Five chapters of summer

A LONG SPACE there's been between the last time I poured tea here and this! Life has brought a satchelful of wonders and works and wanders, so I hardly know where to begin! Perhaps if I rifle through this satchel and pull out chapters one by one?...

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CHAPTER 1 :: LUKAS

So first and most delightfully of all, I'd like to introduce you to a dear new member of my family! I am an aunt for the first time, and quite amazed to meet this beautiful little boy, born in July to my brother Jan and his Maria. This is Lukas Jacob Staines, here just one day old. I cannot quite believe it, since I remember waiting for his father to come home from hospital when he was the same number of hours old (and I was just two)!


We waited a while for him to come, and while we waited, I stitched him seven linen mice. Slightly patched, askew, and lace-collared, they hang all in a row from a piece of linen-wrapped wire (so that they can be hooked anywhere) upon which I stitched words... there's still space at the end for me to add his name, which at the time of giving, had not yet been decided! There are seven mice for seven stories (and the thousand different ways of telling them...)

(do click to enlarge these)

I so look forward to seeing this dear little soul grow, and to see familiar and new in him. He has his father's useful crooked little fingers. He'll be tall. And he will be loved ♥

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CHAPTER 2 :: JERICHO & HANNAH

And second, a painting! Made for Jericho and Hannah, who are wonderful artists and good friends too across the miles, though we've not met. This watercolour of the dear couple flew all the way to them in the Philippines, where they lose themselves in fascinating artistic endeavour, bluebell woods of their imaginations and sometimes run away together as cat and rabbit. I'm quite pleased with the blue of Hannah's dress amid my usual rust-and-moss pallette. And it is painted on Two Rivers hand milled watercolour paper from Somerset. It was a joy to make a painting for two artists who appreciate my work so, and who also make beautiful works themselves.




Here above you can see my progress: pencil, then light washes, then finer more concentrated detail, then done. (Although, in reality, as you can imagine, it took far longer than that!)

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CHAPTER 3 :: LANVAL

And third, a trip across the sea to Brittany! Do you remember these Arthurian-Breton gold and red and black and white paintings that I found such a struggle to finish a month or so ago? Well, they now hang in the most exquisite chateau exhibition in the middle of the Breton forest of Brocéliande, and I was lucky enough to join some of the English and French artists taking part on a trip to this Nest of Myth and see the exhibition opening amid a fanfare of wonderful events: horse displays, storytelling, harp recitals, Breton music. All the while we enjoyed hospitality of the highest order, with wines and food and good things apparently springing up whenever we looked round!

This is the chateau pictured above, seen from across the lake. We watched moonrise over this lake, and heard how many pieces of the Arthurian myth are woven through this place.. Here the Oak that held Merlin, there the lake that hides the crystal cave. We were taken by horse and cart to the Valley of No Return... but came back nonetheless, wide-eyed mostly at the generous funding and support the arts are given in France compared to the UK.



Inside the castle, the works were hung beautifully. I think I had warmed to my paintings after not having seen them for a while, though had I had paint and brush with me, I might still have been tempted to tinker.


There were beautiful windows all around, I looked out across the lake through deliciously atticy cobwebs, or soft summer-breezed curtains to see audiences being told tales below, and boys playing bagpipes.


I was delighted too to meet a jovial old elf called Pierre Dubois, whose book The Great Encyclopedia of Faeries I owned some years ago. I got to practice lots of French and learned many intriguing things from him about Lutins and all the mischiefs of their realm. Pierre was also responsible for a forbidden foray with a few of us beyond this Interdit sign to find a beautiful old myth-soaked Oak tree and this lilied lake.








We stayed in La Gacilly, a town full to the brim with art. There were photographic exhibitions in the streets, art and craft shops everywhere, and cobblestones and hanging baskets too.



And all of our work, along with tales of the making of the accompanying film were put together in a beautifully produced book of the exhibition. The show continues in France until the end of August and the film will premiere there in October. Then for the winter, the exhibition comes to Exeter in December, and we look forward to welcoming our French friends here then and returning their wonderful hospitality. Much appreciation goes to all who put such efforts into this wondrous sharing of legends.

