Blaue Blume - A limited edition book by Inky Leaves

A collection of floral paintings that allows you look closer at the mysticism of nature.

WE ARE NOW LIVE!

Support my Kickstarter project here:

Blaue Blume

Now is your chance to help me turn my latest flower book into a reality whilst also being one of the few who could own a copy. You might remember me my previous Kickstarter Project 'Leafscape', which sold out in the first week - (thank you)!! Since Leafscape, I have been immersed in the colour blue, travelling the world looking for it's rare blue flowers. And now, eight years on, I have amassed a collection which would look fantastic in a book.

If successful, this Kickstarter Project will help me to produce 500 copies (1000 if we get more support) of a beautifully laid-out book and soundtrack that tells the 'Blue Flower' story; marking a further historical moment in the lifeline of botanical art and flower painting. The book will include all of my paintings along with the story with lay-flat binding. It is a unique opportunity to own a piece of my art and a real collector's piece. You'll have all of my blue paintings in one place. The hardback Leafscape books from 2017 now sell for £500 each and are highly sought after.

What will the book look like?

This book will be limited to only 500 copies and will have a blue linen hardcover with embossed platinum foil text on the front and sewn, lay-flat binding to create a highly collectable volume. It will come inside a blue velvet covered slipcase box. The book itself will measure 215 x 300mm (8.35 x 12 in), consist of approximately 80-90 pages and will be printed using a digital press. The book will feature an introduction written by the artist in both English and Spanish and will have a full colour plate of every painting in the collection. Included with this book will be a copy of the environmental soundtrack. Each book will be signed and numbered by the artist and can be personalised at your request. It will be posted packaged like the Leafscape books - inside a bespoke cardboard post box, surrounded by foam insert for protection.

Support my Kickstarter project here:

Blaue Blume

What is 'Blue Flower'?

'Blue Flower' is my way of continuing to develop my ideas around the axis of flower painting and how to bring it into the 21st Century with the use of sound and paint. The collection documents my journey and quest post Leafscape. My driving ambition has always been to show the world how beautiful nature is in unexpected ways. In all of my work, I try to give plants a voice and a soul. I was inspired by Novalis' book 'Blaue Blume', which documents a young man walking across the Alps in search of a blue flower that he dreamt of. Something about this really stirred in my soul and I thought: 'why don't I do something similar, but make my quest more global?' So, I did, and since then, I have been travelling across the globe in my search for the unattainable. Teaching how to paint as I go to fund my trips.

“It is not the treasures,” he said to himself, “that have stirred in me such an unspeakable longing; I care not for wealth and riches. But that blue flower I do long to see; it haunts me and I can think and dream of nothing else. “I never felt so before; it seems as if my past life had been a dream, or as though I had passed in sleep into another world, for in the world that I used to know who would have troubled himself about a flower? Indeed, I never heard tell of such a strange passion for a flower.” - Novalis

Due to the lockdowns during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, the project came to an unexpected halt. I had to cancel my tours of Canada, South Africa, Japan and Romania. I was fairly devastated by this; I had so much I wanted to explore. I ended up having to sell my works ahead of time to keep financially afloat, which meant there cannot be an exhibition as previously hoped. Alas, akin to Novalis' unfinished novel - Blue Flower will in that sense remain unfinished. I rather like this. There is something otherworldly and remote about the colour blue. It represents our dreams and the unattainable. You never arrive in Blue. Like the horizon - it never ends.

Please consider supporting my project in any way you can. I am working with some fairly unforgiving algorithms, so if you can share this campaign on your social media I would be very grateful. You can buy a pack of 10 greetings cards for 15 pounds, or a book.  If you need any help navigating Kickstarter to reserve your book, message me or comment below. 

If you are accessing Kickstarter from your phone, the book is listed under 'Rewards'.

Support my Kickstarter project here:

Blaue Blume

Support my Kickstarter project here:

Blaue Blume

Thank you in advance for your support. It means a lot.

Film of my life as a painter

 

Filmed in my Spanish residence and studio:

www.casadelamorera.com

Becoming Blue XI: Epoca Blu

"Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living."
Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

It is the morning, and like all mornings I wake up and check on all my seedlings. I feel like the Little Prince and his flower on his lonely little planet. Every morning since October I have walked onto the barren, icy roof terrace in my bare feet to inspect the moist, dewy pots for any signs of life. It's become a habit. Thing is, I secretly know that there is life under the dark soil. A few months ago the wind and rain had exposed a thick white searching root in one of the conker pots. I quickly covered it up again, worried it would get dry. This particular conker still hasn't sent an upward shoot, but to my delight, another one has! The conkers I planted in October on my birthday are now growing.

