NUMINOUS LANDSCAPE

"The road mounts the low Downs again. The boundless stubble is streaked by long bands of purple-brown, the work of seven ploughs to which the teams and their carters, riding or walking, are now slowly descending by different ways over the slopes and jingling in the rain. Above is a Druid moor bounded by beeh-clumps, and crossed by old sunken ways and broad grassy tracks. It is a land of moles and sheep."

Above: Looking south from a field near Sutton, West Sussex.

End of Summer

The words of Edward Thomas, from his book 'The South Country', come to my mind again, as the seasons shift. In the studio work is continuing in a number of directions at once, which usually seems to be the way for me. As for exhibitions there is nothing in the pipeline at present, but so it goes sometimes. The remedy for that is always to be making. And walking. Always to be walking, and never carving that apart from the studio work. Such is our culture's propensity for doing, it is all too easy to forget that being can be a creative act, by its very nature. 

Above: Looking north west, towards Pulborough, from the top of the Downs near Storrington.

"Then there are ash trees on either side and ricks of straw wetted to an orange hue, and beyond them the open cornland, and rising out of it an all-day-long procession in the south, the great company of the Downs again, some tipped with wood, some bare; in the north, a broken chain of woods upon low but undulating land seem the vertebra: of a forest of old time stretching from east to west like the Downs."

The above photo was taken (at Bury, looking east across the Arun towards Amberley) during what was probably the longest walk I have ever undertaken; from Worthing to Lodsworth. I have a tendency to set out early, and not have a set destination, but to adjust it as I go. This is the beauty of a) not using a car, and b) some reliable public transport dotted about. There is no need travel such long distances to soak in the wonder of the hills, rivers, grass, and sky, but there is always something I enjoy about knowing the journey from one place to another has been covered and connected by my own feet. It seems to bring them closer, joins them up in my mind, particularly when both places have some kind of significance. In this case my family home, and....a brewery I love!

Housed in an old flint walled barn, making fine ales from a nearby spring water source, there is something I find almost sacramental about imbibing a drink which is rooted in that place, and made with care. Not to mention the warm welcome from attentive staff after so many hours walking. "How's the Ted Hughes book?", I was asked, that being the reading material I had with me a month previously.  

"As the sun descends the light falls on the Downs out of a bright cave in the gloomy forest of sky, and their flanks are olive and their outlines intensely clear. From one summit to another runs a string of trees like cavalry connecting one beech clump with another, so that they seem actually to be moving and adding themselves to the clumps. Above all is the abstract beauty of pure line - coupled with the beauty of the serene and the uninhabited and remote - that holds the eye until at length the hills are humbled and dispread as part of the ceremony of sunset in a tranquil, ensanguined, quietly travelling sky."

Above: Somewhere near Graffham, looking north from the Downs.

Thank you for reading