Time passes. We measure our life in yesterdays, watches on our wrists measuring in seconds/minutes/strides/heartbeats. Calendars a tick of days and months, birthdays the rotations around the sun. We measure our ageing and contrast it with growth, calling seasons change when they are measured in deaths and decay. We watch the change in time through the life of our gardens, the crops we grow, the pulse of insect buzz.
As July slides slowly towards August the first flush of roses is replaced by a second abundance as the deadheading reinvigorates the search for seed. New colour blooms try to attract the overworked bees still in thrall to the lavender. Poor poppy makes a different approach as its petals deepen their colour and the glorious colours of its centre, surround by rich velvet-furred stamens gradually fall away leaving a withered pale brown crowned stick, bulbous with seed. The bees having danced their fertility dance around the centre before the lavender bloomed.
First rose flowering suggests a time when fertility is rewarded for the rose and the garden plants. Yet the dry weather has produced shrunken apples, the profusion of blossoms supplemented by thinning the fruit to maximise the swelling, all coming to nought as the long dry spell sucked the moisture away from fruit into the self-preservation of the tree. The early lavender is losing its lustre, but new arrivals compete for the bees’ services as the bright colours of the fuchsias beckon in corners of the shrubbery.
Some of the steps images on the studio wall. Each 27 x 16 inches, acrylic paintings on gesso primed 330gsm cartridge
All this glory, all this change, all this decay, feeds my eye, feeds my camera lens and through it flows onto my computer screens where enlarging/emphasising/ purifying colour returns as large scale prints to the studio working wall, replacing the images of the concrete steps that in turn replaced the images of the rust and decay of the sea defences, now beyond the reach of my arthritic bones. What is lost from walking the Down and the beach is more than compensated for by the garden, its colour and scent pulling me out in just my dressing gown to breathe in the scents of its freshness, to feel the dampness of the dew on my slippered feet, to enjoy the caress of the morning air on my bare skin.
Later in the heavier air of the afternoon, maybe in heat trapped by a layer of cloud, or in the burning burnishing shine of the sun I will walk again in the different light with a different camera lens and rephotographed the changed colours whilst relishing the scents of the blooms hungry to attract the pollinators which abound. Gatekeeper butterflies, small blues, large whites, pigeons croon their triumph having devoured the young plums leaving just four to feed me, gulls scream for discarded crusts, the cat sniffs the Hotlips petals before performing a vanishing act like the Cheshire Cat yet leaving not a smile but the smell of his cattiness lingering.
Death of a Poppy. 27 x 16 inches acrylic painting on gesso primed 330gsm cartridge
I take this relish of the garden delights into the studio basking in scent and colour, barracked by the robin who still, after years, still thinks the garden is his. The familiar studio smells greet me – the odour of turps, the smell of acrylic paints, – and the colour blasts off the sketchbook pages and photos that litter my worktable. I sit and choose some music, trying to find something that works with hearing aids (strangely Elgar doesn’t but Adele does, Debussy doesn’t but Fay Hield does) and my impulse to create. Colour litters my paint table, partially used tubes, pots of various sizes and dozens of tools all stand ready to serve my hand and eye in realising my vision.
Developing the mark making and exploring different effects I can achieve with paint remains the core of my painting, learning from Monet, Seurat, Turner, Riley, Albers et al whilst keeping the ‘autographic’ quality that marks out painting from photography or AI. I enjoy using the camera to find equivalents in the real world such as the photographs of the Cuckmere sea defences or varied harbours and fishing fleets, but they remain secondary to the constructed relationships in a painting of reflections in waves or nets and rust, symbols of man’s existence.
Water Reflections in Bergen Harbour. Acrylic painting on gesso primedA1 cartridge
I find the accidental relationships in my harbour images which echo my intellectual concerns with colour and mark inspired in turn by accidental relationships I see in my garden, testaments of time passing. It is an interplay between a connoisseur’s knowledge of art, a photographer’s searching vision, my aesthetic values and a sense of mortality. These underpinning values have no relevance to any marketplace, so although I have for many years exhibited and sold, my primary concern is to dig down into my own artistic mind and see what the driver of my creativity is, to acknowledge life, to feed my soul, and praise my God. Is it past life, personal history or the unknown future? It is obviously part of the same drive that created the online magazine; that created the design business; that created the teaching programmes, leaving a mark.
When will my time be I wonder occasionally, wondering if knowing would change anything. What then of the products of my compulsions? I have enquired about a Viking funeral, all my paintings piled on an old boat, my corpse on top, set fire and set sail as a Viking warrior of old, but alas modern policies preclude anything more interesting than being dumped in landfill or burned in an incinerator.
Art burned? Art is life. The poppies are dead. Until next year….
Paintings are available from the Gallery
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