It's been a funny few days here in Spain. Things haven't altered that much for me since the outbreak of Covid19. I am still in my hermetic studio, but I am aware that the entire country is in lockdown and you are not allowed to leave the house for any other reason than for food and pharmaceuticals. You can walk your dog around the block, but only one person is allowed to do this. Same with food shopping. The rules are strict, but everyone here is happy to abide by them. Spain has a huge sense of what it is to be in a community and they all look out for one another. For me, life hasn't really changed. The only alteration is that I am now no longer able to go on my daily walk in the countryside. 

'Isolation', Meconopsis - work in progress.
Watercolour, charcoal and gouche on paper.
56 x 76cm

It has been 63 years since Yves Klein painted 11 identical blue canvases for his ‘Proposte Monocrome, Epoca Blu' at the Gallery Apollinaire. For this exhibition, each canvas was painted with an ultramarine pigment which was suspended in a synthetic resin that would retain the brilliancy of the blue. Klein sought to challenge the boundaries between art and life. He posed questions concerning the nature of art, what it was, is and might be, and consequently challenged all borders and structures. The world is blue and blue has no borders and here we all are, hidden in the borders of a room, a house, a town, a country, now unable to wander. 

"Procrastination is productive and intelligent. 

Our urge to wander around instead of getting right to it is usually a signal that a deeper creative process is occurring, one that needs time we aren’t giving it." 

Chani Nicholls

"Heroes are usually wanderers, and wandering is a symbol of longing, of the restless urge which never finds its object, of nostalgia" Carl Jung. Blue Flower is a project about movement and wandering. Freedom of movement. An essential right for any human. At a time of Brexit and the rise of Spanish Vox and other restricting forms of politics, I chose Blue as an act of rebellion, like the age-old romantics who'd rebel against social norms and would go wandering fields writing poetry. Blue is a colour that moves and essentially this project moves too. It skips between the vast landscapes of dreams, Dreamtime and the imagination, to the frontiers of our planet. It focuses on the landscapes, above and below us; the habitats, the cultures of faraway places, right into the belly of our homes. The fact we are all now 'trapped' in our homes does not stop Blue.

‘The sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he cannot stay quietly in his room.’

Blaise Pascal

The flowers for this collection are used specifically to tell a particular type of story - there are many flowers, many stories and many shades in blue. It's about life. A blue life. As I move with blue, the paintings themselves have changed stylistically. As the colour is explored the style changes in order to capture that 'thing'. The thing is essentially about longing. Longing for faraway places that we shall never arrive in. Longing for the perfect, the comfortable. Longing for love, longing for change, longing for a better world. Blue Flower is as relevant now as it has always been. 

'Blue Flame', Puya berteroniana, from Blue Mountain Botanic Garden, Australia.
Watercolour on paper, 1.5m x 1m.
Work in progress.

The flowers I have documented so far chart my own journey up to this point and have all been intentionally picked. Hyacinth for a domestic landscape, dyed Roses for something more unnatural, Forget-me-Nots for their association of not being forgotten. Some flowers were deliberately looked for in places of cultural significance, Covent Garden, Columbia Road, a street seller on a pavement in London in order to capture a moment in time. Others have been located in their landscapes, Orchids and Gentians and others have been found in botanical zoos or gardens, as not all flowers now grow in their motherland. Many now can't be found in their natural places. Displaced. A sign of the times. 

Blue Flower up until this point has been a snapshot of a world in decay and was always going to be about my pilgrimage to the utopian picturesque, as in true Romantic form. Blue Flower, a seven-year project, is reaching its turning point in 2020, just as I felt it would. Borders are closing and everyone is being put on a spiritual retreat if they like it or not. They are having to find new ways of connecting whilst coming to terms with what they need, what they truly want and who they really are. The land needs nurturing like an egg. We need to slow down for a bit. To turn away from the mechanical world outside, towards the feminine, mystical world inside. Science extrapolates but poetry interpolates. Being inside is poetry. Everything outside of us is empirical. The real blue flowers are inside of us. Let's be like quantum thinkers in our profound search for an unseen world.

