flannel

I've neglected this blog lately but I have been working and travelling. My Tree Project continues. I have returned from spending an early spring in Sydney, Australia. What I loved was the ebullient, optimistic blossoming of the season. In short weeks flowers burst creating shimmering varnish over the landscapes.

Actinotus Helianthi- Flannel Flower 

blossoming through trees

After bush fires the flowers can be particularly profuse. The black skeletal trees are flooded by Flannel Flowers. 

burnt trees

the song of grey tree frogs

Grey tree frogs singing: my enduring memory of fading days and summer evenings while in residence. I was artist-in-residence at Weir Farm National Historic Site in Connecticut for the turning of spring, when everything burst in optimistic green. The trees exuded leaves that grew darker daily.

The Pond Path, Weir Farm

I live in an urban environment, being in rural Connecticut was both challenging and a reminder of what is really important: the sun, the rain, trees and wild plants creating chaos and disorder. There is something incredibly special about waking early and walking out where the deer have just left their marks, becoming aware that the landscape around me is shared, the rotund groundhog owns it as much as I do.

 

the pond at Weir Farm 

Studio Weir Farm National Historic Site

It felt like a bucolic rural idyll of deepest greenness. Of course there were the mosquitos and deer ticks, my own difficulties adjusting to life without the city, the huge MacMansions around me posing as cottages- the park is a little island surrounded by seriously expensive real estate. Being a temporary part of a national park is a privileged position. The park was my own out-of-hours and I had the feeling of being in a museum with no guards. I had three weeks of constant drawing while leaving the preoccupations of home: my art focus sharpened and I felt new again.

Mysore Fig

I'd like to say that I am still working outdoors but I confess I retreated inside one of the greenhouses. I have been drawing a Mysore Fig that has grown rampant and is extending to the roof. Definitely inside the tropical part of the three climate greenhouse is the place to be. However this winter continues to be mild temperature-wise. I have managed a brief watercolour session out in the botanical gardens. The huge storms coming over do mean that watercolour proves to be a challenging medium.     

Mysore Fig

banana plant from the same greenhouse

banana plant again

tea

A New Year and while I can I am enjoying the strangely warm weather. I was working in the Hortus Botanicus today. The investigative project on the life and death of trees continues.

Dusk at the Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam

I could claim my head was full of lofty, creative thoughts but the reality was I spent quite some time dreaming of a nice hot cup of tea. 8 degrees C is not particularly cold but not exactly the sort of temperature for working outdoors and after being immobile for an hour my fantasy did not extend beyond hot beverages. There is something profoundly grounding to work outdoors, to feel the temperature, the wind, to try to grab seconds of sunshine and to focus on essential things like drawing and tea.

"hints of … perfection…."

Sometimes returning to familiar environments can be both reassuring and energizing. I have Swiss family and since I was 3 months old I have been visiting Switzerland. To start my New Year I spent a few days in the French speaking part.

view from the Chateau of Prangins

The weather was astoundingly mild. The sky blue and the view of the Lake of Geneva was beautiful, I know it has hints of chocolate box perfection but this is a special view of the Alps and from this distance they are like lace edging to the sky. They are hiding their more grey, foreboding nature.   

Trees at the entrance to the Chateau

My obsession with trees continues despite having a day off and visiting the Chateau de Prangins- one of three National Museums of Switzerland. 

worked stone

I've returned from my first trip to Orkney. This had been on my wish list of places to visit for many years. I thought December in Orkney would be all horizontal rain and storms but I arrived between storms and it was warm and quiet. Warmer than further south which was pleasantly bemusing.

There is so much I want to draw I am not sure where to begin…

house at Skara Brae looking at the stone dresser 

I started with 3100 BC and spent two hours visiting Skara Brae, Europe's best preserved Neolithic village. Wow. So much remains of these stone structures, it's an environment where people lived and worked and conveys a sense of reality. The entire complex of houses are interconnected, like nests in the dunes, snuggled away from the wind. These were the people who also created the extraordinary shard-like Standing Stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar.

One of the stones of Stenness. 

Orkney has so many layers of history. Driving through the landscape there were remains from the First and Second World Wars. Here are the ruined sheds by the site of the gun emplacements at Yesnaby.

Finally the hills of Hoy from a beach near Stromness. The winter afternoon light was dissolving into blue night. The longest night is almost upon us and daylight is precious.

chestnut rain

I had a short but extremely intense residency in the Netherlands. The first time I have ever been in residency in the country I live in. I was a guest of the Artist Residence Dalen supported by the family Sanders-ten Holte. I want to thank them for their kind support and their belief in my Tree project. 

