A summer storm.

A summer storm. oil on canvas, 120x120cms

I have planted lots of trees over the years: my current garden of just over an acre has more than a hundred. Some are spaced out to fill out, some are closer to reach and create intimate, shady areas. They are not always immune to damage as sometimes the summer storms can be brief but very strong, In more exposed parts of the landscape we have seen a whole row of mature trees blown down. When I step outside of my workplace I am enfolded into a wood.

Turner was a keen fisherman and spent hours observing the weft and weave of water which memory he called upon so often to make his paintings. They were grand recreations, memory on the move, memory and observation melded into imagination. 

Writing, reading, thinking, painting and drawing can lead us into unknown places, making connections and reconnections. I did not see this storm: I was away when it happened but returned to clear away broken branches torn down with heavy, sodden foliage. The storm broke some and left others untouched. I wanted to make something that spoke to what had occurred but still had to be about paint. There are closed areas and open ones and the yellow line to the right is a reminder that the surface is just there. It is a painting after all.

Here and now

oil on canvas. 100x100cms

I admire John Constable's paintings. I have a suspicion that I have always done so. Overlooking our house from an elevated position one recent evening, I saw Golding Constable's garden, its light, its shadows; time compressed in an instant on this evening in France, in the Aveyron, on this evening in Suffolk in England. His painting an intimation of mortality, a here and now.

Lucien Freud once thought The Hay Wain silly but he changed his mind. A few years ago I went to see the Constable show at the V&A. I felt that I knew his paintings: I was wrong. I do remember thinking that they should be outside in the light and the air, in the heat and the rain so that those connections could be made and felt. Weather and noise. One of the things that interests me is that we do not think of noise in these landscapes and yet they would have been noisy places with people calling to one another, shouting; whistling; singing. I am aware of it though much reduced in my own surroundings: voices in the distances chain saw; a tractor; the cry of buzzards; kestrels; a Golden Oriole.

Time passing, one day to the next, one century to another. Here and now, in this moment and in that.

Something shared.

I have been reading from essays by Rackstraw Downes and thought to share this part: he talks about Joe Fiore, who, before going out to paint, would immerse himself in reading. Stendhal, whilst writing his The Charterhouse of Palma, would read from the Civil Code. I was pleased to come across this as a shared activity, settling the mind before committing oneself whatever might be the task to be engaged with.