This house has stood over a hundred years now, built on the site of huts from where British soldiers went to stand in trenches in France in World War 1. Bombs fell on the road in World War 2 and when the house across the road was being modernised ten years ago, the owner had to demolish a reinforce concrete bomb shelter standing against his kitchen wall.
When we viewed prior to buying the house, the man who owned it boasted how he had been principal of Wimbledon Art School, placed by the Department of Education with a brief to close it down. His wife was a Labour education peer (see ‘the Dustman and the Baroness’) who had been a teacher in the town in Lancashire where I was a dustman. Such are the movements of history’s wheel.
We redesigned the garden whilst keeping its basic bare design structure. We moved trees, built the greenhouse and studio, and removed some planting whilst adding our own. For a while I continued to run my online design magazine and used the direct train to London that once ran from Seaford. The train was withdrawn in favour of rich folks elsewhere and cancer closed the business. However, as my health failed my art developed to fill the hole that commercial life left. My focus changed, less about the commercial world and more about my painting.
I had created around 1100 hotel design ‘miniviews’, which were a daylong walk around with a camera and then published in my on-line design magazine two or three times a month, supplementing the daily publication of design news articles I mined from my design friends, hotel groups, and manufacturers in the supply chain. These were popular with over 102,000 readers a day who read over half a million pages daily, leading one hotel group owner to call me the ‘hotel guru’.
Cancer had struck and the next few years were filled with treatments, increasing physical weakness and an inevitable change of focus. I had never stopped painting, but now it has become central to my life. It meant that there was an end to the driving around Europe, Africa and the Sates that had been part of our life reviewing the design of hotels. My partner shifted her focus to the community she had been born into and grew up in
Now my camera has turned to my life, my environment, the garden and the seaside, my focus and camera turned to the nature of creativity and the art I produce. I write for my 500 readers a day – inconspicuous by comparison with my previous readership.
As I have aged and the impact of treatments has imposed limitations I have been absorbed into the garden. Flower paintings, a central part of my work from my life in Lancashire 50years ago, have returned to being a central part of my work now. Alongside are my walks in the footsteps of Slater, whose house is nearby and whose grave is in Seaford town cemetery.
At first, it was the decay that fascinated me in both garden and Seaford’s sea defenses, probably reflecting my own decay. Gradually I have started to delve deeper in my art exploring the meaning of life. I look into my love of colour in parallel with a determination to touch the spiritual soul of the painter I now am with side swipes at the venality of the society I live in. The garden uses colour to attract pollinators, a function fashion fills in the cities
The garden and the natural world of the Sussex downs have begun to absorb me. I discovered how these are not permanent environments, partly through my daily Facebook postings of morning views down the garden, taken from the same spot now over nearly 4,000 days. The daily photos show the subtle daily changes through seasons and weather. They show the passage of time, and this too has become reflected in my work, in pieces like the series of prints marking the four seasons. My favourite piece of woodland also changes as it is expanded by the planting of over 1900 new trees and the removal of fences to allow free movement for wildlife.
Clear of cancer I live with the consequences of ageing and the life I have lived – as a consultant said to me recently “I do not know how you are still alive”. Not only still alive but still creating. My walk to the paint studio is about 100 paces, and I walk with a bucket to fill with weeds in one hand, my camera in the other.
From the ‘Death of A Poppy’ series
The 100 paces can take nearly an hour as I weed and visually forage to capture the world I walk though. The walk slows frequently and I track the garden changes revealed in images like those of the heart of a poppy, its seeds scattering as its beauty rots, death and the promise of new life in one image.
I have a chair outside the studio where I can sit and take in the scents, maybe the sound of children’s innocence in the playground over the fence behind the studio. Maybe I’ll argue with the robin who harangues me if I haven’t filled his feeder. Perhaps the cat will come and jump on my lap and sit purring as the sound of ancient pop comes from the studio player – my youth in music, Dylan, the Beatles, but also modern folk from both US UK (aah Fay Hield) and Africa.
Artwave 2019
Painting is as tough a challenge as it has always been. I show locally, something I have done for 60 years now (I sold my first artwork in 1966). Art needs an audience much as actors need a theatre or musicians a concert venue (although whether anyone reads art as they used to in the early 20th century is doubtful). Gradually the garden is absorbing me as earth absorbs the dead. I surrender, the cat purring on my lap, the camera to hand.
This is now a daily pattern, interruptions and variations being largely down to the weather. I am absorbed into being one with life in the garden. This is life away from the Hive, far from the madding crowd. It reminds me of student life in Corsham – minus the diversions of youth. I remember Michael Tippett telling me how he used to lie in his garden in Corsham “hoping one of you beautiful youngsters would jump over the wall and join me” (he lived next door to a student hostel), but here I am content.
I have the life of the garden and the company of the cat and she who must be obeyed.
I am sublimated.
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