Daisy, daisy…
Daisy, Daisy,
Give me your answer, do!
I’m half crazy,
All for the love of you!
written by Harry Dacre in 1892
The oxeye daisies have grown high. Unlike the common daisy which shrinks in a lawn, oxeye stands tall and proud and springs up as soon as the grass remains unmown. Much as the American colonies emerged standing proud after proclaiming ‘no taxation without representation’, the English oxeye daisy springs up as soon as lawn mowers stop. It really ought to be our English flower symbol, showing how the English will flourish without the foot of taxation on their throat.
The daisies are tall enough that I can lie on the grass and look into the patch. I watch a bee walk between the stems to take pollen from the bright yellow birdsfoot trefoil beneath, a chalk land native that emerges if the grasses are left undisturbed. In my mind an adventure story forms about a brave and bold bee exploring the daisy forest, but it’s been done already.
The trefoil carpet spreads like globs of liquid gold beneath the daisies. Their gold attracts brown tailed bees. Different bees work on different plants – white tails on the lavender, small bees on the ‘hot lips’, and redtails on the daisies. The grubs of lady birds compete with the invading harlequin ladybird grubs – it’s all happening in a layered conflict under the beauty we see, a bit like English society now.
So maybe the story is about this ageing artist. Constrained by age and infirmity of body to exploring visually his garden as Monet did on a larger scale, using the garden imagery to create visual analogies of society, much as his walks in Slaters footsteps used the decay of coastal defences as a mirror image of the decay of Britains end of Empire days. Did you know the willows in Monets paintings reflect the willows symbolising mourning in French graveyards, reflecting the WW1 family sacrifices his gift of them to the French state marked?
My recording of the beauty of the decay in the coastal works has continued uninterrupted for the dozen or more years I’ve been living here, only now becoming secondary to the garden again as mobility decreases. The daisies and trefoil spring from roots hidden beneath the surface, only pushing forth when the mowers pass on, a resilient part of the native downland vegetation. Maybe the English will rise again like the oxeye daisies when the oppression by the ignorant is no longer present.
I continue to record with my camera, develop the analogous stories through pictures. The art of reading pictures is dying. Many listen to the greats like Hockney talking about reverse perspective and are uncomprehending. Goethe’s treatise on colour and its emotional interpretation is but a memory for many, an unknown for most. That is how the value of art diminishes, through ignorance.
Ignorance in the process that truly accelerated with the ‘shock of the new’ where shock was the message not intellectual understanding. Intellectual meaning ‘of the mind’, replaced by the emotive ‘shock’ appeal to the visceral, contemplation and thought being replaced by unthinking emotion, enabling mass manipulation and the destruction of belief in the joy of violence. Preparing the ground for Ai.
Jackson Pollock and David Hockney both products of different environments, Pollock the urban man, Hockney still rooted in the more rural Yorkshire values. Artists reflect in their work the environments that condition them. Mine for my first 17 years was the RAF encampments, even following me into my art college degree as my parents were stationed abroad.
My first semester I received a garbled message about the front of their rental property being blown off by a bomb. My sister who had also stayed UK bound rather than following fathers latest overseas posting, took the offer to join them. I checked they were OK, dad came home long enough to meet and reassure, but it reinforced my sense of our nation in unexpected ways (not least the curious sight of a uniformed RAF officer buying a pub full of art students a round of beers).
I grounded at Corsham. Difficult not to when hosted by Lord Methuen and living in a college housed in Georgian splendour, the main building by Inigo Jones in grounds we enjoyed landscaped by Capability Brown. My father’s abhorrence of my choice of art college tempered by my professional career that led him on his death bed to say if I had been in the RAF, I would “have been a group captain by now”, a high accolade.
Dad, photographed by me in 1963 when he was promoted to flight lieutenant, retired a squadron leader having started in 1938 as a male nurse. Rear gunner on Wellington and Lancaster, remustered as an RAF nurse at wars end.
From my daily 1970’s weather watercolour of the Lancashire Moors in the 70’s to my daily photograph of the view of the Sussex Downs beyond my garden (todays was number 3,927 according to the BBC) I have enjoyed celebrating England and the daisy has been a part of that celebration, despite its appearance being dependent on holding a ‘no-mow May’. Holding back the mower bring rewards in large increases of the insects but especially the bees. We have bumbles early but also leaf cutters, miners, masons, red- and white-tailed as well as the ubiquitous honey bee.
The bee walking through the forest of stalks of the tall growing oxeye daisies is matched by the smaller honeybee who flies skilfully, manoeuvring carefully, threading beneath the daisy heads. Occasionally a loud hum announces a flyover by a dragonfly, its hum rivalling the throb of a Merlin as a Spitfire takes a tourist ride along our chalk cliffs.
Looked from below the daisy looks like an adventurous piece of architecture, reminiscent of Singapore perhaps. Last time I let the grass grow through May I wrote “How do you study grass? I recommend a sunny afternoon, lying down listening to the life in grass” and the same advice applies to enjoying the oxeye daisy and its population. There is much to be discovered again – it was here before the Normans and will survive beyond the current tribes, I’m sure, sharing its Archimedean architecture and simple beauty for man and insect alike.
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