A Brush in the Blue Paintwater Jar of June

WE ARE FROGS crouching disgruntled at the water's edge of a doubtful Summer. So far, this June feels like Mr Jeremy Fisher's slippy-sloppy larder; the air hangs damp and grey; we nip out between downpours to do late things in the garden, and nip in again to light the woodburner in a most unsummerly fashion, and to work at our desks in the warm. There were predictions of parched earth and hosepipe bans here in the South West, but standing under huge wet trees, their barks black with rain, we listen to the the drip-drip from the points of the green glistening leaves, and shake out our webbed feet, and disbelieve the weather forecast.

Here are a few painterly-printerly goings-on, some new, some past, some blue...

 

This old man in a wooden boat on a green garden sea is the Ancient Mariner, painted for an exhibition at the Imagine Gallery based around Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem. I chose to paint the old man himself rather than any scenes of ghostly stormy torment. And for canvas I found a piece of Sequoia redwood amongst the offcuts from the chainsaw carving at the wood fair, which had the heart of a branch-knot like a spear running through it. How perfect, I thought, to make this into the arrow with which the Mariner shoots the Albatross; and the slice of wood was boat-shaped too. So I fitted him into the shape of it, the albatross hung around his neck, so that the redwood arrow ran through both the bird and the Mariner's own heart. 

 

 

The original painting, in oils, is for sale through the gallery now should anyone like to own it. The Mariner's right hand holds an anchor rope which winds around his boots... echoing a sad and true story in my ancestry: My great grandmother Elsie had a sweetheart when she was young whom she called "Blue" ... but she lost him away at sea - he was drowned when his foot got caught in the anchor rope, and she never really forgot him. I still have a tiny elephant made of ivory which belonged to her, into its flank she scratched his name.

And talking of the Imagine Gallery, I'm mighty pleased to announce that there's a limited edition (of 33!) of fine quality giclée prints of a few of my works available for sale there now too... they're hanging handsomely framed on the gallery walls, and the paper and print quality is so good, even I could hardly tell they weren't originals!

 

 

At the moment prints have been made of Baba Yaga, Snowflight Under the Seasky, Anja in the Horse Chestnut, A Girl Mad As Birds, Father Christmas and The Goods & Chattels Man, and they've all been hand embellished (i.e. signed, titled and numbered) by me. This edition of fine prints is all roughly at the size the originals were painted, which in the case of Anja in the Horse Chestnut means almost A1.

I also intend to start selling smaller giclée prints through my etsy shop soon for folks who would like a posher and more knobbly paper quality. Any recommendations of companies who offer this print service with good results would be most welcome - I've been sending off for sample packs from various places, and can't decide.

There've been quite a number of interesting jobs over the past months... some of which I've waited for apter times to tell you about. This is one of them. Tess Giles Marshall, (a hearty cheerer for my work who has commissioned a clock from me before) asked me to paint a banner for her superb new site Pilgrim's Moon - a celebration of cronehood and all that that enfolds. It is a "countercultural path for women, ageing on their own terms" and it's gathering crones and crones-in-waiting left right and centre: Women who rage against the madness of trying to look younger as they age, women who are interested in the wisdom-knots and fascinations that greater numbers of years bring them, and best of all, women who have chosen to take back demeaning old-women words - crone, hag, harridan, witch - and reclaim them for the power-words they are.

These are pictures of the painting in progress - from pencil beginnings to watercolour end. A small band of motley pilgrims make their way from one village to the next under the blue of a wide wild white moon and the strains of a fiddle tune along the way. Do go and sit round the fire that Tess is building...

  

And the last painting in today's gallery was another commemoration of a loss... this one was commissioned by Janey to celebrate the life and mourn the loss of a cat she loved for many years.

As with all commissions involving people, it isn't a portrait of either Janey or her cat, but rather a painting of her sadness and of a girl and a cat that might be Janey or someone else. I rather liked it in its blue circular simplicity. The original hangs on her wall in Australia now, but you can buy prints from my shop here.

Koshka in a Blue Dress

And whilst I painted a tiny ragged moth came to rest on my thumb, and then flew off again.