Oak tree drawing in progress 

These were probably the wettest 5 days I have experienced in the past few months. The drawing above would not dry outdoors. I had to work on plastic sheeting (generously donated by the interior design shop next door) and I carried this indoors to dry, the paper was so damp it took two days to fully dry out. This hadn't stopped me working.

After three days there was a break in the clouds and in those moments I worked under the shelter of these trees (amongst many).

horse chestnut trees Dalen

The winds meant that all around the trees were dropping seeds and the noise of falling chestnuts and acorns was audible.

snack bar Dalen

Dalen is a friendly, small town. Even for the brief period I was there I enjoyed it and felt welcomed. I would also add on the evidence of the snack bars, outrageously optimistic, it takes a brave soul to eat ice-cream in cool, rainy weather.

another snack bar in Dalen

two recent exhibitions

Suddenly after spending a quiet summer making drawings I had two group exhibitions. The first has just ended last week. I was part of a group drawing exhibition at Art Affairs Gallery in Amsterdam. It was the first chance to show the drawing of the Turner's Oak since its creation in the Botanical Gardens this summer.

Turner's Oak, 2013

Then at the same time I was selected to show in the Salisbury Open Drawing exhibition in Salisbury, Wiltshire. I hadn't been to Salisbury for years and I loved the opportunity. The exhibition is still on view until early November at the Salisbury Arts Centre. Lobster Head Cove was made as a result of my earlier residency with Gros Morne National Park and The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery.

Lobster Head Cove rock formation

Between showers

Haltingly temperatures have improved. The rain has stopped long enough for me to draw for several days. I have joined the Amsterdam Botanical Gardens. This is the trunk of the Turner's Oak there. A hybrid of the Holm Oak and the English Oak, the original grown in the Essex nursery of a Mr Turner in 1783. This one is of a later date but equally fascinating. I am quietly obsessed by the convoluted form and I draw it regularly. 

Turner's Oak

I bring my large paper roll into the gardens and I have gained a new friend perhaps because I am a little unusual and sit at duck height on the ground. I am visited daily in the hope that I might finally learn to bring food with me. Apparently this duck and its mate spend the whole summer every summer in the gardens. They nest under cafe tables. 

a slow spring

It has been a hesitant spring in Northern Europe. I have been working outdoors between heavy water- laden winds and happy glimpses of sun. 

Zuid-Kennemerland dunes

 These are the dunes in the National Park near Haarlem. The skeletal trees clasped breaking buds of leaves too small to be seen from a distance. The sun warmed the sand and hidden from the wind I could convince myself change was beginning. 

Text reads: "Warm winds dissolve the long cold, while fragile sunshine tickles the skin" 

I was working on a short text piece to be part of a landscape workshop in South Korea at the end of last month. It's an excellent idea, for those who live too far away we make work in our own surroundings and send in the images. The above is a final line of a short text piece heralding a change of season. 

 

Finally this week the sunshine arrived in earnest and the neighbourhood cherry blossom sagged with abundant flowers.  

life amongst the gum trees

Working back in the urban studio is making me dream of Australia again. Before leaving I was in the Snowy Mountains near Lake Eucambene. It is a landscape with trees that tell its history: amongst the gum trees, European trees nestle where homesteads once were. Eucambene was a thriving community supporting several hundreds of people while the Snowy Mountain (Hydro) scheme was being built and now the few remaining houses are used mostly as agricultural sheds. The dam was completed in 1958.  

tin shed on a farm in the Snowy Mountains

Eucalyptus

What I particularly loved were the eucalyptus trees. With the amount of water and ground water in the region they grow tall. 

Evening amongst eucalyptus trees

Fig trees

I have just returned from 6 weeks of drawing trees in Australia. An extraordinary experience and they were bewilderingly beautiful. My journey began with a visit to the Royal Botanic Gardens plant pathology laboratories in Sydney. I have to thank them for allowing me to visit, I learnt so much. The images of what I saw were so attractive like microscopic etchings.

Tree in the Botanic Gardens

I spent most of my time in Sydney working with urban trees. I was three weeks in Bellevue Hill Park drawing Morton Bay Fig trees. It is rare that I have the chance to work somewhere so deliciously warm.

work in progress, ink drawing

When the nearby school was sealed from the park because traces of fibro building material had been found (containing asbestos) that were being washed down from the park above, I began to realise that life for an urban tree (or artist) can be more precarious than one realizes. Fortunately the site was given the all clear and the asbestos particles were discovered to be bound within the building material.  

