Frost after fog + sunshine = magic

This week began grey and foggy, what few hours of daylight we get at this time of year was filtered through a double layer of dirty 'nets'. Yesterday I went for a walk with friends before having lunch in the local pub, we walked over fields frozen solid and dusted with frost – like icing sugar on a giant chocolate log cake.

In the evening I had to drive over the border into Cambridgeshire, along dark winding lanes; visibility was about 20 metres and the car warning message continuously flashed to remind me of "danger of ice" . . . it was -3C. On the way home I sensed that something strange was happening, in places the fog was becoming thinner and the trees seemed different . . . white and glittery!

This morning the fog had completely gone! Overnight all the tiny droplets of water in the air had formed ice crystals attached to every twig and leaf . . . this was a opportunity not to be missed, after breakfast I went out for a walk with my camera.

I crossed the road opposite my studio and walked down the path behind behind the village church . . .

. . . and emerged into a magical glittering ice-crystal world . . .

As I returned along the field edges I heard a strange sound – the crackling, splintering, tinkling sound of ice crystals falling from the branches high above.

The winter sun's warmth was enough to melt the crystals and they fell like snow all around me, onto the frozen ground.

Celia
x

Fen . . . it's all about how you look at it

Winter has arrived . . . in the morning the grass and roofs are white with frost and the hens' water is frozen. This morning it would have been very easy to snuggle down into the blankets and stay there – BUT is was sunny! A glorious deep blue sky and a low winter sun was just too good to waste

. . . we went for a walk . . .

Cliff is planning a route for the local walking group, for the last Sunday in the year; it's a Fen walk, so we've been checking out a network of Fen tracks and droves (after 20 years I think I've convinced him that there's more to the Fens than just flat fields).

I'm proud to say I'm a "Fenwoman; I know that may provoke snorks of derision and mentions of webbed feet and dubious ancestry, and I don't care! The Fens are unique and they are made by the people that have lived and worked there for centuries. Not just since the drainage of the Fens but Dutch drainage engineers in the 17th Century; the Fen story goes back longer than that: Medieval trading ports; Roman canals taking goods to the far reaches of empire and Neolithic fur traders all played their part.

Today, what can we see? Water held back from the land by strong straight earth banks; the long deep waterways are called 'lodes', they take water from the smaller 'dykes' and feed it into the 'levels' – those long man-made rivers that take the water to the The Wash (the large bay on the North Sea coast). East Anglia has been spared the torrential rain of recent weeks and although water levels are high there has been very little flooding. You can see the water in the lode is much higher than the fields on the right.

Fens are a landscape of air, water and earth; you have to accept that mud, "slub", "clag" is a fact of life. The beauty is in the details, you need to learn to look and to listen. The wind through the reeds which line the edge of the lodes and dykes, is like the rustle of taffeta or the whispers of a hushed crowd.

The air is rarely empty . . . skeins of migrating swans, charms of goldfinches and here – a flapping flock of lapwings cross the sky.

The grey and brown tangles of dead vegetation are alive with birds, like this female reed bunting.

And occasionally along the lode you will see a magnificent mute swan in full sail.

Have I convinced you to look at the Fens?


Celia
x

On the road again . . .

A lot has happened in the past week and a bit . . . earthquakes, tsunamis, radiation leaks, revolutions and goodness knows what else!

But not a lot has been going on in my studio because Cliff and I snuck away to chill out somewhere slightly warmer than Suffolk in mid-March . . .


. . . er well, we thought was going to be warmer!


We should have known that choosing the north coast of Tenerife was a dodgy choice for this time of year – anyhow, between the rain showers (and hail storms) we ventured out to see some wonderful views . . .


and some lovely wild flowers . . .


We strolled up and down some very very steep streets – blimey! I'm so pleased I don't have to do hill-starts like that every day :-O and admired the balconies.


The scenery was big – VERY BIG – with teeny tiny flowing plants; giant cacti; vertiginous (our book of walks used that word so often, it became our word-of-the-week) slopes; and vast volcanic rock outcrops.


On the very last day the sun came out while we were on the far north-west tip of the island – and the Atlantic waves put on a crashing, splashing show!


The rainy days were OK too (but a bit rubbish for taking photos); we found some very good restaurants and ate fish every day.


And wooo-hooo! there was a carnival . . . loads of colour and drums and Latin rhythms; marching bands and amazing costumes and floats; vehicles of all descriptions and crowds of people wearing all sorts of wacky disguises!


After four hours of wild and rumba-ing procession you can imagine the streets were a right mess – nope! the tail of the parade dealt with all that :-) A formation of road-sweepers, complete with leaf-blower wielding municipal street cleaners, salsa'd away every last bit of confetti!


So on Friday night we got back home and I had all sorts of plans to hit the ground running – then fate slammed on the breaks during the night by laying me out with a tummy bug/virus/whatever I don't know the cause – but I spent yesterday wrapped in a duvet, shivering on the sofa. Thankfully I felt much perkier this morning, in fact I was well enough to potter around in the veg patch and get the show on the road – it's good to be back :-)


Celia
x

Summer evening light

There are some landscapes that become so familiar you no longer look at them; but there are some views that, although they aren't dramatic, take on a special quality because you do see them regularly.

Last night I took my camera with me when a drove to the pilates class in a neighbouring village, I wanted to capture the view across the fields where Suffolk meets Cambridgeshire. This is one of my 'slow-burn' inspirations which will emerge into a print or painting one day; there's something about the arrangement of trees and small woods across a gently rolling eiderdown of wheat fields, side lit by the evening sunlight, that makes the space in front of me seem vast. If views where music this one for me is Vaughan Williams's 'Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis' and I imagine myself taking giant steps over the fields as light as air.


On my way home two hours later, the sun has just dipped below the horizon and clouds are rolling in from the north-east. You can just see a fine crescent moon on the edge of the cloud.


The horizon glows pink, red and gold silhouetting the squatting woods that seem to nestle down lower into to the wheat fields as if settling down to sleep.


It's frustrating that photographs (unless taken by a master of landscape photography) flatten and shrink the view. But I can use these to recollect the images in my head.

En plein air

summer•shorts no:03

Did you see the BBC TV programme about David Hockney painting in Yorkshire*? I thought, 'I don't do enough of that - looking and painting outside in the open air'. Art historians call it en plein air, I don't think Hockney uses that phrase. I was struck by the fact that the wild young man of 'Swinging London' and Californian pool-sides had come home; he is a dour, opinionated Yorkshireman in a flat cap and probably always has been – that made me smile.

Today I took my lunch, paints and sketchbook out into the fields. This is a route we walk often and over the past few weeks I've been 'mind-sketching' the softly undulating fields and placing the woods and copses within the space. I'd thought about the colours changing as the summer approaches its climax. It was like a niggling itch in my mind – I needed to put brush to paper.

This is today's painting of Littley Wood under a sky full of scudding clouds.

* the programme is available to watch online until 4 August