This 'silence gives us an opportunity to appreciate a great deal of what we generally see without ever properly noticing, and to understand what we have felt but not yet adequately processed. We have not only been locked away; we have also been granted the privilege of being able to travel around a range of unfamiliar, sometimes daunting but essentially wondrous inner continents.' The Book of Life

Sea Holly work in progress.

Since August 2018, I have been on a journey that is beyond words. I found a deep space inside of me, a whole landscape that I have been mostly happily roaming around in, to the point that I haven't been able to roam in reality and articulate. My issue over the past two years has been that I haven't found myself inhabiting the same place as most people I know. A gap that began to grow from a crack of blue. This has been my greatest upset over the past two years. That a gulf has been manifesting between me and you for months. I've been finding it harder and harder to bridge the distance because our brains felt like they were not in the same place even though our hearts were.

'Everything is delicate'
Meconopsis. 15 x 15cm, Watercolour
SOLD

However, since Covid 19, I suddenly feel less alone because now everyone is living a life I have been living - an isolated one, a virtual life. Life in another dimension. A life where all of your friends are far away. They might be in the same town, but you now can't 'see' them. For me, some of my closest friends are in different countries, and I am lucky to see them once every two or three years. I live mostly alone in silence. I have been in this place of living since August, but I had a dress rehearsal in Tasmania, where I was isolated in a different time zone without a car due to the devastating bush fires for two months. I was forced to heal in silence, far away from everyone and generally 'get on' despite skirting the edges of a nervous breakdown. I hallucinated and I cried for weeks. I got through it. The same happened this winter in Spain. Again - I got through it.

“No one is ever satisfied where he is.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

Now it's Spring and for the first time in months, I feel less alone because everyone else is now going through a similar process to the one I went through. We are all at home, some alone, facing ourselves.

'A desert of discarded antlers. A blue flower hiding in a thicket,
stumped in the complex arrangement of pieces on a chequered board of star dust. Check mate. '

Love in a mist. Work in progress. Watercolour

“Where are the people?” resumed the little prince at last. “It’s a little lonely in the desert…”

 “It is lonely when you’re among people, too,” said the snake.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

Living alone for the past year (on and off) has helped me immensely in accepting what's happening right now. Painting, over the past year, has become less important and the land more so. I have been obsessed with soil and rocks since November 2019. I have to sit on it, walk on it, stick my fingers in it. Listen to it, speak to it. Touch it. The land wants trees. Well, here it does. I can hear it. This is why I am growing conkers, acorns, chestnuts, walnuts and hazelnuts on my roof. Nut trees are good, they feed birds and are less likely to be cut down by locals.

"Hold by confide among the stars 

We could be the lucky ones 

If we could only levitate 

Fly low dear 

Dance beneath the trees 

If only we had oxygen 

And we begin to breath 

And we can watch 

While the beauty takes it's toll"

I am also growing them not just for the land, but for me. I will keep a couple behind to put on my terrace as I don't know when I will be able to leave the house again. Now is the time to create an ecosystem on the roof. Deliveries are not really happening in Spain at the moment, so I am using EVERYTHING I can find. I am drilling holes in the large plastic boxes I used to move house in. Packaging trays for mushrooms, buckets for paint, some plastic pots that had brownies inside from a lunch break when I was teaching in Cairo. I don't have the budget or the delivery system to do it any other way.

Most of the seeds are coming from my food shopping. I have a lump of ginger, peppers, tomatoes and a garlic bulb that sprouted. I have seeds from my garden in London that are ten years old. I planted them last week and they are already growing. Now there's a hopeful sign if ever there was one. A seed, that has been still and dormant for ten years, suddenly growing. We too will grow after this has passed.

This darkness you're in is your eclipse, 

wait for your illumination.

Becoming Blue VI: Blue Sun Orchid - HAUNTING III

The blue man meets the alchemist in the middle of a city. Both standing barefoot on the pavement, they exchange bags. It was all a dream.

Convicts used to call this place ‘The End of the World’. Where I am, there is a place called ‘The Edge of the World’. Beyond this and beyond me, is the largest uninterrupted expanse of ocean in the world. That is quite something to consider. All that blue.

"The moment that we landed there, upon that fatal shore, 

The planters they inspected us, some fifty score or more, 

Then they marched us off like hosses, an' they sold us out of hand, 

They yoked us to the plough, me boys, for to plough Van Diemen's Land. 

