Painting poems, and what happens when it goes wrong

SOMETIMES my paintings take new and unplanned directions, either because I am deliberately trying to break my own rules, or because the project calls for me to step beyond them, as in this case.

These watercolours were done as part of a collaborative project between myself and my good friend, the Scotland-based poet Em Strang. Her poems are wonderful - wild and gentle, quiet and frightening, and I was delighted with the prospect of making images to go with them. 

But here's the thing - illustrating poetry is really hard! A poem, when it really works and has power, makes its images in your imaginal realm, where they can flit and morph as such images should, just beyond the reach of gravity and the crushing weight of collapsing the wave function. Knowing this, it was very hard not to step on the toes of the poem, and to illustrate but still leave space for the unsaid.

Thus I painted outside of my usual edged style, losing myself to the chance happenings in the watercolour, trying to find the hook in each poem that caught my heart.

I ended up with strange images, some of which I really like, and some of which I'm less sure about, but all of which feel very outside my comfort zone.

Having talked it over with Em, we both agreed that these images weren't quite what the poems were asking for, though neither of us know quite what are.

I shall try again one of these days, perhaps, to track down that elusive animal in these beautiful poems, and record its pawprint in paint.

Meanwhile, I continue my learning of what it is to really illustrate words, making companion images that work alongside the poem or story, but do not duplicate it or reveal a mystery that needs to stay hidden.

For now, I have put these little paintings up for sale, along with a few other original paintings and drawings in my shop.

I'd love to hear your thoughts about these images, and about your experiences - both success and failure - of illustrating poetry.

And do sniff out the wonderful work of Em Strang, as well as on her blog, she has a few pieces of writing and poetry at the Dark Mountain site and in the books. In October she will also be running a weekend writing workshop in Cumbria with Susan Richardson ~ Writing Root & Claw.

Melted Snow...

THERE IS A KNOT in my heart made of old string, melting snow and hesitant birdsong.
I cannot tell you its tale, for it is far too sad. But I will tell you some things I have been thinking these last days of quiet...

I have been thinking of home and what that means to me and to all others.
For me, I must build my nest of beautiful sticks and have that always to return safe to. I believe that if we surround ourselves with that which we find beautiful, then the air in our homes will humm with our unique magic, a magic that is smelt by visitors and which is ours alone. How interesting the different feelings we get on entering the homes of others. How warm or cold or unnerving or welcoming they can feel. Some folks can sofa-hop happily, but not I. I must have my ephemera and imagery about me. In stretching yourself out as far as your walls, you are making a place which affirms your vision whenever you sit in it.


I have been thinking of journeys and of the pot-holed roads down which those journeys wind. My own journey has brought me in the most beautiful home I have ever had to a village in Dartmoor which I felt on arrival was itself home, and so, for now, my hat will rest here. There is a sixteenth century cottage with uneven floors that is to become my home in a few weeks' time. I must gather all my selves from all the ends of the dripping tree branches where I have hung them and bundle them up in a cloth bag along with books and paints and pots and pans, and start down this new fork in the road with a set jaw and a pocketful of tears.
The road is still muddy of course, from where the snow has melted, and it is uphill too I see. There may be wheels again further down this road, for I do love them so, but for now I must just put one foot in front of the other.


I have been thinking of the stories we tell of our lives, stories for those we know and stories for those we do not. I have wound out for you this story right here like a ball of string down a long long road. You have seen my life, though of course only a ladleful from the top of the soup. I love to tell you stories, true though they are, they are my tale... my life painted as in my pictures. You people whose unknown friendship I treasure, cannot share in all the pains of my real life. I have agonised over how to write, how to be true and yet hidden. You are a sea of strangers, and yet you are also each and every one of you a single person, a me, a someone with hurts and joys of your own, who thrills at walking in step with another through this strangest of media.


I have been thinking of winter and of the spring that follows all the same. How I find such beautiful in the snow, and its grey-hushed land-blanket. How it can all disappear in just one day if the air is warm enough, and a view is transformed. How life changes with the seasons and how much solace there is amongst the trees.