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CHAPTER 4 :: HOTCHIWITCHI

Now fourth, I bring more artwork, and pages too. A while ago I wrote about hedgehogs, telling of their significance amongst Gypsies and the superstitions that bristle around them. This in turn inspired Sam Rawlings to make a piece of writing about the hedgehog, and I was asked to illustrate it. This handsome little booklet which houses my hedgehoggery is the latest in the short story series produced by London based Arts collective Lazy Gramophone. Their books are beautifully done, with thoughtful letterpress and an eye for a good font. I am delighted to be involved with such an enthusiastic and creative bunch. You can buy a copy of this limited edition publication here for £4.99.


And I am selling prints of my drawing here in my etsy shop. He is a shaman hedgehog, with not apples, but amulets, collected on his wise old spines.

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CHAPTER 5 :: THINGS TO COME

And so fifth, and onwards! Life is full colour at the moment, and blooming with all kinds of delights. I am busy selling work, and making work, as ever trying to dream up projects in between the ones I must make for pennies. Next weekend I will be hawking my wares at the Harlequin Fayre in Norfolk. The next chapter, I'll tell of soon. It has wonder-books and earth-adventures and beloved patchworks and cauldrons of goodness and the threetoed footprints of Baba Yaga's house in it...

Babes in the Wood

THIS BLUE PENCIL that has been sharpened regularly during my hard working spring, sprung once from the branches of a tree, as I was reminded here when my knife met a little knot in the wood. Here in the village we had weekend Mayday celebrations: a fair where I and others sold wares; morrises and maypoles were danced and daffodils yellowed all the shop windows. A little drizzle came in its English way to the fair too. And the maypole ribbons in my brain are still spinning. All the colours of things I have to get done are merging in a mad spiral of panic. Inside my head there are little girls and boys spinning in their beginning-of-summer costumes and their giggles have tumbled out onto my drawing board.
Littl'uns amongst trees has been a theme of recently completed commissions.. and I thought I would show you a couple.


First of all a little watercolour a bit like a gentle nursery rhyme. In it Rue and Noah, two little yellow-haired boys-of-the-woods run through the trees hand in hand. The painting was commissioned by their mum Helen for their dad Jim on his birthday. And a lovely family they are too. The words either side of the illustration are Rue's. He has been singing his own version of a couple of nursery rhymes that don't quite match but which his ma thought would be lovely in the picture.



So there they run. In pencil and watercolour.... Here for you are some of the pencil drawing stages and the painted thing in its completion. I had photos of the boys to work from, but as is usual for me with commissions like this, I like to try to make portrait-ish sorts of images, but they are translated into my world somehow, rather than being slavish copies.



A light spring breeze has blown over this. It is gentler in tone and more playful than my work often can be. Less heavy. I don't know why.

(click to enlarge)

I do struggle with trees when my paintings are not set in deep midwinter. You see there is the problem of leaves, and how on earth to do them! You cannot possibly paint them all, but it has to somehow look as if you have. I am lucky to have the staggeringly brilliant illustrator Virginia Lee as a neighbour and friend, and I must say I would be very happy to be able to paint trees just half as well as she can! I have looked at many different artists' trees, the great Russian turn of the century illustrator Ivan Bilibin for example, who managed to achieve incredible leaved trees with just flat areas of colour, drawing no doubt on his experience as a stage set designer. For these trees I ended up taking inspiration from Samuel Palmer's Early Morning (1825), and for reminding me of Samuel Palmer's wonderful bucolic work I have my dear friend the wonderful artist of paint and felt and melancholic toys Gretel Parker to thank!

(click to enlarge)

No soon as I had wrapped up this little treasure, I leaped into the branches of the next commission, time ticking on as ever and terrifying Eight-Legged Deadlines creeping out of every corner toward me tapping their watches.



This next painting was to be the biggest watercolour I had ever painted, and so I had to order in paper specially, from the excellent Paper People in Devon.


A lady called Margaret had once bought a print from me in Scotland and wanted to celebrate the first birthday of her baby daughter Anja by placing her inside my painting. She asked for something almost filling an A1 sheet of paper, a horse chestnut tree, in which baby Anja was to sleep, curled inside a conker shell, and gathered all around she asked for woodland animals and fairy folk.