As I lay in me bunk one night, a dreamin' all alone, 

I dreamt I wuz in Liverpool, 'way back in Marybone, 

Wid me own true love beside me, an' a jug o' ale in me hand 

Then awoke so broken-hearted, lyin' on Van Diemen's Land."

I have been hiding in Marrawah (translation: number one) for three days. I am no longer shaking. I am happy here. The sun is shining. I might go and ask if I can borrow a push bike so I can cycle to the beach.

Bicycle ride number II.

When I visited this part of Tasmania on November 1^st the place seemed rather different. It was stormy and windy. There were four seasons in a day. On my last night here, a thick, spooky sea mist blanketed the landscape so that you couldn’t see a thing. It felt mysterious and at times, perilous. All the roads here have a dark romance about them. I am particularly fond of ‘Wuthering Heights Road’ and ‘Rebecca Road’. Yesterday I walked down ‘Loverock Road’ and of course there is ‘Comeback Road’. I wonder if there is a ‘Jane Eyre Passage’ or a ‘Dorian Gray Point’? 

Went out for a bicycle ride, my first one... To nowhere. Alone.

I found a diary entry for the 4^th November on a scrap of paper which describes my entry into Australia and why no one received any updates until now. At the time I decided to fully embrace the wild. To let go and fall, to see if Providence would swoop down and catch me. This is the life of the Romantic. You have to go to these places in order to paint them.

“Chasing summer, chasing light, chasing blue.

When I arrived in Australia, the sun was rising and I was given a blue house key to number 5. I was full of anticipation. I expected a depth, but it so far hasn’t been an easy ride. Blue tears of awe, grief, loss, pain, joy, and confusion. Buds tightly coiled unwilling to open up. The wind howls. The heath rages. The storm pulses and then there’s the famous blue coat. Blue joy turned to a loss in an instant. Nipped in the bud. Love lost. Dreaming of a future that won’t unfold. I am uncoiling still. Un-coming. Blue moves the goal posts. This is a project that moves, that evolves. I am moving, traveling and the situation moves. Something dark in the Tarkine Forest. A place of contrasts. My fingers are full of dirt. My hands scratched. Rebellious, the soles of my feet still scabbed from walking barefoot a week ago. Emotionally hurt, my insides are ripped. I feel ripped. The trees are ripped. The trees will be felled. This forest is for logging.”

Romanticism is an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in the late 18^th Century. It stressed strong emotion, imagination, freedom from classical art forms, and rebellion against social conventions. Romanticism's celebration of euphoria and sublimity has always been dogged by an equally intense fascination with melancholia, insanity, crime and a shady atmosphere; with the options of ghosts and the irrational. The name "Dark Romanticism" was given to this form by the literary theorist Mario Praz in his study of the genre “The Romantic Agony’’. Considering this, I guess it is only correct that my foray into Romanticism would lead me to this more shadowy point. To a landscape covered in myth, magic, and murder with a man who would fade into the mists and a flock of orchids that kept their insides hidden. I even met a witch during my first week in Tasmania. A Scorpio, with a rich accent, she was hiding deep in the Tarkine Forest when I stumbled in on November 3^rd.

Arthur River meandering deep into the  mysterious Tarkine Forest. Photo taken on my first trip to Tas.

I am slowly being rescued from a fall by Michael Nyman and Jeff Beal in my new pop-up studio. The table is covered in paints, cups of tea, diaries… many, many diaries of which I have dipped into repeatedly. These have helped me to join up the ends of a peculiar story. As I listen to the notes chime across a stave, I find myself being incredibly grateful to have finally been lent my first set of speakers since I arrived in Australia. I needed the music to find my flow. Now, thoughts and feelings are slowly bubbling up ready for filing. ‘Dreams of a Journey’, ‘Trysting Fields’ and ‘An Eye for Optical Theory’. The later of which I find is great to paint to.

Current Palette... Moving away from watercolour

I want to paint a sensual world. Primal law. The rhythm of a landscape and the rhythm of our hearts. Every human here has a space-time machine inside of them. It can open doors as fast as it can close them. Our hearts are powerful and provide us with the key to all things hidden. “A beating heart drives us downward far down to the primal ground, what is encountered on this journey must be taken most seriously when it is perfectly fused with the appropriate artistic means in visible form because it is not a question of merely reproducing what is seen; the secretly perceived can be made visible” Paul Klee. In his work, the spirit of nature and the spirit of the unconscious became inseparable. His paintings have drawn him and draw us, the onlookers, into their magic circle.