Parking, texts and busses

It is such a privilege to have work installed. I am really delighted that the latest text piece has been adopted by Cambridge County Council Transport Department as a permanent artwork. The whole work has been taken from its original locations in the town and can be read as one piece, a sort of "Welcome to Cambridge" text. It is located at the Trumpington Park and Ride just outside the city.

 

The whole piece reads: this way for rippled hills and ripe, bursting fields blue sky and dressed stone formality. Dipped anthracite clouds poised to varnish. Domestic housing, waving effervescent flowers, pensive dogs and green flag grass. Quiet walls and walked stone lead to hidden squares and bursts of persistent lawn. 

It is the experience of 24 hours in Cambridge from the the viewpoint of a visitor. Many thanks to the Park and Ride team for installing this text and for their support in the process and of course thank you also to Text and Context Cambridge for inviting me to participate without them none of this would have been realised. 

lines out of context

Organizing things from a distance can be complicated. This Cambridge project is more fun when I am there to talk to people in person. Fortunately I have a whole support team (they deserve lots of thanks) all is starting to take a definite form and if the original plan is not working then the back-up one will.

I have been testing laminated signs in the studio to see how long they will stay fixed up to windows with tiny suction cups. This job really does lead to new worlds, I had no idea how sophisticated the manufacture of the suction cup is. It makes me realise how important it is to appreciate the little details. The smallest of things may take years to design and perfect.

Recently I was lucky enough to be in a location where I could spontaneously create and install a text piece. It would disappear in a few minutes of brushing or light rain. Leaving no trace is part of what I do, having fun while doing it, makes my job worthwhile.

 

Rock pools: lines out of context

 

 

...and tree shadows smile

new context

For a brief period of 24 hours I was in Cambridge on a site visit for a text installation I am making there. I travelled cross-country from Oxford to Cambridge with the bus. It was fascinating to travel through the English landscape after so recently being in Canada. The changes are subtle and the countryside is devoted to agriculture. The fields change in size and by the time I reached Cambridge they were huge and ripening.

The bus travelled slowly from one conurbation to the next, stopping in adorable stone villages and huge new towns like Milton Keynes. Agriculture filled the void between developments. The skies are huge and seem to grow as the hills lower and turn to ripples on the horizon.

It became a study of blossoming cloud and chasing thunderstorms. Two days of finding rain and running for shelter in the city and watching more of the same from the bus window.

Countryside from the bus

Snatches of views

Cambridgeshire

the road

This had been the first time I had traveled so widely in Newfoundland and Labrador. I am beginning to appreciate its size. Driving was such an experience. There was only one moose moment when a teenager ambled over the Trans Canada highway in front of me and was having too much fun on this asphalt thing to move away for some time.   

Sometimes the only way to fully understand a landscape is to move within it. I have seen so much road and so many trees. I've driven through strange boreal forest and arctic tundra. Landscapes supporting the thinest of berry bogs and raw moonlike rocks. 

the road along the bay of Islands

Bay of Islands 2

RV for two with trailed car

I am fascinated by the way other people travel. This RV was for only two and the car was trailed from the back.

bend in the road 

Newfoundland has so many long and straight roads.

Terracotta meets pink granite

I can't begin to describe how much I loved Labrador. To start with I found one of my favourite types of rock outcrop: made of pink granite.

pink granite coast

Red Bay was one of the most moving and powerful places I had seen. The Basque Whalers apparently concentrated their work on Saddle Island and there are remains of "try-works" (whale oil ovens) everywhere on the sheltered side of this tiny island. It is industry on a huge scale for the 16th century. 

remains of Basque terracotta tiles on Saddle Island from a roof of a caved in building  

The same terracotta tiles appear in Pasaia and other Basque ports. I am fascinated by the tangible link. The ties to history are so clear.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I loved the contemporary culture too. People were so amazingly friendly and prepared to work with me.  I grew extremely fond of curious objects. Looking at everything with new eyes, I had never seen so many manufactured products with geographical directions on them or relishing their location. The water came from True North, the laundry liquid was from Down East, I washed my hands with North Woods soap. We drank bottled iceberg water called 80 degrees North (L'Eau d'Iceberg) but my favourite one of all so forgive the product placement was the soap called Kiss My Face. It's sold by American importers but I love the name.

True North Water