DREAMT ABOUT HEDGEROWS LAST NIGHT.

Lanes and Stiles to explore

We have landed in Cricklade, Wiltshire.  

A delightful place full of equally delightful people. The place is a beguiling mix of Saxon walls, innumerable footpaths and small estates of homes. A neighbour pops round with tulips the day after we move in!  

Another with a bottle of wine.

There are great things waiting to be discovered, within the small housing estates and the attendant buildings and gardens, tracks that run past barns, farms and desultory chicken coops.

Vortex-like plants and hedges

 

Sprinkled around: small estates of homes

Each day I take Rosie for a walk and come back loaded with ideas and with R’s permission linger longer to make a sketch. Dreamt about hedgerows last night.

 

St Sampson’s Church Tower, a triumph of Late Perpendicular, can be seen for miles around.

 

The lanes that are vortex-like with winter branches and beside each a stream ditch or river.  

I had the studio set up two days after moving in and have even started to carve out time with charcoal and acrylic. There is much to celebrate in drawing and painting and ‘camera as sketchbook’. And approach adopted by the painter George Shaw. 

SIDE BAR 

George Shaw talks about “being a bit of a prowler” constantly touring the landscape, neglected woodlands, these wildernesses, with his camera. He admits to taking hundreds of photographs and using these and his imagination to create works that are very real very lonely and works that monumentalise every day.

Written February 2022

For more on Shaw

https://www.artnet.com/artists/george-shaw-2/

TWO VICTORIAN WELSH FANCIES

The Victorians were an industrious bunch when it came to church building and church make-overs. The architects of the period get mixed reviews. Arguably if they had not happened along many churches might be rubble now.

 

Two 'new build' churches close to Laugharne are delightful and well worth a visit. 

 

St David, Meidrim. 

A guardsman-like line of yews usher you forward to a church that is impossibly long. Or you can gain access to the church yard via a red brick church hall which the Buildings of Wales* characterised as ‘non-descript’. 

 

Inside, the Chancel was the work of  Ewan Christian. He is known for designing the National Portrait Gallery. A busy boy he carried out about 1,300 restorations and additions to churches throughout England and Wales.

 

Under escort the guardsmen yews will take you to a long and lovely church  

The Nave of St David was down to F R Kempson. Frederick Roberston Kempson (1838 – 1923)  was a Herefordshire lad who aside from Meidrim is known Herefordshire secular building designs including Hereford Library in the Venetian Gothic style.

 

St Martin & St Enfael, Merthyr.

This delicacy sits in a narrow valley with a river, the Cowin, running behind the church yard. It is gained via a single track with a farm at the end, Church Farm. 

Tip-toe to the door.. this is a delicate charm of a church.

 

The work of one man: R. K. Penson.  He was a Welsh architect and artist. Penson was county surveyor for Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire. Just up the road he designed Llandovery Town Hall

 

The day I attended 9:45am Holy Communication at St Martin  there were seven in the congregation and a a real welcome. We concluded the service with a hearty rendition of 51. Lo, he comes with clouds descending, a Wesleyan classic.

 

THANK YOU WIKIPEDIA… To whom the writer does donate.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._R._Kempson

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ewan_Christian

THE NATIONAL DISH - a poster child

 

The oft' seen poster of sea fish species

The other day we were on the beach below the quayside at seaside town New Quay in Cardiganshire, about 20 miles south of Aberystwyth. 

It was blustery although the sun shone, and it was nearing lunchtime. 

Regaining the town we  entered the wonderful Captain’s Rendezvous Fish and Chip Restaurant and enjoyed a wonderful meal. The management even provide proper fish knives.

On the wall was the oft' seen poster of sea fish species. 

Any fish and chip emporium worth its salt (sorry) has one on display. 

On Etsy and eBay they sell for a fortune. 

Going to the source, the National Federation of Fish Friers, I was able to purchase one direct. 

It came with a lovely exchange of email with the lady that runs the Training and Qualifications co-ordination. I expect it to arrive very soon and that is not too long before my next cod  and chips.

 

New Quay's quay. Above and to the right is the Captain's Rendezvous

 

‘Both Lancashire and London stake a claim to being the first to invent this famous meal – chips were a cheap, staple food of the industrial north whilst fried fish was introduced in London’s East End. In 1839 Charles Dickens referred to a “fried fish warehouse” in his novel, ‘Oliver Twist’.  Source: Historic UK  - the History and Heritage Accommodation Guide.

COMING BACK TO LIFE

Pliny the Elder tells of  Zeuxis (Greek painter, 5BC) who was keen to paint an ideal image of the human form.  To get to his idea of an ‘ideal’ subject Zeuxis convened a sort of Life Model X-Factor. Whereby he appraised the young women of Agrigentum, a city on the south coast of Sicily.  Naked they stood before Zeuxis. In the end he selected five whose features he would combine in order to paint an ideal image. This is one of the earliest mentions of life or figure drawing. By C13th the practice was established.

Figure drawing is arguably the most difficult subject an artist encounters. My endeavours,  I first  went to classes in 1986, in this are a testament to this. I resumed sessions, locally, last week. And feel the better for it.

