Three Small Paintings

Small painting: Treeline

Small painting: Misty Morning

Small painting: Through Trees

New Project

Wiltshire Walks. Well, actually, this is not a new project. Walking in the countryside has been a favourite of mine for years and it is where I get most of the inspiration for my creative work. The new bit is how I intend to record them in the future.

My computer is stuffed with photos of Wiltshire. Unfortunately they are not in any organised catalogue, so finding images is a very hit-and-miss affair. This year (2008) I decided that I needed to make a better job of sorting them into a more user-friendly form. That set me thinking about the reason why I take photographs when out walking. Most of my photos are a record of colour, pattern and the texture of the land. They are my reference library - but how can I make it better?

Last year I spent most of my free time experimenting with mixed-media paintings, a new direction from my textile art. I thought it would be interesting to try painting outside - directly in the landscape that so inspires me. So I spent the summer - the dry bits! - carrying drawing board, paper, paints, folding chair... out into the middle of fields to paint. Did it work? Did I create? Hmm... I was not happy with the results.

I know that any new way of working takes time to develop, I was not going to produce masterpieces first time out. However, all that I achieved was a painting of what was exactly in front of me. Working in the studio, I filter my experience of the landscape. It becomes an interpretation of my feelings and not just what I saw. Taking all my painting equipment out with me really got in the way of 'me and the land'. The small paintings I created in the studio, I think, are more successful and come nearer to creating the atmosphere that I experienced when out walking.

So I have returned to recording my walks with a digital camera and a small sketchbook.

My idea for the 'new project' is to record the whole walk with photographs, notes and sketches and to store them on my Flickr site. An easier way of retrieving my library of photographs for future reference. A simple idea - but it has already made a big difference to how I have planned walks since January.

I have taken a lot more shots on each trip - recording the journey. It has also made me more keenly aware of the character of each place and how important the quality of light is to creating atmosphere. So now I want to go out and find new places to walk. Maybe revisit places at different times of the year and in different weather conditions.

The trick will be to process the photos as soon as I return home and not to let a backlog pile up. I need some dull days to keep me at the computer!

I am interested to see how this new photo-bank will inspire my future artwork.

Crop circles

  Spent today out on the downs with camera and sketchbook. Walked to Knap Hill, one of my favourite places in the Vale of Pewsey, Wiltshire.



Crop circle photographed on 11th July 2007 from the top of Knap Hill looking towards Woodborough Hill.



Helicopter will have the best view of the formation. Can just see a line of people walking along the tractor tracks to the circle.



Panorama and cloud shadows.



Pages from sketchbook



Close-up of left hand page



Close-up of right hand page



Top of Knap Hill rises behind me.



Can just see the top of Adam's Grave long barrow on Walkers Hill.



Carpet of chalk-downland flowers. Lots of Marbled White butterflies but not resting long enough to photograph - too windy.



Flowers over the whole hill top - beautiful.



Sketchbook, water soluable pencils and inspiring landscape.



Looking south-west towards Wilcot I can see a second crop circle tucked into the corner of a field.



Circles in the land... fascinating.

It all appears a bit clearer now

My last post on this blog was in July 2005. Such a long time ago. What has happened since then? Why have I not blogged? The habit of blogging does not come naturally but in 2007 I hope to make more of an effort.

Over the last year a great deal of my time has been taken by caring for my 90-year-old mother. This has managed to chop each day into little bits. I very rarely have a long period of creative thinking time to develop ideas. So what time I have is very precious and needs to be used to the best advantage.

If I am not creating I feel part of me is not being fed. It is a feeling that something is eating away inside to the point of painful frustration.

So how to balance both parts of my life, artist and carer.

When my caring duties take over the thing I miss most is walking in the Wiltshire countryside with my sketchbook and camera. I need to find a way of using that experience in a more productive way. So my method of working has to change.

The way I have been using textiles to create my landscapes has worked beautifully but it is a very time consuming and labour intensive process. Most of my ideas stack up and fade away before they are born. Creative processes should change and evolve and a method of working that seemed perfect a few years ago seems totally wrong today. Creative ideas change and the process of recording them should change also.

I have been having very mixed feelings about the description of myself as a Textile Artist.

Calling myself a Textile Artist seems to put me in a little box that only quilters and embroiderers look into. That is not a bad thing because some of the feedback that I get from those people is truly amazing. It is just the effect that nametag seems to be having on me as a creative person. If I call one of my pieces of work 'a quilt' and enter it into a Quilting Exhibition it would be judged on a completely different set of rules to the ones that an art gallery would use.

Those rules I find difficult to cope with. I have come to the conclusion that calling myself a Textile Artist is stifling my creative process. What is important to me is capturing the landscape that feeds my soul and fires my imagination. Whether it is drawn, painted, dyed, stuck, stitched, or torn should not matter. The important thing is the image and its effect on the viewer.

So from now on I will call myself an Artist. I think I feel happier with that. Less restricting, more open, and does not prepare the viewer beforehand to what they might see when viewing my work. Maybe it will open up my work to new people, not just the ones interested in textiles.

My new website has a selection of mixed media landscapes, textile pieces created over the last two years and a few old favourites from my old website. It will also have new work added on a regular basis.

My blog will have all other news, exhibitions, galleries, where to see originals, and act as an online sketchbook with drawings, photographs, and comments... and I will try to add new things more regularly... honest.

Where did July go ?

  The end of July already and no entries since 21st June. No way to run a blog. So what happened to July?

I'm a textile artist working from home and in an ideal world would spend each day creating new work and have lots of interesting things to add to my textile artist's blog.