Close up on blues... as they dry

I feel I was drawn into a magic circle of sorts. As I begin to inhabit an entire house alone, I am being constantly reminded that someone else is supposed to be here with me. Their ghost lurks in every room. I catch myself talking to them as if they were here. Maybe they are? Secretly. As I start to draw out the first painting, I change tracks. The one I wanted to paint has been put aside, instead, I am going for something far more haunting. The haunting of Tasmania. A place of ghosts, lost tribes and of aboriginal dream time. Dream time…

As I fetch a poem I wrote on the 12^th November I discover to my astonishment that I was already thinking about a haunting back then.

The Haunting

Dew drips from a withered blade

That burns brightly at its tip

Tightly closed blue cups of ecstasy

that hold a thousand delights

Tease

A tightly knitted corset of opal green

Covering layers of shimmering blue satin

and a sweet, sticky nectary

The bit before courting.

Just exploring one another with words.

Just being

in a pub

drinking beer

and not really worrying about anything in particular.

The early days, which are so short 

Within weeks, the Delphiums will bloom

Along with his Campanula.

Tall, heady spikes will sway in the breeze

But on a heath shrouded in the sea’s soul,

The buds of the Tasmanian sun orchid,

Shall remain tightly closed

Their dangerous depths hidden

Frozen in time

Like an iceberg

12/11/18

Jung drew an analogy between the psyche and light on the electromagnetic spectrum. The centre of the visible light spectrum (i.e., yellow) corresponds to consciousness, which grades into unconsciousnesses at the red and blue ends. Red corresponds to basic unconscious urges and biological instinct, which merges with its chemical and physical conditions. The blue end of the spectrum represents spiritual ideas; and the archetypes, exerting their influence from beyond the visible, corresponding to the invisible realm of ultra-violet. Jung suggested that not only do the archetypal structures govern the behaviour of all living organisms, but that they were contiguous with structures controlling the behaviour of inorganic matter as well. This is where I find myself, in the deep blue end of ancient rocks, crystals, caves and dreams.

My pop-up studio in Tasmania. Making headway with the first piece.

Twenty years ago, around the same time I had the premonitory dreams I discussed in my previous post, my mother bought me a present. It was blue-green, had a bell and two wheels. I called her Neptune after the planet and rode her everywhere. She was my freedom. I remember cycling along the promenade on several occasions when I was 14/15 years old thinking ‘I can now go anywhere and at any time, the world is mine to conquer’. Twenty years on, I find myself strapping a blue helmet onto my head and jumping onto a bicycle in my determination to get around this new landscape without a car. I had forgotten about the feeling Neptune had given me all those years ago, despite the fact I still ride her in Spain. As soon as I found myself peddling along a ‘Postman Pat’ sort of road I got the feeling. I suddenly felt like I could go anywhere and could feel those places properly. Embrace the wind, taste the flowers, smell the sea.

First night in Tasmania, I go for a walk alone and it greets me with this

Dressed in blue, the time traveller hands over a stripey blue bag. Dressed in white, the alchemist hands over a white bag. They stand there, trying to eye the other up in heavy Australian heat. Her hands shake in time with the clicking of nearby traffic lights and the parrots of her dreams sing. Will they ever meet again? Will the alchemist summon the time traveler? Will the time traveler summon the alchemist? Is it even in their control or were their paths just mapped out and they blindly followed them in good faith and hope? Maybe it really was just a dream, the ticking of a heart, an opening and a closing between curtains of deep blue velvet.

The ‘massa confusa’ of alchemy.

Acknowledgments:

With thanks to Susan for giving me her copy of Jung when I visited Canberra. Your book has helped me immensely, especially as I grapple through the crash at the end of this Australian entry wave.

Thanks also to Lorraine for giving me a book on Greek Mythology when I was in Hanmer Springs, New Zealand. 

Wrapping the paintings

Leafscape paintings - an exhibition of botanical art at Abbott and Holder, London, February 2017.

With the LEAFSCAPE exhibition opening at Abbott and Holder in London in six days time, I decided to spent this afternoon wrapping up the leaf paintings in preparation. Here are some photographs that my housemate Holly kindly took while I was working. She's pretty good with a camera as you will see. 

