From the Mourning of the World

The final record cover artwork  - this image will wrap the gatefold sleeve front and back 
~ please click for a larger view

THE WOMAN OF THE EARTH's back bends under the dark weight of tarmac and concrete, industrial civilisation catches in its global communications net the last wild creatures, and poisoned skies choke the leaves from the last trees withstanding. 

A wind blows through those last branches and through the antlers of a fleeing deer, through the hair of the Woman of the Earth, and scatters old memories of things that once lived: twigs and bird bones, seed pods and bees wings, dead leaves and fish skeletons and thistledown. 

The Woman of the Earth weeps. Her sorrow for The Dying is heavier than we can know. Into her garment are stitched the ghosts of extinct species. 

But from her tears grows music: music to wail and sing out and bow and strum and beat out the thrum of our griefs. And from the music grow green leaves, spiralling their new life from the alchemy of tears.

And so goes the tale of my latest painting. This is to be a record cover, commissioned by the folks at The Dark Mountain Project (whom I have painted for before) - a global network of writers, artists and thinkers who aim to challenge the stories our civilisation tells about itself, and produce honest art and novel thinking for a culture in trouble and a world heading for the buffers.

They are bringing out a compilation record of music born of this thinking, and encasing it in a beautiful limited edition vinyl LP, with a gatefold sleeve adorned with my artwork. 

My initial sketch for the record cover design

The title From the Mourning of the World was given to me by Marmaduke Dando - the record's curator, and then I was left pretty much to my own devices to respond to the idea in my own way.

You mightn't be surprised that I was inspired by the melancholy in the title and theme. Even my watercolour was weeping.

Slowly the painting evolved. It was large - I painted at record cover actual size.

As the ghosts of lost creatures whispered blue and green through the paint to me, I even started to see spirits in the paint palette, waiting wordlessly for me to tell their tale.

The image grew, in soft watery colours against the inky black of the oppressive city.

Lastly, once all the colour was there, I carved out the edges in pencil, put in the veins of insect wings, and the furrows on the brow, marked out the fingernails and bird bones, the lettering and fiddle strings, antlers and tresses and long falling tears.

And then it was done.

The record will be made once enough funds have been raised. There'll be a limited edition of just 500 of these unique and beautiful vinyl creations, so hurry along here to the fundraising page and pre-order yourself a copy! I'm particularly excited about the tracks from Jon Boden and Chris Wood and Julian Gaskell's Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, but listening to the tempting snippets on this little introductory video promises a veritable feast for wondering ears and uncivilised souls.

An English Arcanum

A WHILE AGO I told you of three mysterious hares who shared between them just three ears and yet had two ears each. All over Dartmoor these hares can be seen, in the roof bosses of churches, on shop signs and plaques on buildings. And now they can be seen leaping around the second album from Oxford folk band Telling the Bees. You may remember my artwork for their debut Untie the Wind. And just one year later these four talented musicians have put together another exquisite collection of music. An English Arcanum is a mossy basketful of eleven sonic tales made with bagpipes and concertina and voices and mandolin and cello and a good deal of acorns, and it is just wonderful. I was delighted to be asked again by this lovely foursome to make the artwork for their music and this time I am even happier with the result. And so, I am pleased to say, are they. It is all rendered in fine fine pencil. An old one-toothed man, a wayfaring musician, walks out of the woods carrying a barrel organ / cabinet of curiosities which bears a compartment for each song. (The lone tooth was inspired by the one swinging gnasher of a rural farmer called Ivan who we met on a windy hilltop in Wales!) From under his hat poke oak leaves and he wears a pilgrim hat badge of a bee. If you look closely you'll find all sorts of little puzzling details which will make sense when you hear the songs.

(please click to enlarge)

Inside the three strange hares circle the CD deftly as the music plays...



Oak twigs entwine with lyrics...



Old riddles are unravelled by the four winds...

And the four musicians look on proudly...

The new album is already receiving deservedly glowing reviews and the official album launch is this Friday 27th November at the Queen of Clubs cabaret, Holywell Music Rooms, Oxford, if you should be in the vicinity. Otherwise you can have a listen and order a copy of the album for £12 from the band themselves here, or find news and buzzings on their blog.

For me there is something intrinsically right about combining music with imagery, if you listen to this beautifully crafted music whilst looking at the drawings I hope you can almost imagine the pencil strings thrumming.

An English Arcanum is exactly that - a beautiful evocation of an old and strange yet wildly familiar England.

Acorns and Blackberries

ALL ALONG THE LANES the brambles are fruiting. In between jagged stems burst little black juicy clusters, each day bearing another nearly ready berry. Our long walk to town is slowed by these waylaying roadside treats. Some blackberries are small and still too sour, others fall apart to a sauce in our fingers. Some are crunchy with seeds or beasts. For the perfect king berry, hardest to reach, we must compete with feasting wasps. Some say you shouldn't pick blackberries after Michelmas (29th September) for the devil comes down and wees upon them. Perhaps we should make a blackberry crumble soon.