It is a new year, a new decade in a still new century, and January is nearly gone.


Soon I will show you the paintings I have been making of late, and in time pictures of my new walls, but for now, forgive me if I am quiet or overwhelmed, or if I give you poems that talk of loneliness...

WILD GEESE
by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

A house on your back

THIS MAN CARRIES his house on his back in a drawing just completed by me for a nice lady* who asked me to make her a drawing for her house-builder husband. She had seen my Goods & Chattels Man and asked for a little drawing in a similar vein but with a house on his back and a nod to the corrugated iron roofs of Australia where they live.
It is also a rather apt illustration for our predicament right now. We feel like we might have to hoick our house onto our backs and walk!

Regarding our recent and ongoing engine troubles all I can say is GrRrRrRrRrRhHhH!!!
The problem that we went to that garage with in the first place all that time ago is still not fixed, despite all the money we paid them and the weeks we spent parked there. We are very frustrated indeed!

Our intention was to leave for East Anglia this week but alas we are back in the park and ride! There have been days peering under the engine hood, and thinking 'aha we've found the cause', ordering a new part, collecting it from the post office, fitting it and crossing fingers, starting the engine and driving down the A2 a bit to see, only to be greeted with momentous chugging at junctions, revving of its own accord and billows of exhaust smoke down the road. We are pretty sure based on advice from various quarters that all this is being caused by air getting into the fuel somehow... so we have looked for cracks and loose nuts and bolts until blue in the face. Finally yesterday we were put in touch with a knowledgeable man who trained on TKs and can recite the serial numbers to you over the phone. He reckons it's the fuel pump playing up... but alas cannot work on it as the truck won't fit in his yard. So, he recommended another place... which it turns out is just down the road from here and on a farm! And that is where we will head in a bit when I have finished moaning on here. Gawd knows if it'll be good news, we are starting to despair a bit and not trust people. The knowledgeable man made a knowing noise when Tui mentioned the garage in Faversham where we had been and said "..well my mother said if you have no good thing to say about someone then don't say anything!" It seems we were lead to a nest of cowboys, and it is such a shame. We probably never needed six brand new injectors fitting at all. People can so often disappoint you, and we are even more at the mercy of garages as this is our home.

Mechanical troubles are the real downside of living on wheels. It is so much more important for things to run smoothly and the freedom to move vanishes in an instant when things go wrong, leaving you wherever you happen to be. As it goes the park and ride is a sort of sanctuary in this kind of situation, it's quite alright to be parked here for lengths of time, and we are close to town to frantically sell pictures in order to pay for the work!

All the while we have been in this loop of trying-to-get-to-the-bottom-of-it-and-then-not, I have struggled to work and we have sold some pictures. Tui even turned the carpark into a carpentry workshop for a day or two whilst he made a new cupboard for our crawl-through. The space between cab and house had become a sort of pile of vegetables and cartons of juice and milk and bags of salad, and butter (it was cooler you see), so we thought why not put all that into a cupboard... and there's the lovely result above. Tui can be seen here from my desk window mid saw, and his activities even brought the carpark attendant over as he'd had a call from the central CCTV monitors telling him "there's some bloke in the carpark making a cupboard!"
The handles (which I think look slightly like poached eggs) are my contribution to the new creation and are made from a piece of Yew that we found back in the orchard days before any chugging was even on the horizon.

I leave you with a familiar scene of recent days... our house pulled in on a roadside somewhere with the engine hood up, spanners strewn across the pavement, Tui underneath cursing, and kind folk stopping to cough through our exhaust smoke and ask if they can help.
Will we be wandering again next week? Oh I do hope so...


*edited for secrecy :)

*************************************************
JUBILANT POSTSCRIPT!

I would like to report that following this rather glum post we chugged off to the garage-on-the-farm and had our faith in humanity restored. The kind fellows at Injection Development took time and care and diagnosed the problem straight away. It was just a small heater plug part malfunctioning that was letting unburnt diesel through the system. Our relief is tangible... and they shook their heads at the rogues in Faversham, quite incredulous at how much they had charged for not fixing it! It is so nice to have someone who knows an engine inside out really look and work it all out. We needn't have had all this trouble if we had been there in the first place. But now we know, and if ever anyone else is near Canterbury with diesel problems, I can't recommend them highly enough. And the setting is so much more lovely than that dreadful industrial estate.
Rightyho, well I shall return soon with more cheery tales of travelling again!

