Tableau

I have to choose a title for the installation for the MA show.  Although my project is focussed on English countryside the Cuerden Psalter is thought to possibly have been made by French craftsmen as it shows considerable French influence.  I have decided on tableau -  

A group of models or motionless figures representing a scene from a story or from history; a tableau vivant.

Origin:  late 17th century (in the sense 'picture', figuratively 'picturesque description'): from French, literally 'picture', diminutive of table.

June - mowing with a scythe - Bell Sykes Meadows

The 'labour of the month' for June is frequently depicted as a figure mowing grass with a scythe, to make hay.  Lancashire's Coronation Meadow is at Bell Syke's Farm, Slaidburn within the Forest of Bowland AONB.  A variety of activities have been organised by the AONB, through the Haytime Project, including a Marvellous Meadows Day and Scything course tutored by Steve Tomlin.  So I have learnt about the grasses and wildflowers as well as drawing the mowing of the meadow.

Pastoral Plays

Having made the grass figures they demanded to be allowed to interact with another.  I was reminded of a few grainy sepia photos of Pastoral Plays put on at Mottisfont Abbey (probably between the wars?) in which the village children took part, dressed up as fairy folk and flowers.  D's Gran had told me that she had deliberately fainted so that she was taken inside (into the Whistler Room) to recover.

Harry Becker

Having signed up to join the scything course at Slaidburn I started looking at drawings and paintings of folk scything.  Harry Becker (1865 - 1928), a Suffolk artist, made hundreds of drawings, paintings and prints of agricultural labour - including mowing.  They all have an enormous immediacy about them.

Pressing plants

I have always seen pressed flowers as individual specimens, as in herbariums, or, sometimes in a carefully organised arrangement in a picture frame.  What happens if one presses flowers en masse - as one experiences them in a verge or hedgerow?

May - We Go Hawking

The 'occupation of the month' for May, depicted in the Cuerden Psalter, is a man on horseback with a falcon on his right hand.  Sometimes sheep-shearing is the image for May.  I was surprised at how much falconry activity is going on in Lancashire right now.

At Cuerden Valley May Fair on Sunday there were flying displays and the opportunity to look more closely at a range of Cuerden Birds of Prey. I was able to set up my easel and draw them, inside the walled orchard.

There was a moment when Chris, one of the falconers, sat quietly talking to one of the Harris Hawks.

A is for Ash

Of all the prunings gathered during March it is the knobbly twigs from the upper branches of an old ash tree that came down in Miller Wood that I've most wanted to use. . . .