Abstract Landscape Painter. Rural Dweller. Lover of Modernist Art and Design.
Trees & Twilight
Today I’ve been over to Stoke-by-Nayland to drop off some work for Cobbold & Judd’s week-end show. It was a beautiful clear blue morning. I had a warm welcome from Emma and a cheery chat with Richard, before taking Millie for a walk around by the church. There are some wonderful old medieval houses just opposite and adjacent to it. It’s amazing to think that they are simply family homes, as it is like walking around on a film set! Opposite too, is one of my favourite gardens. The seemingly low wall beside the path drops away at least three metres on the other side to reveal a very large and well-kept fruit and vegetable garden which is also populated by many mature trees, the most beautiful of which, in my opinion, is an enormous fig tree that grows up and over the old garden wall. I have no idea who lives there, but whoever they are they have constructed something that I find both beautiful and inspiring.
The Garden, is one of the subjects that I return to again and again in my paintings. I find them fascinating, not least for the wealth of sinuous pattern to be found among the branches and stems. Now that winter is almost here these patterns are becoming more visible as the leaves continue to fall. The magnificent fig tree itself had become a curving pale grey network, dotted with hundreds of small bud shapes where the figs clung to the branches.
As the days shorten, my afternoon walk with Millie has become a twilight walk. I’ve been appreciating the trees in this light too, as they turn into shadows and divide the sky into segments. There seem to have been so may beautiful full moons this year, and during these early evening outings I have photographed the silver-white disc shining through the net of branches. No matter how many times I see it, I still find it fascinating and awe-inspiring. At a bonfire party last week-end I took a photograph to record its appearance with the structure of a fire-illuminated tree.
I can see that the moon is going to continue to appear in many paintings throughout the winter. It always seems such a hopeful and magical thing.
All text & images ©2014 Carol Saunderson
http://anartistinthelandscape.blogspot.co.uk/
