‘A solitary heron,
silver grey, his stature great,
resides within the river village,
old man hunched and scouring,
bending legs to catch fish stirring,
face intent and gaunt and grave,
the pin persistence of his eyes
is trained to strike, devour, digest.
He is a noble fisherbird,
the fine line of his feathers
etched in wisdom…’
Heron – K. S. Moore
The river, already my old friend, has become even more of a sanctuary, and I cherish it… Winter gives way to Spring and life stirs… Marauding ducks harass the moorhens, who strut like sergeant majors along the bank, squawking their discontent…. crows pass overhead, cawing to each other…and a lone buzzard circles, mewing in the wind… and in the liminal spaces between air, vegetation and water, stalks a heron, beady-eyed, beak poised… silently keeping just that step ahead of me as I walk along the opposite bank…(hence the slightly fuzzy photograph above……)
‘A good river is nature’s life work in song,’
Mark Helprin
The river changes daily; from a mirror’d surface with razor-sharp reflections, through gentle ripples to more turbulent waters, pewter ribbons, waves sweeping the banks…a metaphor for life….
Water is endlessly fascinating to me, in all its various guises, and someone else who has been inspired by water in the landscape is poet Simon Armitage…
The Stanza Stones Trail runs through 47 miles of the Pennine region, and along its route are 6 poems carved into stone, each telling of water in its differing forms; The Snow Stone, The Rain Stone, The Mist Stone, The Dew Stone, the Puddle Stones and The Beck Stones…
Although there are beautiful phrases and lines in each, I think The Rain Stone poem is my favourite…
‘Be glad of these freshwater tears,
Each pearled droplet some salty old sea-bullet
Air-lifted out of the waves,
Then laundered and sieved,
Re-cast as a soft bead and returned
And no matter how much it strafes or sheets,
It is no mean feat to catch one
raindrop in the mouth,
To take one drop on the tongue, tasting
Cloud pollen, grain of the heavens, raw sky
Let it teem, up here where the front of
the mind distils the brunt of the world,’
Simon Armitage
…and, once restrictions are lifted, and life returns to a semblance of normality, or whatever the new normal will become, the trail is somewhere I would love to explore…
Walking is vital to me, and, perhaps because we are unable to go far at the present time, I have been drawn back to ‘Wanderlust’ by Rebecca Solnit…
Walking is a form of meditation for me, and I am lucky that I have such a wonderful space so close by…
‘The rhythm of walking generates a kind of rhythm of thinking, and the passage through a landscape echoes or stimulates the passage through a series of thoughts. This creates an odd consonance between internal and external passage, one that suggests that the mind is also a landscape of sorts and that walking is one way to traverse it…And so one aspect of the history of walking is the history of thinking made concrete – for the motions of the mind cannot be traced, but those of the feet can,’ (p.5 & 6, Wanderlust, R. Solnit)
From the ancient Greeks, Romantic poets, authors and latter-day thinkers, Solnit draws together ‘A History of Walking’…from pilgrimages to protest marches, from landscape to urban, she examines the significance of ‘walking’…
‘Walking has created paths, roads, trade routes, generated local and cross-continental senses of place; shaped cities, parks, generated maps, guidebooks, gear, and further afield, a vast library of walking stories and poems of pilgrimages, mountaineering expeditions, meanders, and summer picnics. The landscapes, urban and rural, gestate the stories, and the stories bring us back to the sites of this history,’ (p.2, Wanderlust, R. Solnit)
In last week’s ‘Something for the Weekend’ post I highlighted Norman Ackroyd as being one of my favourite artists, and regular readers will know that Robert MacFarlane is one of my favourite authors…so how wonderful that BBC Radio 4 is re-broadcasting the episode of ‘Only Artists‘ where these two are in conversation…
Claire Leach, this week’s ‘Instagram Artist of the Week’, is also inspired by the landscape – her favourite area being the Forest of Dean…a beautiful area of ancient forest on the English/Welsh border…
Claire has tried many artistic mediums including photography, ceramics and painting. She always saw herself as a painter but during the second year of her Fine Art degree at the University of Gloucester, she started ‘making more and more pencil drawings, culminating in a final degree show full of pencil drawings inspired by landscape and nature.’
Claire admits that many of her drawings are inspired by the Forest of Dean; it’s a place she visited regularly as a child, ‘enjoying weekends cycling along muddy tracks, walking in the woods and canoeing down the River Wye.’ She finds it an endlessly magical place, ‘full of adventure and happy memories.’
Claire produces the most incredibly detailed drawings, of which I am in awe of; neither my patience or lack of, nor my rheumatic fingers would allow me to create in this way!
Claire has a wide-ranging list of favourite artists; from Claude Monet and the French Impressionists, Peter Doig and David Hockney, as well as printmakers, Norman Ackroyd and Emma Stibbon and not forgetting Tacita Dean and Tracey Emin…
In common with a lot of artists, Claire would love a ‘beautiful studio space, with lots of natural light, big windows with far-reaching views and a designated place to make a mess without guilt.’ In reality, she lives in a small flat, without space for a permanent studio, making do with ‘storing materials on a trolley and working from a small table,’ – but she still manages to produce delicate, intricate drawings…drawings that pull you, the viewer, in to have a closer look, to see what small details you can spot…
I love Claire’s work; it speaks of someone who really looks closely at nature, taking in the often overlooked corners…do take a look at her Instagram feed…it is full of the most wonderful pen and ink artworks…
For now, it’s back to where I started…water, and the river…
‘…where water unbinds
hangs at the waterfall’s face, and
just for that one, stretched
white moment
become lace,’
The Beck – Simon Armitage
I hope you have found something to interest and inspire you,
Take care,
C
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Carolyn J Roberts 