And I have been painting, a tiny work, wrapped around with blackberries for an approaching autumn. This is a wedding pendant, commissioned by Anna and Justin who we met at a fair. They are to be married this month and wanted a tiny painting for her to wear on the day. It measures about 3 inches in height and will be worn with a forest green dress. On the back I painted their initials and the date of their happy day (All full of nines like my own date of birth!). There's a smoking rural cottage and hills, and in front of it a two handled lovers' cup. I hunted my books on folklore to find a nice image for a wedding, and found that two spoons on a saucer means a marriage approaches.


Blackberries are not the only fruits in my work of late. There are acorns in the album artwork for the second Telling The Bees album which I have been working away on busily with my 0.3mm pencil. Most of the main drawings are done, but I still have all the smaller work for the interior to do as well as knotting it all together with words and layout.
For those of you who haven't seen it before, you can see my work for the band's debut album here. We were delighted to finally meet Bees' songwriter Andy and his missus Nomi last week as they travelled past our Dartmoor field with bagpipes and mandolin, and tea and biscuits and talk were enjoyed.
This time the artwork includes a sort of wayfaring musician, coming out of the forest, who is at the same time some old oaky symbol of England. He carries a barrel organ / cabinet of curiosities, that displays an object for each song. I shall leave those discoveries until the day when you hear the songs. They are delightful. On the CD circle leap those three hares again.


I found this oak berry and leaf in the grass here the other day. Though the trees are still green, the morning airs feel different. We are remembering the time of year when we used to light fires before breakfast, and can smell the leaves thinking about browning. I always find the turn of this new season hits me like a memory of all past autumns in my life. Soon I will turn thirty which is a bizarre thing indeed...

Telling the Bees

A WEEK after the Sunday-of-Lost-Data I have a little honeyed tale for you. Yesterday the postman brought a thrilling package of CDs, all printed and proper... my first ever album artwork for the fabulous debut release by Telling the Bees ~ a band of four lovely Oxford based musicians who might describe their music as ...darkly crafted folk, classical, cinematic, prog, acoustic-chill, psychedelia!

Untie the Wind, as the album is called, is a wonderful conjuring of a darkly imagined England, and for me has a very strong flavour of something friendly yet strange, and it is this folkloric old and yet not old world that I have tried to conjure in my drawings for them.


I was inspired by the old folk custom that inspired the band's name: that in English villages back in the days of superstitions... it was very important to inform the beehives and their inhabitants of any news: changes of ownership, births, deaths and marriages, otherwise they would take umbrage and leave their hives en masse. The custom was for a newly bereaved widow or heir to go up to each hive, tap it three times with an iron key and then inform the bees that their master had died. Sometimes the hives were adorned with black ribbon to show that the bees were in mourning, or left a small piece of wedding cake to share in matrimonial celebrations.


Telling the Bees will be performing at gigs and festivals across the country and if they buzz through your corner of the woods, I urge you to go along and dance to their evocative mandolins and English border bagpipes, fiddles and cellos, concertinas and songs.

Do click on the pictures to enlarge them.


"A Bedfordshire woman was telling me the other day," says a writer in a Northern daily paper, "how her son had been stung all over by bees. 'And no wonder,' she said, 'he never told them he was going to put them in a new 'ome, and everybody knows that before you goes to put bees in a new 'ome, you must knock three times on the top of the 'ive and tell 'em, same as you must tell 'em when anyone dies in the 'ouse. Ef you don't, they'll be spiteful, for bees is understanding creatures, an' knows what you say to them."

Just the same as a month before,--

The house and the trees,

The barn's brown gable, the vine by the door,--

Nothing changed but the hives of bees.

Before them, under the garden wall,

Forward and back,

Went drearily singing the chore-girl small,

Draping each hive with a shred of black.

Trembling, I listened: the summer sun

Had the chill of snow;

For I knew she was telling the bees of one

Gone on the journey we all must go!

Then I said to myself, "My Mary weeps

For the dead to-day:

Haply her blind old grandsire sleeps

The fret and the pain of his age away."

But her dog whined low; on the doorway sill,

With his cane to his chin,

The old man sat; and the chore-girl still

Sung to the bees stealing out and in.

And the song she was singing ever since

In my ear sounds on:--

"Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence!

Mistress Mary is dead and gone!"

some verses from TELLING THE BEES by John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)

Bees in a Blizzard & Dripping Pianos

TODAY I SIT at my desk looking out at a blizzard of wild sideways-swirling-snows and paint bees and gnarled trees for an album cover commission ...

Meanwhile Tui has been sneaking into the village hall across the way where they keep an old piano in the men's toilets ... he hid his recording device inside the back of the piano whilst he played to the sound of cisterns refilling and dripping taps.