A DIARY IN SKETCH

when patterns repeat

ONE enlightening thing about living in a field is witnessing spring unfold so incrementally, like watching the seconds tick on a clock.

The longer we live in a landscape the more familiar the changes are and when we come to expect them. I start looking for wood anenomes and then, that day, I spot the first flower. Or when I’m wondering how long til the hawthorn blossom, I imagine it and then I see it. It’s a comfort to behold and also a polite, candid reminder of our place on this earth. *

The last few years, I have used notebooks as sketch diaries. The input is pretty irregular so that I don’t feel contained (being locked into systems is something I’ve learned I like to avoid, good or bad). I date the drawing, write a little line or a title according to what the subject is and a little on the feeling of that day. A visual record for nature’s joyful happenings, and mixed internal mutterings too. A secret letter between me and the daffodil.

It’s grounding to look back on years passed, almost by the day, and appreciate when patterns repeat right in front of me - listen to Laura Marling’s Patterns in Repeat while you read this. I now understand the importance of this analogue record and the spark that lights up my brain when pencil hits page; something I really really need. A trick to centring my skittish thoughts, quieting the noise or picking it apart, and beginning a work process. An instantaneous sketch often inspires a more polished and permanent piece; that’s a lovely next step but nothing quite compares to the moment it was bottled.

* Sara Teasdale writes a poignant poem, There Will Come Soft Rains, about the unwavering progression of spring in spite of war. It’s beautiful, melancholy, and all too true.

CONJURING THE SEA

willing into being

I LOVE THE IDEA OF WISHFUL THINKING. Willing things into being, hopeful imagining and manifesting.

To conjure, I think, can be as simple as creating list of hopes and wondering what life would look like if they materialised. Positive thinking? And whether or not the hopes happen, they form a focus, draw out patterns, awaken the senses. Divert thoughts from gloom.

Not sure who of you is watching Small Prophets - possibly the most heartwarming telly there is - but there’s a quietness and care and sweet longing about the protagonist’s phrophesising that makes you want to believe good things can come true if you think hard enough about them (and that it’s not just your instagram listening).

In November I wrote in my notebook (a little pink leatherbound one dedicated to writing down lists of small good things to boost mood) a promise to spend more time by the sea, picturing whimsical painting from a wind-beaten hut where all I could see was coast, sleeping deeply, collecting fossils, following the tides.

As my beloved island family sent photos of home, other creative lures for sea whistled at me. I’d read about the winter residency at Northumberland’s The Old School Gallery looking over Alnmouth Bay in a shoreside cabin, and watched as friend Kristin Perers sewed together a patchwork quilt with tones of the Suffolk seaside pallette. I pined to sign up to the Molly Martin x Kindred House Turner and Dreamlands drawing retreat (next month) but leafed through my Turner’s Skies Sketchbookinstead, painting secret coves and moody sky from memory, dreaming of dark indigo sea against black rusty rocks.

It’s not hard to imagine how eagerly I leapt at the chance to help on my friend Naomi’s yoga retreat at Tresillian House in Cornwall in January. Cooked, sketched, stretched, breathed in some salty air. Conversations returned to the love of the sea with those who love it too, some content to shell-seek while others bravely dive into the wintry waves.

A message came through while I was there (sadly not via a bottle on the beach) from 500 miles further up the coast from my coveted The Old School Gallery, with an invitation to include some larger landscapes in their programme this year. The exact subject of my first line of manifest scribbled in my notebook. Within minutes I replied ‘I’ve never wanted to say yes to a request more! Yes please’.

I like to believe it’s magic connection at play, but whatever it is, it’s a delicious excuse to make art for a project with the knowledge that I’d be flung a little closer to the North Sea, exactly as I’d dreamt. Coming soon.

Tides – Mary Oliver

Every day the sea

blue gray green lavender

pulls away leaving the harbor's

dark-cobbled undercoat

slick and rutted and worm-riddled, the gulls

walk there among old whalebones, the white

spines of fish blink from the strandy stew

as the hours tick over; and then

far out the faint, sheer

line turns, rustling over the slack,

the outer bars, over the green-furled flats, over

the clam beds, slippery logs,

barnacle-studded stones, dragging

the shining sheets forward, deepening,

pushing, wreathing together

wave and seaweed, their piled curvatures

spilling over themselves, lapping

blue gray green lavender, never

resting, not ever but fashioning shore,

continent, everything.

And here you may find me

on almost any morning

walking along the shore so

light-footed so casual.

Oliver, Mary. Devotions. Penguin Press, NY: 2017. (pg. 52)

HELLEBORE FOR HOPE

ON SUNDAY 8TH FEBRUARY at 10am, new artworks centred around the hellebore will be available to buy. Please reply to this email if you’d like to receive a password to preview all work just before it launches. Thank you.

For now, a poem…

Hellebore

For hope

I watch you

your knowing,

giving from wet soil lifting

up then suspended turned to ground.