Jess Shepherd (Inky Leaves) - photo by Holly Markham

I can't even begin to describe how tired I am. I haven't slept properly since well before Christmas and have given up putting make up on to conceal my bags and dark rings. It is a pointless exercise and besides, I have better things to be doing with my time!

 

So the paintings are being moved to Abbott and Holder on Valentines Day which I think is rather lovely. My friend Paul is going to be driving the van up via Haslemere where my framer is currently looking after the three massive paintings.  It is supposed to be a sunny day which will make the whole process much more bearable. Wish us luck!

Jess Shepherd (Inky Leaves) - photo by Holly Markham

Leafscape - the limited edition book

It’s been 18 months since I started creating Leafscape and I am delighted to be able to announce that my Kickstarter project is now live. Now is the time to get involved and be within a chance of having your own copy of the Leafscape book. 

Leafscape from Outhouse Filmworks on Vimeo.

Between 16 - 25 February 2017 I will be working hard to place the botanical kingdom in the spotlight with my exhibition of new watercolour paintings at Abbott and Holder in London. For this exhibition, I am exploring my vision of a botanical dystopia, documenting leaves that are growing on the margins of human civilisation whilst challenging our sense of scale, its value and how we measure it. 

In celebration of the Leafscape exhibition, I would really like to produce a limited edition, linen bound, hard-back book that presents all of the paintings and the environmental soundtrack of all the outside sounds from where each leaf was growing at the time it was found. The idea of recording sound in this way introduces a completely new element to botanical art. 

If successful, this Kickstarter Project will allow me to print 500 copies of this book. It'll also help to turn the whole notion behind 'Leafscape' into reality; by allowing me to pass on the wonder that I have so painstakingly documented to your eyes and ears in a tangible format.

To make a pledge towards the project and be within the chance of owning your own signed and numbered copy of the book, please click here.

Should the campaign be successful, I intend to gift 10 copies to the following institutions with public libraries so that the book can be still be seen by those with an interest in scientific illustration, botany and fine art who missed out on owning a copy for themselves:  

The British Library 
The Royal Botanic Gardens Kew 
The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh 
New York Botanic Garden 
Royal Botanic Garden Sydney 
The Linnean Society of London 
Real Jardín Botánico in Madrid 
Lindley Library of the Royal Horticultural Society 
London The Duchy of Cornwall 
The Chelsea Physic Garden

Q&A: If you have any questions at all about Kickstarter or the exhibition, please don't hesitate to message me, I'd be happy to walk you through the process and talk about the work and show. 

mail@inkyleaves.com

Spread the Word: I am the only one managing this project, so there's a lot of communication required on my part to spread the word whilst I continue to finish the odd painting, soundtrack and book. So please feel free to encourage others to get involved as the success of this campaign will directly determine what we can accomplish together in 2017. Kickstarter has very kindly supplied us with a 'share' button at the top of its page for you to use.

You can continue to follow me and my future projects on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Thank you for joining me on the botanical adventure, 

as ever, it is a pleasure to be here with you, 

right now, at this very moment in time and space.

Indiana and the Temple of Leaf

Botanical illustration of 'Indiana' (Catalpa bignonioides)
work in progress - 76 x 56cm - watercolour on paper

Its been a month.. I won't apologise as I had nothing of importance to say and dislike publishing drivel. It certainly has been a odd time, I know it usually is in my world, but there has been a lot of too-ing and fro-ing in space and time. I am basically doing more 'time travel' than usual and it still goes on. At first it took me by surprise as I entered what I call the 12^th house* back in December. As you already know, it took me to some dark places (the maze), but now its taking me to some wonderful places and since January I have decided to just let go and ride this Wonker-like roller-coaster.

