To be a pilgrim is to be connected. We are all connected, we are all related, there is no I and the other, I am the other, the other is me – that is what makes me a pilgrim in life and a pilgrim of the Earth. My pilgrimage is not going somewhere; my pilgrimage... Read more »
The end of the year and, for some reason, my mind turns to Cennini: FUNDAMENTAL PROVISIONS FOR ANYONE WHO ENTERS THIS PROFESSION CHAPTER III You, therefore, who with lofty spirit are fired with this ambition, and are about to enter the profession, begin by decking yourselves with this attire: Enthusiasm, Reverence, Obedience, and Constancy. And... Read more »
There is something wonderful about printmaking. Often thought of as the poor relation of painting, it is hard on the hands, messy, brain-tanglingly difficult, (you work in mirror image) and frequently frustrating but to those of us who love it …well there is nothing quite like it. However difficult it might be to explain why... Read more »
For just a very few days a year, a cherry tree flowers in Halwell churchyard. The ground between the graves is a tapestry of primroses, celandine, violets, cowslips, ground ivy and daisies – a sight magical enough – but the huge flowering tree with its chaos of bee-filled, pink and white petals, is something else... Read more »
I have walked three fields before I notice that I’ve noticed nothing. Well, perhaps not quite nothing. I had, with some glee, registered the frost on first stepping out and I’d enjoyed breaking the ice in a puddled tractor rut near the barn in the second field. Other than that, by the time I get... Read more »
It is hard sometimes to see any good in humans. Listen to too much news and it can seem as if we do only harm, contaminating all we touch. Echoes of King Midas, who, we are reminded by Aristotle, died of starvation – an ‘unforeseen consequence’ of his own vainglorious wish. At the moment I’m... Read more »
In the mornings, before I go into the studio, Daisy and I walk. About half way round our usual hour-long route is a steep meadow. Strictly speaking a meadow is a field of grass ‘ shut up’ against cattle between March and June or July, mown and then grazed until the following spring. These days... Read more »
I learned only today that the word obsession comes from the latin obsidere – to besiege. from ob (before) and sedeo (I sit) Working on a big drawing like this, for months on end, I am not sure which of us is under siege – who sits before whom? Perhaps the poet Li Bai understood: ‘We sit... Read more »
At its deepest level, any poetic utterance grows out of a desire to overcome loneliness, to share experience. “Absence” Charcoal and Inks on Arches paper. 40″X 27″ approx For a long time – really since I started making paintings as a conscious adult – I’ve been troubled by notions of ‘self’ and of art as... Read more »
Most of this year has been spent working for an exhibition that will pay homage to one of the most beloved aspects of our landscape – the tree. Patricia Singh of Beaux Arts London was very keen that Revd. Richard Davey – who has written several times on my work with great insight and sensitivity... Read more »
“The ash tree growing in the corner of the garden was felled. I heard the sound and, looking out and seeing it maimed, there came at that moment a great pang and I wished to die and not to see the inscapes of the world destroyed any more.” So wrote Gerald Manley Hopkins in around... Read more »
