In Gozo last Summer I took the opportunity to walk across the top of the Azure Window to capture the view down over the rock pools and beyond to Fungus Rock in the distance. Continue reading “Azure Window”
Azure Window
Category: Places
A Short Walk With Howard Phipps
I’d been looking forward to this for years. Ever since we first had his wood engravings I’d been curious about where they came from. We usually get Howard’s prints in the post or occasionally he might bring us a few, but this time I was invited to go and collect some myself. It was an opportunity to visit his studio, to see how his wood engravings are made and also to discover the landscape that informs them. I left the A303 and followed the A30 down a dead straight Roman road to Stockbridge then along the old drover’s road towards Salisbury. I began to recognise the distinctive local features, the gentle rolling hills, the trees silhouetted against the sky, and I knew I was entering Phipps country. Continue reading “A Short Walk With Howard Phipps”
Mementi
This is the Ponte della Maddalena (Bridge of Mary Magdalene) across the Serchio river in Italy, also known as Ponte del Diavolo (Bridge of the Devil). We visited last year on our way to Lucca and I was reminded of it again recently when it appeared in Il Racconto dei Racconti (Tale of Tales), a magical film shot in spectacular locations all over Italy. It prompted me to go looking for more mementoes. Continue reading “Mementi”
Lowestoft
Ordnance Survey of Great Britain 1954, Sheet 137 – Lowestoft
(click on the image for a closer look)
A recent trip to Hastings lead to a Sunday morning treasure hunt in Roberts Rummage, a small living room piled high with loosely sorted items and belongings of past lives. My friend Christopher and I spent a couple of hours searching the stacks of china, jars of buttons and drawers of brass wear and the excitement is the unknown item you will stumble across, the joy of cleaning it up and the new life and place it will have in our lives.
I often think of the life items have had and if you could trace them back where they would take you. Amongst the old board games I discovered this map. Having grown up just outside Lowestoft I was thrilled, it felt like a gift to trace back the villages and towns I have known all my life. Continue reading “Lowestoft”
Unknown Countries
I’d not been to Hastings before. Strange to admit, especially since I lived in Maidstone for three years just 30 miles away, though that was over 40 years ago. Hastings was where John Martyn lived but, as much as I loved his music, we always by-passed the town on our way home from Brighton. Continue reading “Unknown Countries”
Downland Landscapes
Downs Study from Beachy Head
This series of landscape works has been painted entirely on location. They are a direct response to what I saw and the experience of being in the landscape. I have always worked from direct observation and never seen the point of working away from the subject matter. That is because I do not paint pictures of things, I make studies. Continue reading “Downland Landscapes”
Around Shoreham
I’d often wondered about Shoreham. It’s famous as the inspiration for many of Samuel Palmer’s bucolic paintings, but on the map it’s surrounded by motorways, an edgeland bordered by the M20, the M25 and the M26. I suppose I’d worried that it’s spell must have been broken. But then after a recent visit to Ankerwycke, also on the rim of the M25, I realised that magic can persist. Continue reading “Around Shoreham”
Otmoor
I was born just after WW2. My parents had moved to Noke when they married in the early 1940s. We lived in a tiny cottage, totally lacking modern amenities. No electricity, water from the well and an earth loo in ‘The Elm Barn’, a shed with a grand name, all set in a third of an acre of orchard. An artist’s retreat from the hurly burly of war torn London. This was my world. Apple trees to climb, a stream to splash in, and a duck pond beyond the gate where my brother and I sailed catamaran boats whittled from elder sticks. Continue reading “Otmoor”
To The Horizon
As a birthday treat Sue took me for a walk on the Dengie Peninsula on the far eastern shore of Essex. She had her eyes on the horizon. We arrived via Burnham-on-Crouch, a pretty Georgian estuary town but with the saddest fish & chips and a clown to scare the children. His car was parked next to ours. We made our escape towards Southminster, but we got ensnared by the Burnham Loop where we revolved time and again around the endless fenlands (afeared lest we contract Dengie Fever from the mosquito-infested swamps) until finally we saw the error of our ways (a misplaced signpost) and we were at last expelled to Tillingham and ultimately onwards to Bradwell-on-Sea. Continue reading “To The Horizon”
Candalla
This is the old mill at Candalla in the hills above Camaiore in northern Tuscany. I think it’s possible to rent it as a holiday home, but it’s perhaps not the most peaceful retreat. The pool attracts lots of visitors in summer, all of them keen to jump in and cool off. Continue reading “Candalla”