The Orchard Tales and the Orchard Toils of the First Few Days of Two Thousand and Nine ...

AS THE OWL in the barn hoots and stirs himself for a night of hunting I sit here in the Bedford a few yards from him, warm and dry with nostrilsfull of harissa-spiced chickpeas almost ready to eat and connected via a little plastic thingamyjig to the whole world outside this orchard. The people in that whole world are amid such different experiences and live in an alphabet'sworth of different dwellings, and yet they all share the same need and yearning for warmth and home.



In these last few weeks I have learnt to think quite differently about those warm home comforts which we never really give a second thought. Living in a wooden vehicle parked in a field means that nothing comes in or out of our home unless we physically bring it about. Water must be collected from somewhere (at present a tap for watering flowers by gravestones in the churchyard down the lane), and waste water emptied. And warmth too must be collected ... we have spent much of our time since being here walking with rucksack and saw to nearby forests to find fallen branches and bring them home in great quantities so as to keep ourselves warm. This, I know, sounds romantic and perhaps a little obvious... but actually finding enough dry, uninhabited wood and carrying it back again is a constant occupation of ours in this cold weather. We have been lucky down here in this southern foot of England to escape rainclouds, but instead the sky has brought us thin blankets of snow and frosts that freeze last night's bathwater to crackling.

So we bought some bags of coal to augment the logs and it burned hot and fierce for two days. Then the stove began to smoke.. and not just out of the chimney. It smoked from the door, from the all the seals and bolt holes and from the collars at each flue joint. We coughed and coughed and opened windows. Freezing cold with streaming eyes we realised the stove couldn't be used any more. So for the next two days we had a fire outdoors, where the smoke could escape. We watched the stars and made hot water bottles to warm the twoquilted bed which we ran to as the embers died. The next evening the gas ran out! So that night we cooked dinner and boiled hotwaterbottle water on the outdoor fire and in the morning (after heating a precarious cupful of water for tea on an upturned camping-gas heater) I trekked out to find a new calor gas bottle while Tui stayed at home and dismantled the fire and re-fire-cemented all the joints before putting it back together again. I won't go into long boring detail about my day of gas hunting except to say that it wasn't unlike Frodo's journey to Mount Doom, but with more disappointments and train cancellations and refusals of busdrivers to take me due to "hazardous chemicals". A final arm-achingly arduous trek brought me back to a delightfully warm and smokefree Bedford! Our home is wonderful, but with no fire it is very much less so.. and in these modern days of central heating, it is no longer appreciated how very important warmth in the winter is. The next day we cleaned the chimney and found that the coal had left such a thick black sooty residue that there had been only a couple of centimetres of air left for the smoke to escape. Now we burn just wood and little nuggets of smokeless fuel.

In all these days of tending to our daily basic needs, neither of us has had time to create anything. I have begun but not finished a drawing by daylight, which begins to fade around half past three. We have bought a little generator to power laptops, a phone charger and a desk lamp, and now at long last have the internet too. Soon we'll be more established and I'll be able to reopen my shop and begin making clocks again. Town is not far away and my family is much nearer by than before, so we have had lovely days walking between the sunlit appletree stakes, and drinking cups of tea.


We have felt very much more outdoors than you do inside the walls of a house. Nature is right there. You don't have to go out into it, you are already there. It affects you more directly for good or ill. I have weathered cheeks, twig-scratched arms and dirt beneath my fingernails. The skies are beautiful and the blackbirds tiptoe their little threetoed birdfeet across our roof in the mornings. It is freezing in the night when we climb down from the luton bed and run outside to wee; and the low sun and the cracking of forest underfoot and the smell of woodsmoke from the chimney make our hearts soar.