down for more attention. The lamb must be fine as the women leave and the ewe instantly jumps up and starts licking it.

The highland cows at Blebo Craigs have four new calves now. Family life in the field, and toughing out the cold weather, as they are able, unlike most domesticated cattle. The Fingask shorthorns will be in their barns for another few weeks, and even then their calves get pneumonia easily in a typically cold May.

The pretty little ornamental plum outside my kitchen.

I have been pursuing two directions – figures in a landscape are really catching my attention whether from old photos in my Photo library, or from walks right now. This young guy was fly-fishing in the Eden one day as I walked along. I talked to him briefly in passing another day and he turned out to be Eastern European. He was impressed I knew he was fly-fishing!

He was here in a bend of the river where the current swirls and slows down.

The other direction is abstract, but it seems to be becoming a little more difficult to get to grips with true abstraction, as the landscape has been creeping in for a while now. This is probably a tree!

Getting ahead of myself, as I finished this one first. But the way I finished it influenced how I treated the tree-trunk one –

I put down these trails of metallic acrylic from the squeezy paint bottle and then painted over them

then half wiped the paint off with kitchen roll, and scratched through with the palette knife. There was torn paper from an old piece collaged on under all the paint as well.

They give the impression of a pattern of leaves and branches without any depth.

Plus introducing some complementary colour to all that green,

Then the watery wavery painting in glazing layers over the big patch of raw linen on the right hand side does different things to the feeling of space in the painting, making it impossible to read any sense of perspective.

I still don’t want to make landscape paintings in the traditional sense.

And the little half-figures at the bottom also interfere with the sense of space. (It was noted the other day at a wonderful crit session with Fraser Taylor that Bonnard often put figures at the edges of his paintings, only partially visible)

A lot of the hipstamatic effects do things to pictorial depth in quite a subtle way.

I have plenty of images from which to make more of this sort of painting.

The fun stage is to paint the figures in watercolour.

I am having a new love affair with watercolours, I have all my old half-pan boxes out.

This swing tree in the top of the Kemback woods at Blebo Craig intrigues me. It has two rope swings. Maybe a painting that has no human figures, but infers them.

It’s a huge and magnificent beech.

I am always finding inspirational trees.

Another beech tree on the downhill edge of Kemback. The Hipstamatic colouring in this one would be fun to do something with.