 Life drawing is very much part of the curriculum in art schools. Some staff at some schools, infatuated with present-day ‘conceptual’ art, try all sorts of gimmicks to avoid students following established approaches to life drawing; for example the person drawing  places a piece of chalk between her or his big and second toe, and then with eyes shut (no peeking) they draw the model posed in front of the class.

 

However it is an absorbing exercise, using charcoal, ink or paint one develops an eye for shape and the interplay of light. The equivalent I always thing of a pianist practising scales.

JOY

January is the month where joy, delight and happiness is thin on the ground. Here are recent incidents creating reasons to be cheerful.

 

 

Over the New Year’s we were fortunate to stay with dear friends Mike and Kate. 

Catching up, comparing notes, sharing news and our hopes and uncertainties for the year ahead Mike said:

“Well we are people who can get joy from any life”

I rushed back to our room and wrote his thought down in my book. I have been reflecting about this idea ever since.

 

Harry Baker, an author and poet has been talking to us this week on Prayer for the Day, BBC Radio 4’s daily prayer and reflection. Each 2 minute programme brings huge happiness at the start of the day.  He signed off his January 9 broadcast with 

“Creator god, thank you for adventure. Thank you that this world is so full of wonder that a lifetime spent exploring it wouldn’t even begin to scratch the surface”.

>> Link to that broadcast https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001gwx2

 

I discovered joy in another quarter this week – Photographer Alan Burles in his Guardian article A lighter side of life – picture essay published on Monday 26 December.

 

“The first time I saw a photograph by Elliott Erwitt I fell madly in love with him. “I wasn’t only drawn to Erwitt, I quickly discovered many other amazing reportage photographers too and I now realise that one of the things that I was drawn to was that their work didn’t condemn the world, it celebrated it. “

Link to that article >> https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/dec/26/a-lighter-side-of-life-picture-essay

 

I wrote to Alan saying how much I enjoyed his article and the accompanying photographs.

He replied saying 

“I see you are an artist I can see that your art also celebrates the world” 

 

 

 

The copyrights of The Guardian newspaper, BBC and photographer Alan Burles are acknowledged and also that of dear friend Mike Colling.

SNOW GOOSE

At the end of a nine mile track off the A9 (Perth - Inverness road) is Bruar Lodge on the Atholl estate. Surrounded by high hills and bracing stretches of moorland this landscape that changes with the light, time of day and the weather. Siân and I were the guests of dear friends Kate and Mike. Arriving in good time on the 29^th we had temerity to bring our car along the track. Mistake.

As I write, some five days later we are stranded here, swaddled in high luxury and wonderful company. It is toasty warm inside the lodge, and you step outside into a country that just has to be captured on paper, even when 5 – 8 degrees below.  

 

The energy, shape, sweep and patterns of the country is captivating and so is the compulsion to draw is easy to gratify.  

 

My field kit is simple: coat, scarf, cap, boots, over trousers:    ...Plus stick sketch book and graphite stick and pen and I am off. Across the snow. Almost everywhere the sound of running water from the river or streams that pop up from nowhere. Little wind and with the sun sometimes it is quite warm.

 

Certainly being outside here is the best place to make drawings and the ambient temperature ensure every mark is quickly pressed into submission.  

What brilliant fun.

 

When will we be out of the Glen? 

Who knows. 

BARNS, FARMS AND CRUMBLING COTTAGES

I stop by them in the car, photograph and draw them.  Later paint them. Drawn to them with “the sort of compulsion that derives from their physicality rather than any associations”¹. 

 

Their meanness and implied indigence is prominent. Many are heartening neglected, ugly.

These are small scale scrawled marks on the landscape. Satisfying and enduring, preserved for function or former utility.

Another drive by painting: Llanygnog

 

Their composition is stone, breeze block, rusting corrugated tin.

Some have modern olive green steel roofs, a concession to trying to blend in. Windows without glass slowly shedding their paint. 

 

Close by an obligatory shipping container is pressed into service for who knows what.

On the road to St Clears: Sheds nestle next to a caravan

 

Dereliction in these parts means two of most things, at least: cars up on bricks, corrugated sheets, plastic buckets, wire, fencing posts, tyres (lots of). Close by half a car, three-quarters of a car, a shed a hutch, more posts. All subdued by grass, ivy, creepers and old man's beard. 

 

Oil drums (colours various) and the nearby gate is secured by blue bailer twine, acting as both hinge and latch.

 

Colour has a vital part to play in this agricultural tableaux. 

Every shade of grey you could mix, 

for the stone, concrete and skies overhead. 

Add Burnt Sienna for the rust, 

Turquoise or electric blue in the plastic detritus that on the ground in front. 

Lemon Yellow (hose pipes) 

Cadmium Orange (baler twine).

Lichen: shades from dark Hookers Green to the palest blue or a watery mustard yellow.

 
Late December Afternoon -  Brook Farm nr. Pendine

 

Trashtische?

These buildings and their grounds are visually pungent. More satisfying than the mollycoddled  rural museum heritage-experience with entry fees and overgrown with signage.

 

¹  Jonathan Meades from Pedro and Ricky Come Again Unbound Books 2021

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Isolated glory: A barn near St Davids, Pembrokeshire