pink birds and butterly wings

the pink birds have flown and very happy they look in their new home
the golden meadows, silver birches and dancing orchards have all found new homes....thank you to everyone who made the AAF in Battersea so successful for me x

as i just wrote to the lovely keeper of the Pink Birds:

5 years ago i took the leap of faith to go full time painting .... i always knew it was the right decision for me...although difficult at times...now i feel so joyous and grateful and privileged to live where i live and have the life i have (well most of the time)

to celebrate i bought a ring......it looks like butterflies wings........i have never wanted to wear rings before but this year i gave up biting my nails

i’m not sure if it’s amethyst or fluorite but either is fine
amethyst is a stone of spirituality and contentment and fluorite is used to bring order to chaos....according to my book


actually looking around the house and studio i rather hope its fluorite

well back to work...lots to do in the next few days as more shows coming up and i have very very few paintings left

living in the forest

through every window i see the forest....and it sees me
the house faces east and west...its in a valley that runs north to south...
how different that is...
how aware of the day passing i am...from the early first light that i see bringing the forest in front of the house alive as i make my tea...tea to be drunk in bed with the forest in front of me...then down to the table where i sit at the computer....more tea as the sun reaches the deck and the still beautiful meadow....
the stargazer becomes the sun worshiper

it was a perfect time...

possibly makes sense if you listen to this...but not as often as i have i hope...

it was a perfect time,
i'm glad i spent it with you

part of a series...secret gardens.....sketches really but i dont seem to be able to sketch anything less than a metre square these days...probably destined to only be seen here on summerland

seeing the skyline

on friday i delivered painting to derbyshire....it was wonderful to see the skyline and the open spaces so different to the forest

walking through wild grasses

wild grasses is the title of the painting in the previous post...shamelessly lifted from Robyn's comment which i neglected to acknowledge, sorry about that...

anyway a keen eyed reader has spotted a fairy princess walking in the meadow, not that i believe in such things of course...

more of the same...

thank you so much for the lovely comments and emails about the golden meadow paintings. the autumn continues to glow...and the paint is flowing. here are a couple more of the latest pieces.

Birch and Bracken 100x100 cms


Wild Grasses 100x100 cms

...and sometimes there is a detail in a painting that i wish i could cut out and keep (and sometimes i do just that ...but not with this one!)


detail from Wild Grasses

the moon...

i've been thinking about the moon

it often appears in and influences my paintings. recently i found a very early painting from a time i was on an art foundation course more than 20 years ago.
i was and still am fascinated by the white horses...mainly found carved into the chalk hills of the wiltshire landscape...early land art.
the one i was particularly attracted to was at cherhill.
i recently found this painting in my old studio... its the cherhill white horse in the moonlight. for me the painting was about being restrained and being free...i believed the horse could rise from the hillside during the moonlight and gallop over the down lands...but most of the time it was contained and two dimensional in a hollow of cherhill. the painting attempts in a naive way to represent the horse carved into the land just at the point when it is touched by the moon and is becoming three dimensional.

by the light of the moon

at the time i felt my life was constrained ...but painting was a taste of freedom.

more about the white horses of wiltshire here
and another very recent moon painting on the celtic year blog

autumn gold

the wonderful autumn weather has been very conducive to painting this week...just as well as the affordable art fair in battersea park is coming up very very soon.

I have been immersed in autumn golds

golden meadow
mixed media 100 x 100 cms

autumn meadow
mixed media 100 x 100 cms

no surprise really...i don't have to look very far for inspiration...this is my meadow...it should have been cut weeks ago but i love it too much