Dove Cottage Garden
Night Paintings
These pictures are the result of several night painting sessions in Dove Cottage garden. They consider the passage of time and transition moments, the magic of the gloaming and the silence of nighttime. You can read more about the process of painting at night in my blogpost here The paintings on this page form part of a wider enquiry into creative process which you can also read more about on the 'blog' page.
Snippets of Time
These small studies were made in Dove Cottage garden, the home of William and Dorothy Wordsworth. Painted on the spot at different times of day throughout the year they are like snippets of time noting the changing rhythms of the garden. These are a small selection of a larger series, all painted from the same bench.
Works on Paper
Watercolour drawings made in the garden echo the flow of words and marks in Wordsworth's manuscripts. I used a concertina sketchbook to chart these garden rhythms. The format allows time to be an element in the work as it flows across a long piece of paper (70 pages). The folds are sometimes worked across and sometimes act as a natural stop. It is double sided and can be 'read' in any direction. The nature of the book means that associations and links can be made across time, as one page happily falls open next to another which might have been painted 2 months before.
Watch a short video I recorded with the Wordsworth Trust talking about my time spent in the garden here