Now I must add a note here about 'fairies'.. though I fear it should take a longer paragraph than I have time to write just now. Many folk assume that my work is fairy-ish. But it isn't. You'll not find a gossamer wing, no matter how hard you look, in any of my paintings! Old wise folk, gnarled gnomes, riddles and stories of strange-goings-on are much more my cup of tea. I find there is far too much pink and glitter, too much superficial fairy (or indeed faery) fancy about these days. You must understand I do feel my work is rooted in an old magic, in stories of oddness, the wild creatures and disappearances, the other realms in the fairytales. But so much nowadays isn't that, and consequently I deliberately avoid wings and all their insubstantial fluff. Perhaps it is a dislike for the flimsy fakery I feel in the depiction of many fairies. I feel they need to be wilder, earthier and more unnerving. And this is pretty much the sort of thing I told Margaret when she asked for fairies. I said well I'll paint woodland folk, I'll paint little men with knobbly noses and funny little hats. That sort of thing. Just not fairies. You see to me these strange little people are indeed people.. the odd ones, the marginal ones, the ones who are not noticed or noticed for the wrong reasons. They are my fairies.


I hope that makes sense? Margaret understood and let me set to work depicting a gathering of these little folk.
It took yonks longer than I had planned... weeks and weeks. And I found it overwhelming at times. I sent Margaret a very rough sketch, as she asked for one, but usually I do much of my workings out in the final piece, it seems to suit me better. Gradually the painting took shape. Little folk appeared in corners and branches offering baby sleeping Anja conkers as gifts. And amongst the roots and branches sat fox and badger and squirrel, owl and mouse and hedgehog.
Anja is watched over from above by sun and moon and a kind yellow bird. It is an honour to make an artwork for one so young. I hope Anja grows up with fond memories of the strange little people who brought her horse chestnuts on her first birthday. I hope she remembers them and is kind to them.

(click to enlarge)

Anja in the Horse Chestnut - print available here

(do click on the images to enlarge and see them all in detail)

This large creation was posted off just in time for baby Anja's Mayday first birthday and I have the astonishingly talented illustrator David Wyatt to thank for the use of his large scanner! Without which I wouldn't be able to show you this in such good quality. David's rather brilliant at doing trees too, and goblins :)

And to complete the forest tale, I bring you photographs from a trip I took a few weeks back with friends Miriam and Damien and their own dear babes in the woods... to Wistman's Wood, the most incredible mossy wonderland of trees I have ever seen. Truly I understood then where all the tales of being pisky-led had come from.


You approach the little forest from across moorland, eventually half noticing in the distance a grey patch of shrubbery... can you see it? Far off where those two hills meet....


That is Wistman's Wood believe it or not. It looks like nothing more than a clump of dry gorse or low shrubs until you get close and step inside. When you do, your whole world turns green.


Green hairy moss covers everything: the granite boulders and tree trunks gnarled as a fairytale. It isn't big these days Wistman's Wood. Centuries ago it covered miles of moorland.
And it was easy to become lost inside.


Now this enchanting copse of stunted and gnarled ancient English oak trees is small enough that you can see beyond it to the moor and river, giving an eerie sense of I'm not sure what.


There are many legends and tales about this Wood. It is an unusual and enigmatic place. I am told that a particular moss grows only here and two other places in Europe. You can read in depth folklore about the wood here. Of particular interest to me is the supposed origin of the name. Wistman's Wood is derived they say from Wisht-Man's Wood, this refers to the Devonshire word Wisht meaning pixie-led or haunted. Others relate it to wissen, the Saxon / German to know. "From the same etymon comes also wise: ‘sapient; judging rightly; having much knowledge' Thus Wissman’s or Wistman’s Wood signifies Silva Sapientium, ‘the wood of wisemen.’"


Whatever it means it was a wonderful place to experience. The trees themselves look like wise men. I shall return there when the weather warms with my pencil and sketchbook on a quiet day, and perhaps I shall come back to show what I drew...


That's the wood, and so to the babe...
I have just enjoyed a happy weekend with my brother Jan and his lovely Maria who came to visit me here in Dartmoor and enjoy the May celebrations. With them came a kicking seven month old bump, my first niece or nephew who will make its little self known in July, and begin wandering in the mossy forest of this world ♥