Deep edges unfurl, desire for a winter companion

but strong enough alone.

It’s as though grey is your match,

the endless days of mist your comfort.

Cold holds you

one flower picked is its hour, fleeting.

THE WORLD AS A PATCHWORK QUILT

thick mist & hellebores

I’ve been inspired by my new Paul Klee book which I snapped up, secondhand, from a window in town. The plates in the book are all so different; in some you have paintings like palette swatches, the brighter the colours the more central on the canvas (I want to do a weather diary like this though more thoughts on that later) and, in others, naively sketched stars poke through alongside cone shapes, cylinders, inky loosely-drawn structures. Klee seems free to alter, regularly changing his way of painting, which I love. His eye for colour has had me frenzied, my view now a world as a patchwork quilt with real-time colour ways.

Pushing aside the usual harsh January to-dos there’s plenty, when I think about it, that’s been catching me lately. Line sketches by Van Gogh, busy but simple, almost moving on the page. I’ve been listening to The Telepathy Tapes. Visceral dreams about the sea and old friends I haven’t seen for years. I’m new to playing the guitar and learning with absolute delight how to finger-pick. A Long Winter by Colm Tobin is my perfect size of novel. There are seeds that need sowing from Alma Proust with an intention to have a flower-cloud in my garden this summer. I’m cutting and making subjects of hellebores, the only things flowering in the garden; their dark rusty petals visible through thick mist. They seem to be surviving for a long while out of water in my freezing studio. Paint is mapping its way onto larger canvases. Whispers to march up steep hills along to playlists sent by friends. Hours of this perma-mist brings mystery from a blanket grey, reddish trees and lichen barely visible but close up they emerge from dark edges to illuminate the centre of my view.

Jubilance, dark edges,

OPEN.

hop.

Awake

dark edges

SLACK

Deep purple, bright violet

rush under

Mist and mist

Linen

WINTER SUN

and daily sketches

Soft Yellows

oil on panel

30 x 40 cm

MORNINGS come slowly, sneaking through a crack in the curtain. They start with a grey frost, wet glass and low mist, easing off the cool of the night.

On a clear day in November, when I make my coffee in the kitchen, I watch the sun rise over the wood, framed by the window, and it transforms all from grey to pink and yellow. Almost too blinding to confront head on and strong enough to bring too much truth to our dusty worktops.

My palette is butter, rust again and soft, blushing pink. This time last year I was focused so much of the idea of dusk that I went dark, deep into shadows and tree shapes and moon reflection. This time it’s an exploration of winter daylight, whatever sliver of it is given. Even on grey, damp days these colours are carrying me through.

I’ll start my daily winter paintings soon, sketching in oil or whatever I have to hand. Maybe it’ll be these soft, strong, sometimes harsh yellows that will radiate.

ARTISTS, MAKERS, FRIENDS

and the treasure in colour

Smooth Things Over

oil on canvas

20 × 14cm

I linger in my sketchbook, thinking and writing about colour shifts. Trying to describe in words and brushstrokes that moment when, without warning, sunlight shifts the scene.

Sun moves through dense cloud, pushed by a strong wind, and radiates onto a once-shaded part of your view, whether cityscape or field or sea or fruit bowl. The space is illuminated, its colour changed completely. But it remains in the same tone, in total harmony to what was right there.

It wakes me up, forces me to notice everything in front.

I love that moment just before movement. And with it, the object that’s being changed. Transience, an explosion of colour. It forces my paint palette to get richer. Less grey, more gold. A treasure for days when the light’s lost early.

-

Sliding Water opens its doors this week for Artists, Makers, Friends. You’ll find work by a small collection of local makers selling in aid of York Art Gallery, staged by The Friends of York Art gallery. I have 6 works on the walls all following this feeling of shift and colour and revelation. Will you come?

I’ll be dropping into the gallery at various points but on Thursday 13th November at 2pm I’ll come to host a Meet the Artist session, for your questions and for conversations. We can talk about the colours that lift you and move you. You can book tickets here for that and for other artists too.

Palette: dirty rose, deep soil, acid yellow, lilac, midnight blue, rust

Illusion of Motion

oil on board

52cm x 42cm

A LOVE LETTER

New works on paper. 

Lunar Eclipse

oil pastel on khadi paper

10 x 15cm

SUNBEDS teetering on stone; indents of a could-be prehistoric spine in the rock, or pressed fingerprints, carved out for contemplation.

Storms are due but for now there’s sun, cloud too, and waves lapping on the rocks below. A far off sail. We wear bold colours via our swimsuits, embracing the strength of our bodies a decade into motherhood, embracing the space and quiet and ability to read and create. Awaiting the lunar eclipse.

Plants emerging from hard ground; succulents, green and woody reaching for salty air. Light and breath we search for.

Palette: Ultramarine, pale lichen, luminous ochre, metal, rust, pink stone, slate, washed linen, cerulean. Peach, real peach. White from ricotta and honey like linseed oil.