By the Reedy Margins Where the Waterlilies Grow, mixed media, 25 x 28cm, May 2017

Where we live in Berlin we’re within easy reach of lots of lovely lakes for swimming and it’s one of the great pleasures of summer to swim amongst the waterlilies in the clear turquoise water. In warm weather, when there’s a full moon, we go down to swim in the Teufelssee at night which inspired this cut-out relief image I made yesterday, although there’s something rather odd going on under the water with some weird phosphorescent glow emanating from beneath the surface. This might have something to do with the fact that I started making when I go back from watching Alien:Covenant yesterday and my head was full of space horror, although I think this strange glow is something altogether less nightmarish than the Facehuggers and Neomorphs in that movie, and just some friendly will-o’-the-wisp enjoying the warm summer night……I hope!

Study for The Droods, (poem by Jeffery Beam), mixed media collage, 30 x 40 cm, 2017

Suddenly, it’s full-on summer, and it’s just glorious.  I’m not immune to the charms of a walk through drifts of red and gold fallen leaves in autumn, or the crystalline icy wonderland of a frosty morning in winter, but this weather is my favourite!

So the swooning languor of summer is infusing this collage study for an illustration project i’m working at the moment. I’m working with the wonderful American poet Jeffery Bean on illustrating his children’s poem The Droods. It’s an extremely exciting prospect for me; I think making images to go with text, both elements enhancing the other, is one of the most enthralling ideas for an artist – but also one of the most difficult!

My first sketches for this project are mainly exploring composition, and how to make a space in an image for lines of text that looks convincing and that allow words and images  to breath and collaborate on the page. Hence the space in the top part of this picture; the style may change drastically, but the way that the text fits on the page is going to be crucial for the illustration to be successful. Lots of experiments to be done!

The Droods is a children’s poem, but I find it every bit as entrancing now, as I read it in my 50s as I would have done as a kid. Reading it now, as an older person, has the marvellous effect of connecting me with my inner child again, and all the magic that seems perfectly plausible to that person! As well as the composition, this study explores the territory of doorways to different worlds; a favourite theme of mine. A trout breaks through the thin membrane that separates the water element with the air, just as the person in the poem stumbles into the Droody universe in the trees on the other side of the stream… This notion of stumbling across a doorway to a different place is so central to my memories of my childhood, of play, of daydreams and imagination. These magic worlds are usually only accessible to children, the ‘grown ups’ would never find it, they’ve lost they key.

There are some lyrics in the Pink Floyd song Comfortably Numb that sum it up perfectly for me:

‘…When I was a child

I caught a fleeting glimpse

Out of the corner of my eye

I turned to look but it was gone

I cannot put my finger on it now

The child is grown

The dream is gone…’

You lose touch with that part of yourself when you grow up at your peril, and poems like The Droods helps me reconnect.

More about this project later in the year…

Sanctuary Dawn, mixed media, 2016

The British Museum have a lovely exhibition on at the moment called Places of the mind: British watercolour landscapes 1850-1950. I spent a very pleasant evening on Friday at the Museum with my friend Harry, sitting in room 90 and enjoying the paintings and drawings whilst listening to The Halcyon Quartet playing music contemporary with the images on the wall. It’s a great idea and the BM now has a regular programme of similar musical performances linked to their exhibitions. On Friday evening the Halcyon Quartet played pieces by Gustav Holst, Sir Arthur Bliss and Ernest John Moeran. The music was heavily inspired by the British landscape and they played it beautifully.

The exhibition itself includes works by some of my favourite British artists. The title  suggests that the images we create of the landscape around us are products of our imaginations as much as the scenes we see with our eyes. The ‘spirit of place’ we try to express lurks in the deepest parts of our minds as well as in the hills and trees around us.

The unique qualities of the British landscape, its geology, weather and its history seep into our senses from a very young age I think. So it becomes a part of us; we shape it, and it shapes us in return, round and round.