Reality is very different. July has been packed with events that have kept me away from my desk.

My brother has been very ill in hospital - very worrying - so I've had to make lots of visits to Dorset to see him.

Our son has been dodging bombs in London - very nerve racking - so I've been reading the BBC News website more than usual.

My mother, at 89, has decided to plan a complete maintenance job on her house, new double glazing, new curtains, re-decoration etc. Amazing energy at 89 I hear you say, well yes I agree, except that she plans and I'm expected to implement it all. Well, it is better than visiting her in a nursing home.

Mike, my husband, has returned to a freelance design career and is back working from home. He hates doing the business accounts so I have learned how to use Excel spread sheets and have done it for him - not bad going considering I was computerphobic 2 years ago. Perhaps he will finish re-designing my website in return.

So, time left for me... not much.

I have managed to take a few photographs. Wiltshire looks wonderful at this time of year. July is the season of the crop circles, so I will include some photos later. Lots of activity in our garden pond with beautiful dragonflies hatching, so more photo opportunities.

As far as textile work goes I am way behind. I promised my gallery a new range of small work inspired by Wiltshire Landscape. I have loads of inspirational photos and sketches but no finished work yet.

Creative work for me. Perhaps this seems strange to people who consider my Wiltshire Landscapes to be my work. They are but I have personal projects on the go as well. Work that I probably will never sell. New ideas, experiments in new ways of working, pushing the boundaries of my textile art. Some not using textiles at all.

The theme I am working on at the moment was inspired by Bryce Canyon (which might surprise my American friends). Here I am, in the middle of Wiltshire, and I am creating Hoodoos and Spirit Dolls inspired by the landscape and Native American Art seen on a trip to Arizona and the Canyons 18 months ago. The ideas for this project have been buzzing around my head ever since. I completed two pieces for an exhibition last year, but they were done to a deadline and I didn't feel that I had experimented with the subject material enough. That's always a problem when doing new work to tight deadlines.

I am now letting the ideas evolve without the pressure of a deadline and the new ideas are better. More to follow, but here are photos of two painted and decorated twigs that are going to be part of the work.


The first one I found in the Meramec River, Missouri on our first trip to the States in 1998. When I saw this twig it had been in the water for some time but I could see it had a 'face'. It has been in my collection of interesting 'things' ever since. Being from America, I thought it would be perfect in this new piece so last week I painted the 'face'. The strange thing was that I kept finding new faces. Each way I turned it more faces appeared, so I painted them too. Mike thinks it has become very spooky. I think they are the river spirits and it is just perfect. It has a presence.


The second one I found when returning home from visiting my brother in hospital. I stopped at Martin Down, a Nature Reserve on the border of Dorset and Wiltshire, to take a short walk to take photos. The evening was beautiful, all the wheat fields were golden in the setting sun. As I stopped to take a photo, there at my feet was a strange piece of twig. But to me the twig was instantly a bird, perfect for my Hoodoo and Spirit Dolls work. I picked it up and returned to the car - forgetting to take any photos. It was as if I had been told to stop the car, to walk along that path, just to find the bird-twig. Strange.

Sunrise at Silbury

  An unforgettable morning.

Got up at 3:30 am to watch the sunrise on the Summer Solstice at Avebury Stone Circle. The sky was clear and early morning mist hung over the fields, giving a magical atmosphere.

The nearer I got to the stone circle the busier it became. The police close the roads around Avebury on the solstice to protect the ancient monument from too many visitors. So, everyone was walking. All these people so early in the morning. Very strange.

I didn't want to be with such a large crowd on a magical morning. I really wanted to watch the dawn on my own.

So I turned away from Avebury and went instead to Silbury Hill. This is the largest pre-historic man-made structure in Europe and this morning, with the mist swirling around its base, it looked very mysterious and atmospheric. I found somewhere quiet to sit and wait for the dawn.

In my sketchbook I drew and recorded how I felt. The photographs record the colours and landscape, but what I remember most was the overwhelming power from the earth as the sun rose over the horizon.

Yes, an unforgettable morning.




Sketchbook page



Silbury Hill at 4:20 am.



Looking towards Avebury over misty fields



A select band of Solstice watchers



Beautiful colour



Just before...



... the sunrise



Silhouette of Silbury Hill

Beautiful Morning

  I woke this morning at 5:30 am with sun streaming in and the dawn chorus in full swing. I couldn't possibly go back to sleep on such a beautiful morning. So with camera, sketchbook and a half-asleep Mike, went for a walk on Morgan's Hill Nature Reserve.

A fantastic display of chalk downland wildflowers, including orchids. The low early morning sun was picking out the folds and ridges in the hillside and the criss-cross sheep tracks. Blackcaps were singing their hearts out. The misty fields stretched into the distance like a patchwork quilt. What an inspiring place to be on such a beautiful morning.



Folds in the landscape seen at dawn, Morgan's Hill, Wiltshire



View north from Morgan's Hill to a patchwork of fields



View north east from Morgan's Hill - on the hill in the distance is the Lansdowne Monument, a stone obelisk erected by Sir William Petty in 1845.



Lesser butterfly orchid, Morgan's Hill Nature Reserve, Wiltshire



Common spotted-orchid, Morgan's Hill Nature Reserve, Wiltshire



Yellow rattle, a semi-parasitic wildflower, feeds on the roots of grasses. It gets its name from the rattle of the seeds in the seed-pod.



The rich sward of the chalk downlands of Wiltshire - common spotted-orchid, salad burnet, silverweed, meadow buttercup... a wildflower carpet



Red campion in flower with black bryony climbing up the tree

Taking photos is easy. Now comes the difficult bit...