printmaking, more dahlia painting and gardening …..

Making a new flowerbed is not cheap when the garden base soil is solid clay, with no topsoil, especially under the turf rolled out when these houses were new, 25 -30 years ago. Clay is full of minerals but needs to be infiltrated in some way so that plants can access it. I prefer the no dig method, I sheet mulch with bought topsoil and compost, and plant into that, adding gravel from my abundant granite chip areas, and the plants find their own way down to the nutrients with the help of added mycorrhizal fungi. Prairie plants generally have deep roots, so once they are established they are fine. The same goes for roses and fruit trees. I think it’s a crime that all the topsoil is sold off from new build sites.

Here is the established prairie bed. The asters and pony grass (Mexican feather) have pushed out most of the cone flowers but the yellow rudbeckia is hanging on and spreading.

The added soil gets a bit shallow this end, and I have sown various marigolds, cornflowers and love-in-the-mist, annuals to come up soon and hold it together without needing depth.

All the young plants that needed a permanent home are in, mostly various kinds of rudbeckia, with the tall pallida cone flowers in the back corner. So far there have been no dog incursions. I bought some wire netting but am hoping I won’t need it.

My other innovation has been the dry-point prints. I did this one back in late August when the first dahlia flowered, a gorgeous orange cactus. More ideas about painting them have been running around in my head.

Not least, after taking part in a poetry workshop run by Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana, with this image echoing in my head. The child is a ten year-old Yayoi Kusama, the famous Japanese artist who obsessively covered everything with dots. She looks so unhappy, as if she would rather be a dahlia flower than a human. Alex’s poetry (latest collection, Skinship, has sold out the first print) is autofiction, and perhaps that’s what my painting is. A mixture of autobiographical and fiction.

I drew a lot of quick fountain pen ideas in my sketchbook –

scrawly but allowing instinct and memory over any accuracy –

even trying the selfie function on my phone

to work out how I could place myself behind those dahlias

A fast scratch on an acrylic plate seemed to finalise a decision.

printing it out helped, with a reference to the orange dahlia print too.

It was too big for the pasta maker press, I had to use the baren. It’s such a cheap one It will fall to bits soon.

I worked on the canvas a bit with a graphite stick. I don’t usually draw things out on the canvas first, but this really helped.

This canvas has endured some pretty extreme treatment. it has lumps of acrylic and pigment as well as thick paper collaged onto it under an old painting.

I overworked the flower heads a bit so used a blotting and printing technique with kitchen paper to make them looser.

Dahlias after Yayoi has elements of the first three dahlia paintings but adding the self-portrait links it to the Bonnard-ish work i was doing last year. This week and next week I have some time booked in the print studio at the DCA to get some prints off all my plates.

We are having ups and downs in the weather, almost cold enough for a frost at night, and some lovely sunny days. This painted lady flew up off my wildflower grass and onto the drive (which is fast becoming a gravel wildflower garden)

I am still seeing bees on my flowers, a common carder, all gold fur, and some honeybees.

Some echinaceas are still holding onto petals and colour. The apples are ripening one by one.

Watching the colours change around us.

Big tides on the beach, but it’s getting nippier.

A trip into Edinburgh to catch up on some galleries. I want to go to the big Gwen John show at Modern Two with Lucy, so i didn’t do that. This painting by John Joseph Mitchel at Ingleby has a feel of her work.