Winter Blues..Pruning Back

Winter is fast upon us, yet beauty can still be found in the wonderful changing skies as the light filters through the trees.

I am planning projects through to 2018 yet, as with the burgeoning garden I also need to 'prune back' on some things. Journal updates on this Magpie blog will be cut back. Regular updates on work, inspiration and general news will still continue on my main blog and Facebook page

I have always loved the views of the trees through my window as they change through the season. I have woken up to them for over thirty five years.

Love the starlings when they come to visit the trees.

So now I am experimenting we ways of interpreting the trees as I see everyday.

Not sure how it will all end up but her is a sneak peak of trees in progress based on snippets caught through the blinds (thankyou to Sheilagh Dyson for the pics)

Last words to the artist Paul Nash as this month marks the end of the Battle of the Somme::

'the most broken trees even had sprouted somewhere and in the midst, from the depth of the wood’s bruised heart poured out the throbbing song of a nightingale. Ridiculous mad incongruity! One can’t think which is the more absurd, the War or Nature…(Nash 1948, 187)

Paul Nash We are Making a New World



Fen, Land, Trees and Parks

I have been out and about recently and looking forward to seeing my family in Norfolk,East Anglia over the New Year. 

Marsh Grass Cas Holmes (commission for a retirement present)

3 December saw the 175th birthday Octavia Hill! another East Anglian - National Trust co-founder, visionary, tireless champion of green, open spaces for everyone.Born in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire (1838). When she was 26, she established her first low-income housing project in the slums off of London's Marylebone Road. She also came to see the importance of open spaces after seeing the cramped and overcrowded conditions in which the city's poor were living. She campaigned for the preservation of, as she put it, "a few acres here and there-the hill top enables the Londoner to rise above the smoke, to feel a refreshing air for a little time and to see the sun setting in coloured glory which abounds so in the Earth God made." With that goal in mind, she co-founded Britain's National Trust for Places of Historic Interest and Natural Beauty in 1895. This year marks the 100th anniversary of her death; when she died in 1912, the National Trust had 713 members; it now has 4 million.
Octavia Hill, who said, "The need of quiet, the need of air, the need of exercise [...] the sight of sky and of things growing seem human needs common to all."

Wicken Fen, the first nature reserve acquired by the National Trust- in 1899. Photo by John Hughes, Wicken Fen ranger. www.nationaltrust.org.uk/wicken-fen/

I recently had a visit to the Savill and Heather Gardens part of the Windsor Great Parks. There is still a lot of colour in winter. Loved the 'River of Grass'. It is often difficult to get the time just to 'look' and enjoy the time to investigate something new.

Loved how the spade looks like a miniature landscape

And a reminder that Spring is on its way.

Finally a sketch of Norfolk  reeds and a sketch of grasses by the Stour bring Norfolk and Kent together. You can see more at my exhibition at The Beaney which is on until 12th January.