I don't know whether the sun will come back again, I hope it does - we are planting vegetables, and thinking of warm evenings of summer adventure and bare feet and songs under the stars and golden picnics in August.
Even frogs like to bask from time to time don't they?

Sunrise, Moonset, Lanternlit, Rainwet

FIRST FROST after weeks of wet. And the crystal grass is pinking with the sun-up. It is beautiful and it is cold and I jump back in to light the morning fire. Our truck has moved again, though only a few feet this time. Now we are tucked behind the early cock-a-doodling chicken enclosure, protected from winter winds and our back door faces east to greet this:

Our windows see new things now, different branches from before and the sunrise shoots right through the windscreen. The round bedroom window faces west now and shows us the setting sun, though sunset is far earlier than bedtime!

Nights are noticeably long - endless dark hours seem darker when your evenings are lit by lamplight. If you wander out in the field after dark, the crisp moon nights are clear and cold and lit just enough to see where to put your feet. The grass is wet and there are sounds of roosting birds rearranging themselves in the hedgerow, a knotted layer of blackness in the black. When the moon is up behind the bare night tree bones all you can see of our house are a few orange lantern spots in the distance.

In these last few weeks I have been to see my family again. In London we saw some wonderful works of art. The Sacred Made Real exhibition at the National Gallery is a rare and unique opportunity to see seventeenth century Spanish devotional painted woodcarvings of exquisite quality. Many of them are lifesize and imposing in their realism, and yet somehow more than real. There is blood and bruising, ivory teeth, glass eyes and horn fingernails. This figure of the dead Christ is by Gregorio Fernández:

These figures are still in use today in religious processions in Spain, they are kissed and revered.

The photos can in no way portray the powerful presence of this beautiful work.

We also went to an art and antiques fair, and saw (amongst all the nasty chintz and china and polished veneer) a stall of Russian icons. Hanging all together like this they were beautiful. A patchwork of wonderful painting. And, I noticed, all in my favourite ochre-red-olive Rima-palette.

All together these artworks were a triumph of painting on wood. But the Spanish carvings and the Russian icons also had in common that element of devotion to the object itself in some way. I think that artists over the centuries who have made with their hands and their souls objects that are beautiful, are intercessors, portrayers of the inexplicable wonder of life or the divine or whatever you choose to call it. And in seeing these beautiful objects, these sights that delight the eye, some transformation takes place within you, because of what the artist was feeling whilst creating. Often I am asked to explain my paintings, which seems to me a slightly ridiculous request. As a visual expression, a work of art should need no explanation in another medium (words) I think. Of course it is interesting to learn of the stories behind paintings, but for a work of art to be utterly dead to you until you read an essay explaining the underlying idea, is failure.

Philosopher Roger Scruton delved into this further the other day, in his excellent programme Why Beauty Matters. It is about time someone pointed out that the Emperor that is conceptual art has no clothes on.

I returned to Devon on train tracks flanked on either side by lakes that were once farms. All over England the rain has fallen and fallen and rivers have burst their banks. Luckily we are parked on top of a hill, but the river Teign which we must cross to walk to town is certainly full and ferocious. The clouds have been passing over and over, rain storms then a brief sunny respite, then rain again. Everywhere is wet and constant rivulets run down all the lanes' gutters.

The sunlit interludes make the roads and the hedges sparkle, and birds busy themselves before winter. But there is always a leaden cloud in inky sky bringing up the rear.

While I was away, Tui had been making beautiful cupboards again. This delightful thing is a shelf for all those bits of paper that you write things on and put down somewhere! And it's for books that are left on corners and road maps and leaflets and thesauruses (thesauri?). It is made from an old piece of wood that was something else, and the broken paint surface makes it look like an antique piece of folk art I think. Here it is by day:

And perhaps you can spot it here below by night, amid the glow of an amber evening. An evening for heating bath water on the fire, for crocheting next to a candle, and for reading books with a horlicks.

I have been painting snowy paintings for winter, which I shall show you soon. Meantime, I am selling pictures at the Chagford ChristMART tomorrow, Saturday 5th December in the Jubilee Hall from 9am - 1pm. I shall be in excellent artistic company, and there'll be mulled wine too.

May your evenings be warm and lanternlit, and all England's puddles freeze in the December sun.