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"
