Sunday 28 March 2010

Sand and Sea

You take a moment in time
capture it;
then watch and wait
and see the scene around you
transform from sea to sand
and back again.

The light changes,
shafts of sunlight fall on rocks,
famous for a moment.

The horizon fades
until it's impossible to see
where the sea ends and the sky begins.

Then you seek
to put all of that into paint;
that movement
and that stillness.

I have posted here some paintings of Old Grimsby Bay on Tresco, one of the Scilly Isles. As with almost everywhere else I have painted I have run along the beach, swum in the sea, dug huge holes in the sand and watched the rush of the tide suddenly filling them with water. And there was one amazing picnic of wine and cheese and fruit and chocolate [very good chocolate] as the sun set and the heat faded. It was one of those [all too often] moments when I, wearing only shorts and T shirt, was revelling in the glory of the sunset and Jane was just shivering in the cold despite her multiple layers!




After Alnmouth any painting or sculpture in any church or chapel in the world, will seem almost mundane. You look down through the east window to the shifting sands of the estuary of the river Aln. It's not the safest of places, quite apart from the days when you couldn't move for the Jellyfish the tides came in fast, seriously fast, although not as fast at those at Traeth Mawr. I have walked below Portmerion and not had time to take off my walking boots, or put on my wellies [depending on need] before the water caught up with me. At low tide you can cross the river, but it's all too easy to get swept out, rather like Bossington [a shingle ridge rather than an estuary] where you can swim but need to swim continually west to avoid being swept east onto the rocks Hurlstone point. [H+S advice: don't swim in any of the places I do!] Yet Alnmouth is different from so many other estuaries, and the view out to Coquet Island is one that I have painted again and again and can still see.

Tuesday 23 March 2010

Cnicht

It is a mountain that has fascinated me throughout my life. It's neither very high, nor remote, nor hard to climb - I can be up and down in just over an hour, but it gives the lie to the idea that a mountain cannot be a mountain unless it is over 3000' or 1000m tall [or whatever arbitrary height you determine]. Some even call it the Welsh Matterhorn; although that seems too ambitious and superlative even for me. Yet Cnicht is without doubt spectacular. It's a great climb; the gentle grass ridge, the more exposed rocky one and the final scramble to the summit from which you can see amazing views down to Porthmadoc, the Traeth Mawr and Moel y Gest; and turning away from the sea over to the distant heights of Snowdon and up to the dark ridge of Moelwyn. Yet alongside climbing it I also love painting and photographing it and have down so many times. Here are a few of the paintings and a sketch [photos will come in a seperate post].




Thursday 18 March 2010

A terminal case?

I'm not entirely sure where I've been these past fifteen or so years [working too hard?], or how I've managed to miss out out on Bill Bryson's 'Notes from a small island' but anyway I've finally caught up with this and loads of other books - one of the great things about not working is the chance to read, and paint and garden and cook... the list goes on.

I was told to stop reading Bryson in bed because, although I didn't emit any of the loud snorts that one of the reviews promised, I couldn't stop myself, and the whole room, shaking with silent laughter.

There's a wonderful quote [among many] on architecture and in his chapter on Oxford he writes of all the beautiful buildings created throughout the ages, so why don't we build an ugly one now... I'd kind of assumed that bad building was inevitable. but I'm thinking again and looking at streetscapes anew and longing for a bulldozer, and which one we can use as a prison for the architects.

He also writes of the two kinds of walkers, those who walk to the pub and [hopefully] stagger back, and those with more serious intent who dress up in special clothes and go out whatever the weather. Which reminds me of the time we headed off on the Watkin Path up Snowdon at 7am in thick cloud and rain and I kept on saying, 'We might rise above the cloud into the sun, it's happened before.' [Another day when I wasn't the most popular man in town - because the cloud decided to stick around.] Then Bryson writes of the breed of walkers who have the condition in a terminal form, those who wear shorts whatever the weather; and as someone who wears shorts even when I walk and run in the snow [or as pictured in the cloud on Crib Goch] I wonder how much longer I have... Answers on a postcard or here



Monday 15 March 2010

Fires and gardens

The last few days have seen me, among other things:
  • clinging on for dear life, half way down a cliff on the edge of an island cutting grass [all of this masquerades as a part of our garden [which was built by a man who seriously liked his digger and left two steep 'islands' on each side of the drive.

  • cooking tea on the fire for the first time in this house. It wasn't quite like the Parc fire [pictured] and the cast iron, so heavy that you can barely lift it, lethal weapon style, frying pan, with which you can cook for 10 [also pictured], but it was fun and its great having a real fire in the house.

  • liberating kindling and fallen branches from Kingscliffe Woods for the said fire.

  • putting up the zip wire AKA death slide and then falling off it as the wire breaks - I'm now on the hunt for 20m of replacement cable.

  • setting up the rest of the adventure playground in the garden and the swings on the apple tree.

  • leading the Mothering Sunday service in a packed and wonderfully friendly and responsive St Mary's - and managing to get the radio microphones working all of 3 minutes before the service started.

