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Looking at pictures of trees and foliage, I was reminded of the documentary David Hockney: A Bigger Picture . In the film, we see Hockney, having left life in Los Angeles, standing on the grass verges of Yorkshire country lanes with canvas and easel, painting the landscape in all weathers.
Here he has chosen a common sight of the English countryside, the hedgerow. I am interested in it because it is not a conventionally picturesque rural scene and could be unremarkable. He has included the road and a grass verge. It reminds me of a photograph and you get the sense that you are standing in the location. In fact, anyone could park at this spot and take a look. It has an unconventional composition and we look dead on at the elderflower which takes over the middle area. The simple house is tucked to the side.
Any hedgerow is incredibly complex. This painting makes me think of the physical energy of the artist, (some of the paintings were done at great speed) and very intense study and ‘looking’ to make sense of the foliage and light on that particular day. There is also a great feeling of pleasure at that July day.
>>LALouver gallery
I have been looking at this painting by Cézanne to understand how to give trees their three dimensional form.
The large area of shadow works in two ways. It pushes the tree in the foreground towards us and sends the smaller tree across the fields into the distance. This is with very simple means, may be two or three tones of leaf green. Light falls in a column on the large left hand tree, on its leaves and on the trunk, with a shadowy gap which sets the leaves still further towards us.
It is a very unsentimental and it makes you feels as if you are standing there in the countryside.
The Avenue at the Jas de Bouffan. Paul Cézanne 1868-70. Tate/National Gallery.
A selection of Chinese Qing Dynasty snuff bottles caught my eye. They are made of a variety of natural materials; turquoise, glass, clay, jade, silver, pearl and the blue one is decorated with kingfisher feathers set in silver. They look like they would be a pleasure to hold. The imagery comes from nature; dragons, waves, a goat, a landscape, flowers, stems and a lemon. Like kingfishers, they are small but dramatic with their daring colours and decoration.
The full set of snuff jars from the Qing Dynasty can be seen on bmimages.com
By chance, I had my squeamishness put to the test in three very different situations.
Having enjoyed Serial Mom and Hairspray, I watched This Filthy World, a one man show by the filmmaker John Waters. As he stood on the dimly lit grave yard stage set, his appearance reminded me of a Hammer horror character. He is creative, funny and clever which made it all the more challenging when he began to paint gruesome images in our minds. He was like a 17th Century libertine who played at challenging boundaries of taste and prudishness.
I was at a museum in the West Country, designed to be fun and for all the family. Leaving the sunny lawn, we were lead by a guide in period costume into gloomy reconstruction of a barber surgeon’s workshop in the 17th Century. As the guide picked up instrument after instrument, he began to elaborate on the grisly cures that were applied to the suffering. Members of the audience were laid out the operating table to aid our imaginations. More gruesome images in my mind! (I wondered, are these horrors entertaining because they are safely in the distant past?)
Next, I was visiting an exhibition dedicated to Skin, at the Wellcome Collection, an authoritative modern museum with an up market cafe. As is the curatorial policy, artworks are interspersed with objects from the collection. I skirted around the exhibits catching glimpses of skin in various states and films of oozing and cutting. That was enough.
Image: A sign pointing towards a torture exhibit in Carcassone, France.
This is one of a set of prints I am working based on the shredded paper.
Shredders have become part of the household and they reflect our concerns about identity theft and fraudsters rummaging though our rubbish bags.
The inspiration for one of the first shredders came from a pasta maker. The remnants left by the shredders come in several different shapes. Each shape represents a different level of security. In other words, some are more easily reassembled than others.
Strip- cut, cross or confetti-cut or diamond-cut particle-cut, disintegrators, hammermills, pierce and tear and grinders are the options.
At the time of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the staff of the US embassy shredded sensitive documents (strip cut) just before the building was taken over. The new Iranian government employed carpet weavers to reassemble together the ‘noodles’ that were left behind.
When Enron employees shredded incriminating documents, some of them made a mistake. They fed the documents into the shredders the wrong way so the strips followed the lines of text and the pages were much easier to reconstruct.
 
Dartmoor villages feel as if they have been built to withstand the harsh and changeable weather of the moor, even on a summer’s day. The buildings look thick walled and sturdy and the space in the streets is intimate. Here the buildings are decorated with bunting and, in a small public area, a sculpture shows appreciation for the sturdy sheep and ponies of the moor.
I took this photo on walk in Devon. A dead tree stands directly in front of a leafy one. The combination looks as if someone has split one tree down the middle, as Damien Hirst would his sheep and cows.
On this plate, the trees is painted in a similar way. The branches are drawn first, and the leaves added as if they exist only in the same plane, and not in a voluminous three dimensional space.
Dish. Charles II hiding in oak tree, flanked by lion and unicorn. English. c.1680
© The Trustees of the British Museum
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Elderflower Blossom, Kilham, July
