Another sub-zero morning. The snow that fell over the weekend is still laying, compacted and icy but there is a thin bright sunlight and another opportunity to stretch my legs; taking the St Swithun's Way out of Winchester for a mile or two along the western edge of Winnall Moors. Birds are easy to spot against the whiteness of the landscape and show themselves easily as they busily search for food.
The track past the allotments and desirable north Winchester residences leads to a footbridge at a farm gate. Beyond this the path is narrow between fence and stream. Un-gloving my hands I make a quick sketch of the northern end of Winnall Moors.
The fingers are too cold to allow more than a sketchy impression. A magnificent Buzzard quarters the field to my left, close enough to see the colours and patterns on its broad variegated wings and fanned tail.
I'm reflecting on my studio output - not enough for my liking - and wondering where my work will take me next.
I have made some charcoal and oil 'paintings' on primed paper experimenting with observational drawing/layering and surface.
Quick drawing in charcoal, achieved with a few strokes of the charcoal stick over an old piece of letter-press, primed with acrylic primer and washed over with oil washes, diluted with turps.
(From overhead, a female Sparrowhawk flies down the hedgerow and settles in a tree about 80 metres ahead. She is looking at me. I am looking at her).
I used a similar approach in the red painting - then layered over the top some text and drawing in crayon - based upon images from the '15-day process' project and woodcut/letterpress work.
An experiment with superimposing monotype-drawing onto an oil-painted canvas, again there is a debate about surface and what comes in front of what. Conventional wisdom would suggest that blue should recede and the warmer orange should advance but this is reversed here. The type of line and application dictates which colour appears to be 'on top' of the other.
The next monotype over a dramatic painted canvas took this idea further. 'GREENWOODPECKER' Has been a constant companion for a few months. Once the time has been invested in carving letters for a woodcut block it is hard not to use them everywhere. In this case I reversed the text onto a photocopy and then drew onto the back of the canvas, laid over almost-dry relief ink to impress the letters and drawing onto the surface of the canvas.
(I think Long-tailed Tits are among my favourite birds. Matt Sewell has described them as 'tiny clouds in track-suits'. In the winter they hang around in gangs and are constantly on the move. A bunch of them is feeding close to where I stand.)
There is a long way to go in thinking-through my creative process. In the last three months it has taken-in aspects of the random to generate compositional strategies selecting elements by random numerical process. I made some progress when I tried to scale this up to a room-sized installation.
This brought together a lot of the ideas into one place. I need to extend this to bigger work and also to extend the vocabulary of my mark-making to emphasise and contrast the variation between fine-drawing and gestural painting, clean lines and dribbly splashes of colour. I was pleased when I took the sheets of paper off the wall that some stood up as compositions in their own right.
Reminiscent of Freud's work 'on dreams' - the image is made up of disparate, unrelated elements.
(Returning across the playing fields, onto the Wildlife Reserve, a Water Rail is squealing in the snow-draped sedge-bed. Although I have seen them elsewhere, I have never set eyes on a Water Rail on Winnall Moors. I hear it often but it's just about being in the right place at the right time - and being there regularly helps increase the chances).
I am really pleased that this random-process drawing and the small monotype on canvas will be included in an exhibition in Bracknell, in February - about which more later.
The other thing I am contemplating is how walking and experiencing the landscape influences and informs my work. There is a conference in Sunderland this summer that looks at this subject. I want to investigate this more closely and integrate my outdoor and studio work.
(39 bird species found in a two-hour walk, not bad - but several obvious suspects are missing - House Sparrow, Starling, Reed Bunting, Rook!)
While I have admiration for the psychogeographic urbanism of Laura Oldfield Ford; her reflection on edge-places and the built environment in decline, I have to admit that I am a country-dweller; that most unfashionable sub-species - a villager! Although I love the excitement of the city, taking a flaneur's perambulation around Southwark, or sharing a few pints of Pride in the pub, the natural environment excites me more. Not that our countryside is really 'natural', admittedly, since we have a man-made/managed and farmed environment in almost all parts of England. Even so it has its own edge-places and habitats in decline. Farming and its impact on the landscape is an interesting area for political and social investigation. Naturally conservative and reactionary, the lifestyle and issues of the farming and countryside communities appear to be outside the scope of contemporary art. Is this really the case and if so, why is this? The idea of 'rural idyll' is an Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century delusion. Life in the country was always hard and bitter for the majority, riven as it is with inequality and injustice in the distribution of resources. Nonetheless, a sense of well-being and tranquility it to be found by pulling-on walking boots, taking a pair of binoculars and watching a winter-flock of finches feeding on a stubble field - or up on The Berkshire Downs, seeing an over-wintering Short-eared Owl scudding along the grassy tops of The Ridgeway.
And so it was that I found the opportunity this morning to get out from my studio and onto the Winnall Moors wildlife reserve, on the western edge of the South Downs National Park. A small area of reedbeds and wet woodland beside the River Itchen, I see Winnall Moors daily just outside my studio window and on a clear, bright morning such as today's, it calls to me.
With diffused sunlight shining through the bare branches of the willows and alders, the habitat required nothing of me other than to be left as I found it.
It was very cold out, just above freezing, and I sketched with un-gloved fingers for as long as I could bear it. A Long-tailed Tit flitted across the tree-line and, as expected, was soon followed by seven or eight of its friends and family.
The 'stuck-pig squeal' of a Water Rail pierced the reed bed; and on artificial board-walks, chicken-wired to avoid slips (and insurance claims), a lone jogger puffed past, exhaling rhythmically, in time with his iPod.
Across the Itchen, people were at work on the Winnall Trading Estate, Lesser Black-backed Gulls perched in their rooftops.
Leaving the wildlife reserve at the northern end, my route crossed the footbridge to the playing fields, where dog-walkers were emptying their pets. Beyond the rugby pitches, the St Swithun's Way leads north beside a stream towards 'The Worthys' and Itchen Abbass. This is the first stage of the ancient pilgimage route from Winchester to Canterbury; a walk I completed last spring (see my book here!)
In the summer this stream is a good place to see Water Voles doggy-paddling across the water, their round noses poking up for air. They were probably cosy and asleep in their burrows this morning. Two Chiffchaffs were flitting silently among branches at the water's edge. Normally thought of as a herald of spring,with their slap-dash, chiff-chaff song, these neat little birds are now wintering in Britain in increasing numbers.
Further along the path, the scene opens out to the right across the wetland and grazing land of the reserve.
Two Little Egrets were fishing the streams across the northern end of Winnall Moors, and a flock of Lapwing jumbled across the sky. The path reached farmland on the left, where a hedgerow was filled with brilliantly-coloured Yellowhammers, reflecting the sunshine. By this time my body indicated it was time to return to civilisation (or at least a lavatory) and so I turned and made my way back towards the studio. I had seen only 34 bird species (obvious absences including Reed Bunting, Starling and House Sparrow) but it had been an ideal morning for being outdoors with sketchpad and binoculars.