  • running 8.25 miles at 7.30mins a mile - I'm usually on 8min miles when I'm running on my own, but the Quantock Harriers speed me up.

  • cutting up some toffee brownies that were so chewy as to be all but inedible into very very small pieces and then putting them into my latest batch of ice cream, where they work well. I guess that there's a reason why most people make chocolate brownies and no one else has done toffee ones.

It's been a good few days. I now need to return to work and a scary 'to do' list. Painting, admin, training, sawing wood and exploring something that might make some real money - it's amazing how easy it is to fill a very good life with loads of interesting and valuable stuff, none of which earns me any money at all.


Sunday 14 March 2010

Stoles

Here are the stoles! They are made of cotton and sewn by a friend in Somerset. I then take them and paint them in oils. All the designs are inspired by the created world around us. I do mean created rather than natural, partly because so much of our world, even in the wildest of places, has been heavily influenced by humanity; and partly because there is amazing beauty in what we have created, most of the time. I paint outside, or at least in our conservatory with the door wide open, not least because turpentine makes my head explode, which doesn't have the greatest effect on the design.

They are painted [loosely] in the four liturgical colours - although it has been commented that one of mine could cover all four seasons of the year. The colours and seasons are:

White/Gold for Christmas, Easter, Baptisms, Weddings and other celebrations.
Purple for Lent and Advent and Funerals [on the whole].
Red for Pentecost.
Green for growth, through the rest of the year.

There are particular places that are connected with particular stoles. My purple stoles will always be influenced by Dunkery Beacon [on Exmoor] while the ling heather is in full bloom. My green stoles will likewise always remind me of Parc and the Croesor valley in July.

The stoles come in the relevant lengths [depending on your height] and although there are recurring themes, some are rather more figurative, some softer, each stole is completely unique. That's about as much as I want to write, mainly because each work of art re-invents itself each time a new person looks at it. As an example, one person saw my white stole [above], inspired by the sea and sand, and saw in it stars and moon.

There is also this. Richard Hughes in his excellent forward to William Faulkner's amazing novel The Sound and the Fury writes: There is a story told of a celebrated Russian dancer, who was asked by someone what she meant by a certain dance. She answered with some exasperation, 'If I could say it in so many words, do you think I should take the very great trouble of dancing it?'

If you are interested in getting a stole please contact me and let me know what length colour and design [give or take] you would like.

Friday 12 March 2010

Trinity Returned

It was strange being back at Trinity - good to sell some stoles and be back in college - but strange; not least because it was all almost exactly the same as it was 15 years ago. I heard the same conversations in the common room about infant baptism, useless lectures [and some great ones], even more useless placements, evangelical young male students [some used to play 'Fantasy Lecturer' with points awarded for 'sound' terminology from the Faculty and double points if it arose as a result of a question] and liberal older ones, people breaking down and putting themselves back together again, by the grace of God... the list goes on. Sitting in the Dinning Room I saw the same wonderful mix of ages and races and gender, it could so easily have been fifteen years ago and I felt very welcome, Trinity is an amazing place. But the food is another thing that has also barely changed, in fact I wondered if the pasta had simply been re-heated - except for the olives, they never cooked with olives in my day!

The Carter Common Room brought back memories; especially of the time Ben and I managed to flood it out. We had decided that a late night water fight would be a really good idea, but that we should limit it to the kitchen, which worked well until we burst the water main and it rapidly spread not just to the Common Room [on the 1st floor] but down the stair well. Which was also OK [and we got all the water out by about 3 am] until the water got into the electrics and set off the fire alarm at 5am, and then again at 6.30am!

Thursday 11 March 2010

Dawn Running

There was light enough to see as I left the house at 6.04 this morning and the moon was faint. By the time I had reached the canal the sun was rising. Back home seven miles later, despite a messed up knee, it was fully day. For so many months I've been running in the dark, even in the moonlight unable to see much of the woods and fields and hills around me, or the signposts on the lanes [not that there are many of them in the Quantocks, but that's another story]. And then there are the times when in thick fog I can barely see my hands, let alone my feet.

Yet running in the pre-dawn dark is every bit as amazing as the sight of the rising sun. You can't see where you're putting your feet, you have no idea whether or when you are going to fall flat on your face, or land knee deep in half frozen water. The landmarks are completely different to those of the day and predictably hard to see, but there is a wild beauty to it and more parallels to life than I have time to bore you with.

Back home, with breakfast done and the kids off the school and playgroup I pack up and set off to Trinity to sell stoles - the first time that I've ever sold my paintings without a specific commission - far more scary than even the darkest of runs. I sold five of them and made a profit and had a very good response. I kept on being asked if I had a website, to which the answer had to be 'no, this is a first'. I website is way beyond me, but I have, assuming that this is working, managed to set up this blog [and without getting Jane to do all the techie stuff]. And in due course, hopefully, it'll have pictures of the stoles [for your information, they are long scarf type things that priests wear around their necks - and mine are painted in oils] and my other paintings, as well as assorting ramblings about the kids, Jane, running, church, politics and the rest of life.

I've just discovered how to insert a picture [I think] so here is one of Cnicht - of which I'll be writing much, much more.