Polar Bear, the steam engine I used to work on as a 
child at Amberley Museum - my very own roller-coaster

This morning I find myself going through some receipts I found from my trip to California back 2013 and this is what I mean by time travel. It can take on all sorts of forms. Last night while I was trying to get to sleep, I found myself in the dens of my childhood, riding steam engines and eating picnics. What is peculiar about these experiences is that they aren't just memories or spells of reminiscence - I am actually THERE. I can smell the smoke and hear the birds, feel the clay dust, the soot and the dampness of the woodlands of Amberley Museum where I was 'brought up'. I can hear the wurring of the heater under my feet in the gift shop and navigate my way through all the offices at different stages of their own evolution. I can jump from one theatre bench to another and cast shadow puppets on the wall where the projector casts its light. I can see all the hundreds of museum keys mounted on another wall, all splattered in oil and grime from dirty hands and engines. I spot the cat and enter the mess room. I trace every line on every worn out face and collect years of experience from their tired eyes. Stained tea cups, coffee grounds, chalk footprints. The clank, clank, clank of the blacksmith going about his work, the toot from the train and the ding of the cow bell on the pottery bicycle. This is so real, it is like I am on drugs. Is this full blown nostalgia I wonder? I don’t think it is, as there is no sense of longing, its just I am there like ghost, like a time traveller. I can even watch myself. It is poignant, the entire vision isn't nostalgia it is a garment of clothing that covers my skin and makes me, me.

It has been rather beautiful this January... still no rain and lots of sunshine.
The farmers are a bit worried about the lack of rain, but life goes on.

GIANT BEANS...

As I find myself there again, in the wonderland of my childhood, I come to remember I giant ceramic bean that my mother made for an event at the museum, I must have been 11 or 12 years old at the time. It was a carefully planned operation by my mother. She made this enormous deep red bean which was glazed in cadmium red and gold ready for a special day where all the children would come into the site, see the enormous bean (which was about as big as 2 year old) and help to dig a hole to bury it. Then, come Christmas, it would have grown into a giant bean stalk ready for Santa's grotto. I helped with the installation... painting massive bean leaves against a cloudy blue sky in the freezing cold December air in a pair of dungarees. Things like this have made me who I am, nothing has changed, I am still painting big leaves.

The beginnings of the Judas Leaf - started yesterday

AND GINGER MUMMIES...

I watched the 'Immortal Egyptians' on the BBC last week (recommend it!)... again, I found myself leaving my present state of being. I was not in Spain, I was not 31 years old, I was 8 years old, in the British Museum on my first school trip, staring down at a petrified (naturally mummified) corpse called 'Ginger'. Time stopped when I was 8 just like it did last last week, but when I was 8 years old I was travelling even further back. I was picturing him laying in the desert. That moment was so important to me that I actually decided to start this blog back in 2009 using the poem I wrote about the experience in 1992. Museums... they seem to have pretty much dictated my evolution.

AND THE TEMPLE OF LEAF...

Leaftastic

The leaves continue to evolve and grow and I think I have a title for the show, although it isn't set in stone yet: 'The Botanical Menagerie'. It's either this or 'Leafscapes'. The first is an attempt to try and describe the fact that these are leaves in 'cages' on display - like a menagerie, or a zoo. The second has a double meaning on the fact that the paintings are like landscapes or maps, but it is also a bit of a pun as the leaves are trying to 'escape'. Anyway - I welcome your thoughts on these titles. It might be that the whole double show is the 'menagerie' and then under this title come the leafscapes and the RHS. 

So, news front - my studio has turned into a forest of leaves as I keep starting new works, getting the skeletons in and then moving onto the next one. I am not sure why I am working like this. It is rather frenzied and not my usual style. I feel that there is a subconscious tactic to this approach - it's almost like I am trying to see what a bunch of enormous leaves look like together and if this is actually going to work before investing too much time on each individual piece, whilst also ensuring that they are all finished 'together' at the same skill level. I am finding that with all this practice my painting is most certainly improving and this could mean that the leaves I do right this minute might end up looking very different to the leaves I finish in December 2016. As with all shows, I feel that there needs to be a level of consistency, so to juggle them around in this way is helping to achieve this. Come summer, when I am working from live specimens, I won't be able to do this as well, but these dried petrified leaves seem to be helping me with this process.

Indiana, Indie and Pop1. 

I nipped into London this month to see the Julia Cameron exhibition and the Bauer Brothers, both of which were lovely, intimate shows. I like intimate, bite sized exhibitions - they are so much easier to digest and usually less busy. The Bauer brothers was so small that no one in the Natural History Museum knew what I was talking about when I asked where it was or where the book was in the gift shop. It was a secret show! Anyway, I am already looking forward to going back to London for the Georgia O'Keefe show at Tate in the Autumn. Can't wait!

And here they all are (bar one)... 

*Astrological terminology for the 12th house that is often associated with dreams and illusions - the room within a room.