To The Great Tree-Loving Fraternity We Belong

AN IVY BRANCH hugs a tree with fierce love, its arms and legs making us believe it is almost a person. All over this ivy-person's body are painted people: bird-people, plant-people, animal-people, insect-people, fish-people and human-people, reaching out and loving the tree too, in the symbiotic way that forests demand of us all: we would not be here if it were not for trees, holding together the stories of our ecosystems, feeding us, housing us, giving us air to breathe, water to drink and swim in, and holding together with their roots the very earth we call our home. And yet, there is also a crack - threading through the tree into the ivy-person. How long can we hold on? The tree has been cut too, and in its beautiful, now-visible rings, we can read the words: To the great tree-loving fraternity we belong...

I have just finished painting this piece and it is already winging its way to the gallery where it will be on display from tomorrow(!) I was asked to submit a piece to the latest exhibition at Brighton's ONCA gallery (One Network for Conservation & the Arts) which is an artistic celebration of trees. The 100 Project, as it is called, will last for 100 hours, and the aim of the project is that ONCA will create two forests: one in the gallery of 100 tree-related artworks, and one outside in the London Road area of Brighton where they will plant 100 trees! The artworks are all less that 20cm square in size and will all be for sale at £100 - half the sale price going to the artist, and half toward the tree-planting. Artworks are by professional artists as well as local school children and youth groups, and the whole project is in association with the Earth Restoration Service, which seeks to rectify environmental degradation by working with small local communities to enhance the integrity of local ecosystems. Green Party MP Caroline Lucas will be opening the tree-planting event on Saturday, and the special guest at tomorrow night's opening will be a lime tree.

Inspired by this project I agreed to make a piece to go in this art-forest, and had the very piece of wood waiting to be used. This was given to me by someone who thought it reminded them of my work, and for me, the tree-huggingness of its shape begged to be made into a three dimensional painting about tree-love.

I worked fast as the deadline zoomed towards me, and gradually covered the ivy-person with smaller tree-loving people of varying species...

It became quite a thing. It is still very fresh in my creative eye, so I can't really see it now as I know I will in a few weeks, by which time it may be sold! I can see why flat paintings took off! - this was immensely fiddly to achieve, but I nevertheless enjoyed it - a combination of three and two dimensions. 

The quote, by the way, is by Henry Ward Beecher, and I found it after completing the painting because I felt it needed words too, and these seemed to sum up what I was trying to say perfectly (although I of course do not exclude any sorority in the Great Tree-Loving!)

May this painting and all its fellow art-forest works go some way to re-entwining all the tree-loving peoples with their great green-armed beloveds.

Rosehip November

SINCE THE WINDS CAME, the yellowing leaves of the year and the last apples have fallen into our gathering early dusks, and we have looked out beyond the black sky-writing of the now bare branches into the cold cold soon-come night and thought of Indoors and Fire.

We've been nearly three damp months without a usable woodburner (our only real heating), and finally finally, we have a hearth again, and we did not have to move house! It's amazing how not being able to light a fire takes the heart, in a very real sense, right out of a home. All the complexities of thatched listed buildings, landlord's house insurance, chimney regulations and suchlike, have been remedied, and the original fireplace has been uncovered from behind decades of brick and plaster. We are overjoyed with warmth!

Meanwhile, my studio has been a hive of Calendar packing. I was so pleased to have sold out within such a short space of time! Thank you folks as always for loving and supporting what I do - it makes a real and tangible difference. I have made a second order with the printers, which I will be listing for sale this coming THURSDAY NOVEMBER 21st at 8pm UK TIME (find out when that is where you are here). Be quick folks: I predict this lot will whisk off the shelves rather fast too!

Though the sunlight streams into my lovely studio, the winds also blow in through cracks between the floorboards, and so woodburner-installation shall be happening there too before long.

A painting has been birthing on the floor of my studio for some months now. It's on a large piece of oak which won't fit comfortably on my desk or drawing board, and it is almost done. I can't show you it yet, but will be sure to do so in due course. My back and knees are quite glad it's nearly finished.

