July horse

And July is over, just like that, with a Scottish summer now chillier and wetter than we expect, but also warming sun in between.

Somehow horses have got into my studio. Perhaps it was inevitable, first the child in nature, then the creature.

And they are wonderful to paint. Beautiful seductive creatures, always that glamour in the field,  are we too wild to come to you?

Perhaps I have been resisting them ever since I went to Art School and did more serious Art things.

floating acrylic paint on water, it soaked in as it dried, so a very delicate pale effect.

I had been looking at this on line, it’s Andrew Cranston’s ‘Those who hide well, live well’, admiring its fluidity and that gorgeous amber translucency. (it’s been aquired by the National Gallery of Scotland), and I have to admit that I was hoping for some of this amber translucency in my painting. Of course I am not using distemper, and I am very much trying to reproduce the water colour effects I can get on paper.

the building across the top is from Andreii Tarkovsky’s film “the Sacrifice”

I rather exaggerated the piebald plaster ….

meanwhile we had a visitor

Lucy and Scott were in Maine. I think she enjoyed her stay. She was very good, slept quietly, she might have dug a hole or two …

Bims could not run on the beach though, she is too rough for such a little person with such short legs.

so eventually the painting reached this point, with its lovely quote from a Jean Atkin poem, Yellowhammer, in her collection How Time is in Fields, written in the bottom right-hand corner – “as horses stand, like days”. The pattern from the collaged wrapping paper migrated onto the horse, as he’s an Appaloosa.

and over the painting

and onto the left-hand tree.

I enjoyed putting these delicate tree-bark patterns onto the tree-trunks.

now a new canvas awaits, taller, at 150 x 100 cm.

This piebald pony mare might be the next one – from the zoney ragwort field on the edge of this housing scheme. There is a super filmic farmstead behind with a tall spire and a clock stopped at ten to six over the big archway entrance. Or there is the Zona building from Stalker. maybe to play with.

Meanwhile this wrought iron bench came into view.

Underneath the linen there is an abstract that i didn’t feel convinced about, but liked enough for it to be part of another painting.

On the principle of Matisse’s the Red Studio I used pink and orange as underpainting.

And various shades of green on top, scraping back enough to show the colours underneath.

I mostly put this on with a palette knife –

so much easier to control thick and thin and to go right through it again.

it has “braided in the dream-bough” written into it, scraped in and off.

This is the original, it is up a footpath in Blebo Craigs, and although a bit beaten up, it is a graceful handmade seat, most inviting. I need to paint it again, to get more of that falling backwards open attitude.

And now, to reward your patience with all that studio talk, here is a beautiful walk in the woods we did on Sunday, over near Perth, the river is the Tay, and it is not far downstream from out Murthly walk. We parked at “3” and did not do the bit to Kinclaven. It was over six miles without that.

Part of it is oak forest, unusual for Scotland, and it reminded me of our walks back in Norfolk around the Bayfield estate.

Ash dieback is hitting so many trees; this one was completely dead.

On our way to the Tay for our picnic.

There was not too much obvious damage from the storm winter two years ago.

It was a warm day but not hot, and the trees gave the dogs plenty of shade.

So many big characterful trees.

This was the most special, a huge, hollow oak on the river bank.

a tiny sandy cove to climb down into

where the river widened and eddied around

Nonna swam – she is such a water dog – and B just wet her feet …

glades of Sitka

looming oaks

some very odd shaped ones too

some of us wore shorts, which was a bit brave considering we waded through thick bracken in places

but no ticks presented themselves – and there were no flies either.

This strangely shaped specimen is a cherry.

and this a beech tree.

a gorgeous walk, and we should go back in bluebell season. I heard nuthatches and woodpeckers, and the app told me it heard treecreepers. We did not see any butterflies however.

I have seen a few of these in the last couple of days – small tortoiseshell – and one was in my garden today. People in the South are telling me they have a butterfly explosion, but it’s a very poor summer for them here, so far.

Another walk – yesterday I walked around Lindores Loch, and went into Abdie Old Kirk churchyard to have a look, as the very stiff gate was left open. It was built in the 13th century and consecrated in 1242 by Bishop David de Bernham, and then received significant additions in the seventeenth century. It was abandoned in 1827 but restored in 1856.

So many stories on these gravestones.

The church has lost its roof but the sandstone structure is pretty solid.

Abdie House looks like it needed a few maids and men to keep it running back in the day – all those chimneys –

enough wealthy people lived around to have a lot of well-preserved wall-memorials

and a lot of tragically young deaths to read about.

One presumes the splitting of Scottish congregations between Episcopalian and Presbyterian and the “Wee Free” forced the disuse.

But it is still consecrated ground

and has war graves from the 20th Century.

I was surprised how legible all these stone carvings are.

One more thing on the painting

I am trying out this Yupo “paper” it’s plastic (sorry!) and resists watercolour, which is very interesting to work with.

I think I like real paper best, but will continue to explore this.

and lastly I hanker after being an abstract painter.

wonderful paintings – Lotte Wieringa in her studio in LA. And her instagram page is here