Forest Floor 1 – Brambles and Moss, acrylic on panel, 40 x 50 cm, 2020

There are lots of woods and forests around Berlin, including some very old Beech forests with enormous trees and dark, mysterious shadows. But the small things on the forest floor also catch my eye sometimes.

I remember once when I was on holiday on the island of Harris in the Hebrides and we were walking through an area of Machair, or low lying grassland along the coast. As I walked, I noticed there were several layers of vegetation, and that below each layer was another, smaller layer of finer, more delicate plants. I couldn’t believe the diversity of plant life there, in what seemed to me, quite a tough environment, it was a wonderful place.

So I like to paint what’s on the ground, it’s full of life, seething away, rotting down the old to replenish the soil and generate new growth.

As we’re not going away on holiday this summer, well at least not till later in the summer, depending on how things go with travel restrictions etc., I’m getting out and about more locally and discovering the woods and lakes around Berlin. You can’t beat the British countryside, in my opinion, but there are some wonderful places within an hour of the city here, with lots of inspiration for painting 🙂