Learning from the past

Some light as the nights draw in

Little was visible but squares of a dusky orange red on either side of the street, where the firelight or lamplight of each cottage overflowed through the casements into the dark world without.

                     The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham

The past couple of weeks did not pan out as expected. I have barely been out drawing at all, and when I did, I struggled to settle to it. My mum was taken unexpectedly into hospital, and as she is already in poor health, and lives on the other side of the country, it proved to be an extremely stressful time. Fortunately she is now back at home and a little brighter, but as anyone with elderly parents will understand, I remain very jumpy and anxious and in dread of another phone call.

But perhaps sometimes a break away can prove to have unexpected consequences and can encourage you to follow unexpected paths, even if the cause is not what you would have wished.

As I lay awake one night, trying not to fret and trying to push dark thoughts away, my mind kept niggling at some paintings I had made over twenty years ago, and I slipped back to when I used to live in the heart of Norwich. My studio was a tiny shed at the bottom of a long cottage garden and I would paint oils of what I grew in my vegetable patch and of my evolving, beloved garden through the seasons.

The winter before I left was especially bitter. My studio became too cold to bear, and so I carried some watercolours up to my tiny bathroom, where the window overlooked the garden and rows and rows of the terraced houses, where the smoke drifted out of the brick chimneys on to a leaden sky. And so my landscape and view shifted.

I spent days endlessly painting the little boxes on the hillside, and the vast late winter skies, as the darkness drew in and the windows lit up, one by one. My colour palette changed to blues, purples and brick red and the only natural features were tiny wood pigeons that used to sit on the chimney pots. What was most interesting in retrospect was that they were not representative of the archectitecture at all, but instead were my response to it. I must have spent hours gazing out over those rooftops, a view that I loved, and that looking had seeped in and reappeared as simplified blocks of colour.

                                               How difficult it is to be simple.

Vincent Van Gogh (1853 - 1890)

I had an exhibition approaching with the Twenty Group at Norwich Castle and, instead of entering my intended work, instead I had several of these paintings hurriedly framed instead. Sadly, because of the rush to do this, I never photographed them and, as happily each one sold, I never saw them again.

But that night, as the mind can focus on the strangest things in the early hours, I would not let these images go.

The next morning I went on a hunt. I had a thought that in my studio was a folder of old work and wondered perhaps if some of them were still there? The folder was tucked by my plan chest, and covered in dust and cobwebs, but inside were half a dozen of the forgotten pictures.

They were painted in 1999, yet as soon as I saw them I was back perched in that bathroom, my foot on the radiator with my paints on a board across the bath. They were so unlike all previous work, and yet they were my paintings.

And so I have been pondering, what happened to that person who let go and painted not just what I saw, but what I felt about a place? That inexplicable shift prompted by a wintry cold snap, could I make it happen again? I find it fascinating that my mind sought these out, a place where I felt secure, of comforting, consoling images with welcoming light filled windows. I have loved painting and drawing the trees and landscape of Wortham Ling in recent months, but I have longed to move beyond the detail and observation and paint something that tells more of how I love that place.

When time is limited, it is an easy decision to draw what is there rather than take time to think about what it is that makes you want to draw it, what materials you can use to bring that about and how you can transform it into something that is your vision of it. So, while the weather bites, and darkness falls, I am going to play, see what appears and hope for more peaceful days ahead.

                            I rarely draw what I see - I draw what I feel in my body.

Barbara Hepworth (1903 - 75)

Little Boxes on the Hillside, Watercolour

Something to listen to

As night draws in so quickly now, I have chosen something to listen to that explores London as night falls. In the episode “Night Walking” , from the podcast “Inside a Mountain” by Charlie Lee Potter, we follow in the footsteps of Charles Dickens, an inveterate night walker, and Virginia Woolf, as they walk the streets of London catching glimpses of the lives behind the lit windows.

And from the city to a night walk in deep darkness in an ancient woodland in Gloucestershire. One of the weekly soundscape postcards on the Countryfile Plodcast. I confess I would be rather unnerved by walking in woodland at night, partly because I have no sense of direction and would never find my way out! But here, you can vicariously experience the sounds and wildlife in the company of Fergus Collins.

Something to read

Keeping me company on these dark evenings has been the enriching and beautifully written The Lighted Window, Evening Walks Remembered by cultural historian Peter Davidson. In each chapter he illuminates paintings and poetry, helping see afresh even the familair, as he walks through cities and rural landscapes. I especially loved the chapter “Windows in the Landscape” where he explores the work of favourite artists Samuel Palmer and Robin Tanner, who is described as drawing the image below perched on the church tower and watching the lighted windows go out one by one.

Castle Combe in Wiltshire as seen from the church tower

Robin Tanner, etching 1929, Ashmolean Museum

Thank you very much for joining me here, and for supporting my work, and I look forward to meeting again in a couple of weeks.