Rowley Gallery Blog
Hatfield Park in Hertfordshire (not to be confused with its namesake Hatfield Forest in Essex) is home to an extraordinary number of venerable old oak trees, many of them believed to be over 1200 years old. A walk around the park might be described as a tour of the Stations of the Oak. Continue reading “Elizabethan Oaks”
Half Way – Port Meadow project with David Attwooll.
Fog. Snow. Flood. Wind. Rain. We have been through all. It makes outside work difficult if not impossible. Pen clogs with ice. Watercolour freezes and gets spattered with rain. Continue reading “Half Way”
This is a short film by Sarah Thomas. It was made in Iceland, the music improvised in an empty fish oil tank at an abandoned herring factory. It is the winner of the Penguin Books Wayfarer competition. As a result, Sarah will spend the next two months travelling around Britain, recording her experiences for A Journey On Foot. She has also written Journeys In Between, both blogs worth a look, both distinguished by captivating photos and enthralling stories.
I’m getting behind. Too many posts and not enough time. This one’s long overdue. We walked this way a month ago or more. It was another suggestion from Christopher Somerville. We printed out the map and the directions only to find when we arrived in Fyfield that I’d left the map at home. The directions were good but occasionally a map would have clarified things. It led to a few differences of opinion and a few trial and error wrong turns and turnarounds. 7½ miles turned out to be more like 10. Continue reading “The Fields Of Fyfield”
If I could take off for 24 hours I think I’d like to walk on Alderney, stepping from stone to stone of Andy Goldsworthy’s recent installation of rammed earth boulders positioned around the island. I read about it at The Island Review; please take a look, it’s a great website, and also see Alderney Stones on Andy Goldsworthy’s own website, and Sticks & Stones by Kevin Rushby at The Guardian. Further information can be found at Art & Islands Foundation. And what a perfect cow photo this is!
On the Spring Bank Holiday weekend, aka Whitsun Bank Holiday or maybe even Whitsuntide, we went down to Kew. It was a slow journey. There was a UEFA Cup Final at Wembley that evening and a Premiership Rugby Final at Twickenham that afternoon, there were roadworks in Ealing and there was a continuous traffic jam around the North Circular. There was a long queue to Kew. By the time we arrived I was stir crazy. Once inside the gates I was snap happy. The resulting photostream begins with eucalyptus, smooth-skinned and animal-like with aromatic blade-shaped leaves. Continue reading “Kew Gardens”
Herewith a message from Robert Macfarlane:
I’ve come to realise, in the eight years since I first wrote about holloways, that many people share my fascination with these sunken lanes, which have been harrowed down into the landscape by the passage of feet and rainwater (and sometimes 4x4s…). People have sent me photographs of the holloways they know, the paintings and sketches they have made of them, maps with their locations indicated, or the stories, memories and folklore they associate with them. Continue reading “Flickr: Holloway”
This walk begins where In Epping Forest ended. Butlers Retreat turned out to be the perfect place for breakfast, with possibly the best coffee in Essex. It kick started our trip up to Saffron Walden. Along the way we passed huge fields of cultivated rapeseed and roadside banks of wild cowslips, a yellow landscape that was once purple with crocus grown for their precious saffron. Continue reading “From Saffron Walden”
Don’t Spill The Milk! is a new book by Stephen Davies and Christopher Corr, just published by Andersen Press. It’s their second collaboration and hopefully it will be just as successful as their first, The Goggle-Eyed Goats, which was launched last year at The Rowley Gallery. Continue reading “Don’t Spill The Milk!”
On May Day, a public holiday given over to celebrations of fertility we went looking for maypoles and morris dancers. We went out to Epping Forest and parked by Queen Elizabeth’s Hunting Lodge. Straightaway, even before leaving the car, there were grand old characterful trees springing back into life, bursting with new born leaves. Maypoles and morris dancers proved more elusive. Continue reading “In Epping Forest”