MARCH
"Spring greens, Doddington.." Acrylic on board 10x10"
WINTER - January
Trees along the drive, January snow..
Background
Doddington Place Gardens, home of the Oldfield family, sits midway between Faversham and Sittingbourne on the brow of a valley surrounded by wooded countryside. Its ten acres of landscaped gardens border woodlands, orchards and farmland - they encompass a wide variety of different gardening styles, specimen trees and extensive, beautiful yew hedges. The grounds are divided up into separate walks and gardens, each with their own unique character and seasonal aspect.
The intention in taking up a years residency at Doddington is fairly simple - to create a body of work, recording in drawings, paintings and words the gardens' seasonal progress through the year. These works will be posted here on the blog, as well as Twitter and Instagram - this gives me an opportunity to show sketches, work in progress and how these rough thumbnails might develop into more finished pieces (or not). Hopefully this opportunity to share my working practice might be of interest to some who follow my work as well as giving me the chance to look at it afresh.
BEGINNINGS...
Drawing
Drawing is fundamental to everything that I do as an artist. It's the default that underlies all other creative activity - the manipulation of colour, tone and mark making in the paintings springs from these initial, simple investigations with sketchbook, pencil and charcoal.. These drawings might simply be a means of gathering information as preparation for a painting, a brief notation to memorise a fleeting idea or an exercise for their own sake, a way of familiarising myself with a subject. These initial drawings are on a fairly intimate scale, small diary entries in a hardback sketchbook or on loose sheets of paper or card clipped to a board. I use pencil, ink, charcoal, pastel, whatever works - ultimately there is no set way of working, a result of years of using whatever comes to hand... I prefer the options that using a variety of media gives me, in terms of mark making, tonal effects and dealing with scale.
This then was my way of becoming acquainted with the garden. Despite a bout of post Christmas ill health delaying proceedings January did not disappoint on the weather front. Some heavy frosts and a decent blanketing of snow (helped by Doddington's elevated position) showed the gardens and surrounding landscape stripped back to the bone. Frozen ponds, silver birches frail against snow flecked yews and "century wide" oak and beech along the drive, bare branches silhouetted in the light of a blazing sunset across the valley. I love this time of year for working - hard light, stark contrasts and silhouettes, despite the frostbitten fingers..
From the sketchbook - the gardens in Winter
"Silver birch in the snow.." Acrylic on board 10x10"
"Winter sun..." Mixed media on paper 12x12"
"Treeline.." Acrylic on board 10x10"
These drawings and small paintings have been supplemented by larger pieces using watercolour and gouache, looking from Doddington out over the valley, field and woodland layering to the horizon.
These skeches were then reworked on a more intimate scale into finished paintings..
"Late sun across the valley #1" Acrylic on board 10x10"
"Late sun across the valley #2" Acrylic on board 10x10"
WINTER - February
SNOWDROPS
“Solitary firstling,
Coming in the cold time...”
'Snowdrops at Doddington' Mixed media 12x12"
Poised between Winter and Spring, ghostlike patches of snowdrops put on their display in February, outriders of warmer weather to come. Steadfast in the calendar, snowdrops seem to define some sort of pivot in the year, a nod towards distant Summer, however remote..
Pencil 11x11"
Pencil 11x11"
Pencil 11x11"
Pencil 11x11"
They are firmly embedded in our culture, in literature, poetry and folklore. Colourful country alias' abound - Candlemas Bells, Mary's taper, Snow piercer, February fairmaids, Dingle-dangle.. Surprisingly they were not recorded until relatively late as a wild species -
"We look on it as a wild flower, yet most of it's colonies probably began as garden escapes. It nay not even be a British native, despite it's seemingly ancient pedigree."
Richard Mabey
Their wintry cadence is captured by Ted Hughes in his poem "Snowdrop" : "Her pale head heavy as metal.." but maybe poet Alice Oswald should have the last word, from her collection "Weeds and Wild Flowers" :
"Yes, she's no more now than a drop of snow on a green stem - her name is now her calling.... But what a beauty, what a mighty power Of patience kept intact is now in flower."
Watercolour 15x15"
Mixed media 10x12"
Watercolour 10x10"
