Visit to the Seekers Trust

It was good to have some time at the Seekers Trust in Addington recently. The little flats are set in gardens with a wood next door to explore and a large pond. The seekers website here.

I have been going for some years for solitary retreats and creative stays and appreciate the healing chapels and Angelic connections.

Ruth and I went this time, armed with loads of water soluble media and my cameras. I enjoyed drawing with the water soluble crayons, pens, and coloured Inktense crayons.

As well as the woods and rose garden I drew the cherry tree outside our flat and used the spiritual connections and library to draw alchemical notes and Buddhas.

We also went to Aylesford Priory, and I was drawn to all the ancient trees around the site including a huge plane tree and fir at the back of the Priory. Their old barn, now a cafe and shop, was being re thatched, interesting to watch the craftsmen at work.

We came away with some pottery from the Aylesford Pottery founded by David Leach in the 1950's

Studying Sunflowers

My daughter Ruth bought a lovely bunch of sunflowers this week. I have been enjoying looking at them, taking a few photos and doing some sketches.

We also had a sunflower self seeded in the path at the front of the house, it seemed right to leave it to flower.

As the weather is getting colder, the sunflowers bring a sense of warmth and summer in the house.

I used my water colour pencils and pen and ink for the sketches and some digital processing for the photographs.

Visit to Avebury

I spent a lovely few days in Avebury, Wiltshire, with Ruth. We took the scenic route along the South Downs to Winchester, then up to Marlborough and then on to Avebury.

Beautiful countryside  all along the route, rolling hills and fields, avenues of trees and pretty little villages. I realized that I hadn't spent much time recently in the country and it felt like I was drinking in refreshment and happiness.

We were staying in Avebury it's self at Manor Farm. The village is very small, with a pub, community shop and post office and another shop selling books and craft and crystals.

It is also much smaller than it was before Alexander Keiller bought Avebury in 1934. He knocked down buildings as they became empty, to clear space for the stone circles. The National Trust also followed suit till the 1960's.

Keiller was though responsible for excavating the buried stones, raising them again and setting concrete markers where he thought other stones would have been. Making Avebury the  World Heritage site it is today. With the archaeologist foreman, William Young, Keiller also, dug down into the ditch around the site and explored the area, uncovering items now in the museum.

I really enjoyed my time around the stones, drawing and taking photographs. We also visited the West Kennet long barrow on top of a chalk ridge overlooking Silbury Hill.

I was struck by the positive energy of the site and feeling of connection to the landscape.
And I will be working on more art works from my time there.

Margate Seascapes and Sketches

 

I've been down to the sea front and harbour, taking photographs and doing some sketches.
The colours in the sea have been beautiful this week.

I've been using up paint from my palette to cover some of my sketchbook pages with tones of blue and using white pen to draw on top of it. I've also been following the contours of the waves in my drawings and water colour sketches.

I like the effect of this and will paint a few more sheets with different shades of blue to work on.

Retreat at the Seekers Trust

I had a few days solitary retreat at the Seekers Trust as a meditation and art  space. The Seekers Trust website here
It was good to be back amongst the gardens and wood around the site.
They have been refurbishing the flats and have a new café and office space. There were bluebells and forget- me -nots in the woods  and mock orange by my door.

I was lucky to have good weather after the first day with showers and I took my canvases into the wood to do some drawings and back to the flat to paint them.

Some of my favourite trees remain in the wood, though some have fallen down or been cut down, such is the ecology of the woodland.  Many birds still around, lovely to hear them singing most of the day.

I was up at dawn on one day to hear and record the dawn chorus, I love that sense of being surrounded by bird song. It's always amazing how much sound can come out of such tiny birds.

I am still working on some paintings of the woods and church on the hill and on the photographs I took there. I'll upload them when I've finished them.

Curiosity exhibition and sketches

I caught the last day of the Curiosity exhibition at the Turner Contenporary Gallery on Sunday.

I had chance to see the amazing glass sea creatures again and Turner's watercolour studies of birds.

I also watched Tacita Dean's films one of ,which was a film of the artist Claes Oldenberg Manhatton Mouse Museum in his studio, cleaning and re arranging his collection of objects.

I am always pleased to see other artists studios and what they keep in them, and especially if they seem to collect all sorts of strange objects.. Claes Oldenberg had many such objects from platform boots and a childs trainer, to a mug with an apple core on it, antique perfume bottles and

He moved around on an wheeled office chair, dusting the pieces with a paintbrush and moving some from box shelf to box shelf.

A fascinating study and I was pleased to see it. Often I don't seem to have the time or energy to watch films as well as see exhibitions, so it's good I live close to the gallery.

Tacita Dean's other film, Prisoner Pair was a close up of 2 pears in a bottle of Schnapps, sunlight falls across the bottle and casts shadows, bubbles and small pieces of pear move in the liquid. Strangely mesmerising. I was glad to have watched them before the exhibition closed.

Out side the gallery I sat down for a few minutes taking a few photogrphs and sketching.

The next exhibition at the Turner Contemporary has Sketches from Turner and Constable, which looks great and opens on the 5th October 2013.

Wild man life drawing at Turner Contemporary

The Turner Contemporary gallery held a couple of Wild man drawing sessions last week.
I managed to go along on Thursday and join in with the session.

I was intrigued with the subject matter, and indeed there was actually a wildman and his partner and baby, all dressed in a range of furs and fabrics.

They posed behind a cloth leaving us with great shadows to draw and also came out for us to draw.

Most of the poses were very short but I enjoyed working with my drawing pen and seeing the adults and children working along side with me.

The Turner Gallery does put on very good workshops and sessions, a lot of which are open for adults with and without children, so its worth looking at their programme.  Website here http://www.turnercontemporary.org/