I made another little maquette today too, here he is, lying in the landscape and dreaming away…

The Gate, acrylic on paper collage, 29 x 32 cm, 2017

‘I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year;

“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown”‘

I stumbled across these lines the other day and I was intrigued as they chimed with some imagery i’ve been tinkering with for a while. In 1939, King George VI quoted them in his Christmas broadcast to the British Empire. The war was just beginning and the words were intended to provide comfort and encouragement in the darkest of times. The quote, which the King used to close his speech, was from a poem called God Knows, written by Minnie Haskins and published in 1908. The poem goes on to suggest that we should trust to god when we step into uncertainty, but I think those first two lines are the most powerful, conjuring the mysterious, mythic figure standing at some eternal cosmic wheel of time. I’m drawn to gates, doorways and portals of all kinds; they beckon, entice and carry the promise of adventure, and transformation. This is perfect from Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, when Charles goes for his first lunch date with Sebastian:

‘But I was in search of love in those days, and I went full of curiosity and the faint, unrecognized apprehension that here, at last, I should find that low door in the wall, which others, I knew, had found before me, which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden, which was somewhere, not overlooked by any window, in the heart of that grey city.’

<sigh!>

The collage above is another piece of work inspired by the folly I came across in the gardens of Mount Ephraim, near Faversham, some time ago. It’s a doorway with no purpose, so walking through it can mean anything you want it to, I love it.

It’s been a busy week so not much time at the art table; the quick and dirty of collage is really useful when it’s like this. I hope the rest of the month will be quieter and I can get down to some more sustained work but for now, it’s a cut and paste job, in fact I haven’t even got round to sticking this one down yet…

Starsailor study, mixed media, 17 x 27 cm, 2017 

Using the box frame again that I found last week, this time for experimenting with a maquette  and various bioluminescent creatures from the sea. I don’t think I’ve ever really seen bioluminescence in the sea properly, and it’s one of those things, like seeing the northern lights, that’s on my wish list.

Jim Lovell, astronaut on the Apollo 13 mission, tells a great story about actually navigating using bioluminescence. When he was a navy pilot he  was flying out at sea one night when his navigation systems failed. He had to find his way back to his aircraft carrier or he would perish. He turned his cabin lights off and followed the glowing trail left by bioluminescent algae, churned up by the ship’s wake and found his way back. 

There’s all kinds of ways to find your way through life, using your head, using your heart, GPS or, occasionally, perhaps, by consulting glowing starfish or squid. 

I’ll make some bigger pieces once I find the right box frame but these experiments are also useful for planning new paintings. 

Finally mister sailor man and his creatures relax after the photoshoot….

Towards the Sunshine, mixed media, 17 x 27 cm, 2017

Clearing out a cluttered corner in our workspace this weekend I came across an old box frame I must have bought a couple of years ago and forgotten about. I’ve been wanting to try some diaramas and 3D work in frames for a while so this is an experiment. It’s turned out rather clunky but I can see potential in this format and I’m looking for some more frames to really push things further and do some a series of work. I did enjoy using some colour too, although it doesn’t come naturally, I’m much more in my comfort zone with monochrome ! 

I’ve mentioned the gardens at Mount Ephraim on this blog before; they’re just outside Faversham, a few miles from Whitstable where I live in the U.K. Overlooking the wonderful Miz Maze (a beautiful labyrinth planted with tall grasses and perennials) on the edge of some lovely mature woodland, is a delightful folly which inspired this little diorama in the box frame. It takes the form of an arch and doorway, leading from nowhere in particular and going to nowhere in particular. I love the fact that it has a door that you can open and close, as if you were going from one room to another. The arch above the door has a panel with the following inscription:

Keep your face always

Towards the sunshine

And the shadows will 

Fall behind you

I’ve carried these words with me ever since I read them and stepped through that doorway over six years ago. It doesn’t deny the shadows – life isn’t all sunshine as we know – but it does point us in the right direction, and urges us not to let the shadows overwhelm us. If you approach the door from the woods you step through the arch, out from the shadows of the tress and emerge into the sunlight of the Miz Maze, it’s delightful. 

I’m looking forward to more visits to Mount Ephraim and its wonderful gardens this year 😊