PaintingsScattering seeds For Sale

The cry of the ravens and buzzards and the sensory smell of the damp earth create the spell - the conversation with nature starts, the immersion is underway.

With luck, shadows and light play around the glades.

Spring and Summer green, Autumn gold and Winter skeletal trees.

The canvas propped up on the nettles, making a silent mark in the woods - man, water and the pots of paint.

Usually a large stretched canvas preferred or sketch book but not an unruly loose canvas - collected earth colours ochre, mud, king alfred cakes - animal, mineral and vegetable. Plus the creamy Fullers Earth leaching out of the springs - all materials unprocessed, granular, rough, primitive paint

Early large marks by moving the brush from pot to pot. The mood switches. Pools of pigment dotted on, and the canvas turned - angles altered to move the the rivulets of colour. Often they bead and hold in tension until the osmotic skin breaks, moves across and down and drips over the edge sometimes onto the stretched out concertina sketch book. Colours move and mix - rain and dew fall from the leaves and splash the canvas adding to the effect. A trio of tiny alder cones blow in - a gift from the tall leaning tree that shadows.

It needs more - the brush dips into the molehill, and scrapes the side of the brook looking for new shades. The state of bliss in nature is now deep. The meditation medication is at peak effect as the aquarelle casts its deep magic.

Time is nothing - the light and, if lucky the sun, control the mood

………until a dog up on the track flushes out a pheasant. The spell is broken. Then home.

So ‘En Plein Air’ is not yet stretched to ‘A la belle etoile’ but it will happen, with owl attendant [and by a crackling fire]. "