In other autumnal news, those in the South West and beyond are cordially invited to come and say hello at my stall at these upcoming craft fairs this month (and snaffle the last calendars left!)...

The first will be the always cozy and convivial delight that is the South Devon Steiner School Advent Fair near Totnes on Saturday November 23rd:

The second will be a gathering of local art and craft talent on Saturday November 30th for the Chagford Winter Artisan Fayre, where you will see many wondrous creations in wood, clay, silver, pencil, paint, bronze, fabric, ink, thread, paper, wool and gem:

There have been cold, sunny November stomps on the moor, where we looked down over the valley of the river Dart, and the many beautiful ochres, umbers, ambers, rusts and browns that clothe it.

And we gloried in the low November sunlight edging the mossy moorland woods as we walked out the heavy-booted things of the year passing behind us.

I have been helping clear and prune an old overgrown local orchard where the apples are sweet and the ivy threatens to win the battle. Under the autumn crowflight, we tended trees in the smoke from an applewood fire, and learnt about which branches to cut, and which to leave to bear fruit next year. 

When the elderberries were ripe, I gathered them to make syrup - an excellent tonic for the colder months which will fight chills and ills before they get you. I followed the recipe in Roger Phillips' Wild Food. Simmer the black elderberries with sugar and cloves, then strain and bottle.

It hasn't lasted long.

And from the orchard cuttings, I rescued ripe rosehips, and bottled them dry with sugar, after making a few cuts in the skin of each hip. For this I followed the instructions in Hedgerow Medicine by Julie Bruton-Seal and Matthew Seal, but also those given by the mother of a friend from Bulgaria, who told me that they still make syrups by layering berries with sugar in a jar, and leaving them for a couple of months until the sugar and berries have turned into a syrup, and then straining and bottling. This retains far more of the goodness than the cooking method, so we shall see what emerges from the jar in the new year.

On which subject, I cannot pass by without sharing Rosehip November by Vashti Bunyan. This quiet, atmospheric song sits on an album she released in 1970 - Just Another Diamond Day - which she wrote whilst travelling in a wagon through Britain. It garnered very little initial acclaim, which caused this gentle soul to abandon her musical career entirely, until recently when after thirty years had passed and her music had gathered a cult following, she once again took up her guitar. Some people find this album a bit twee, but for me there's something essential and sparse and honest in the music and artwork that reminds me of the feeling in the fallen autumn leaves and in our innermost desires to sit on a dark evening by a log fire warming our toes and dreaming of the road ahead.

The Nisse Mother Clock

A HILL-HAG LOOKS OUT from where she crouches underneath a tree whose roots entangle her white hair. 

Amongst the roots also hide Nisse - small red-capped Norwegian gnomes, and outside beyond the hill, dusk is coming in. I can hear crows. 

The hill-hag who is older than the hill, or perhaps, even, is the hill, crouches there patiently. Her large hands tending a brew which bubbles inside a double horse-headed cauldron over an underground fire.

Only the Nisser know what aeons of ingredients the hill-hag sprinkles into the brew, but it's a time-turning concoction, and the magic is more ancient than I can say.

This is the latest Once Upon O'Clock to come from my busy paintbrushes. It was made for Alette Thorsnes in Norway who asked for a clock wound up in Norwegian folklore, old wise women, trees and Nisser, and this is what I conjured.

I was particularly pleased with this gnarled northern scene, and so decided to turn it into prints, which I don't normally do with the clocks, as I don't think they always work without their hands and numbers.

You can buy small prints of this Nisse Mother and larger archival giclée prints here, which will be joined by some other new giclée prints over the coming days, so keep your eyes open.

My clock order list is shortening slowly, but I'm still not taking on any new clock orders until all those outstanding are done, and I'll let you know here when that day comes, though at the rate I paint, by then my hair might not look dissimilar to hers...