Reculver

A few months ago I booked a small gallery space for the middle of February at the Horsebridge Centre in Whistable, so it’s time to get cracking and produce some more work. Luckily, it’s only a small space, with enough room for about 10 small paintings which I think I can get together. The general theme of the exhibition is water in the landscape – there’s been a bit too much of that recently here in the UK, hope everybody reading this has not been affected by the flooding and general wind and wuthering. A February show at the Horsebridge seems to becoming a regular fixture for me and I like to include one or two images with a local Kent coast flavour, hence the Reculver collage. I lived in Whitstable for a couple of years and became very fond of the place so the show is also an opportunity to explore the landscape and seascape I used to enjoy so much and to catch up with old friends down in the ‘Bubble.

Sandwiched between the bustling towns of Whitstable and Herne Bay the village of Reculver is now just a scattering of houses and caravan parks although it was once a thriving and wealthy settlement. it still boasts a dramatic ruined monastery though, right on the edge of the sea. In fact it was the encroaching sea that contributed to the abandonment of the church but the two towers were saved as a navigational aid and they make a fine sight, especially when silhouetted against one of the amazing sunsets this part of the coast is famous for and that brought Turner down to paint, just a few miles further east along the coast at Margate.

Happy new year everybody, all the very, very best for 2014 x

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Thank you to everybody who dropped by Hedgecrows to have a look this year, and thank you for all the comments, especially over recent weeks after Dad passed away; you kind words really helped during some dark times.

Finally, sorry for the weird photo quality of recent images, I can’t seem to get enough good light at the moment to photograph anything – definitely time for a new scanner!

All the best,

Phil x

After the last couple of werewolf story designs my work table was littered with various monochrome textures and papers – a discarded shape on the floor suggested a winged figure so I’ve pasted it up as this Icarus image. It hasn’t photographed well in the weak wintery light of the early morning before I set off for work – I must get a scanner!

I’ve been working on this theme some more, based on the Lincolnshire folk tale about the werewolf skeleton which was unearthed at Landrick Fen by a young archaeologist called Jones. The story was recorded in 1926 by Christopher Marlowe and published in his book  Fen Country. The take describes how Jones was digging in the peat bog of the fen when he found a skeleton which appeared to have the body of a man but with a wolf’s skull. Assuming it was some kind of hoax he took the bones back to his home where he set about examining how the skeleton had been fixed together, except, of course, he couldn’t find out how they were fixed together because, eek,  it wasn’t a hoax at all!

The Werewolf of Dogdyke

Over on Clive Hicks-Jenkins’ Artlog, a new online exhibition has been announced – you can see the introduction here. I took part in the exhibition last year which was themed on alphabets and this year the challenge will be to make a puppet on the theme of folk tales, fairy tales, myths and legends. The exhibition will be curated by artist and designer Peter Slight and from recent posts on the Artlog you can see the wealth of talent that has so far thrown their hats into the ring (here and here), so it’s shaping up to be something really special already.

Clive’s Artlog is one of the great joys of the blogosphere and the online exhibitions that have appeared there over recent years have been a particular highlight. Last year the alphabet project brought  together contributors from the UK and abroad, and generated incredibly diverse and interesting work. As a contributor I found it very rewarding getting involved in a group exhibition with people from around the globe and getting stuck into a brief that took my work in directions it may never have gone otherwise; I think some of the work I did towards the end of last year for my island alphabet is the best I’ve done.

Anyway, the theme for this new exhibition is a bit more daunting as I’ve never made a puppet in my life. I’m approaching the subject rather by stealth, exploring themes and images first before I get to grips with actually trying to make anything puppet-like. As a starting point. I’ve been looking at folk stories and myths from the county of Lincolnshire where I grew up. In some ways it’s quite an unremarkable county, a bit out on a limb, with no real spectacular sights or wonders that other places can boast (with the possible exception of Lincoln Cathedral, towering majestically on the tip of the hill overlooking the city). It’s charms can take some discovering but they are there if you look hard enough. One of it’s moods that I appreciate is a kind of ancient gothic gloom which seems to flourish in the emptiness of the place, and the fact that there seem to be good number of ruins and run down old country estates dotted about. One of the better known Lincolnshire folk takes tells the story of a werewolf skeleton that was dug up on an archaeological dig at Landrick Fen near the aptly named Dogdyke. I’ve illustrated the point where the skeleton, taken from the ground and back to the archaeologist’s home, comes back to life to terrify the life out of him.

If you want to get involved you’ll find loads of information and inspiration from Clive if you browse back through the last few months’ posts on the Artlog as Clive has been exploring puppets and puppet-making on his blog for some time. There was in fact a puppet week at the Artlog back in July which certainly whet my appetite for all things puppet.

The Green King

This morning I wanted to use up some scraps or collage paper i made yesterday for the green castle picture so i made a green king to inhabit the place. He came into being quite quickly, with a few snips here and there, using papers I’d made for something else – not for the first time I found this a rewarding approach, more satisfying than planning something meticulously for some reason, and it’s fun!

Not quite sure where this image came from, a green castle seemed to pop out of nowhere yesterday. It might have something to do with the fact that I’ve finally got round to finishing watching Game of Thrones recently as i’ve been stuck indoors with a chest infection and my head is now full of castles, dragons, and knights in armour (that Drogo fella seems to have stuck in my head too, no idea why :-).  I think I’m also really keen to use some strong colour again; as they say in Game of Thrones, ‘winter is coming’, but I’m yearning for the spring already and some fresh greens.

The Green Castle