Seasons’ Greetings! It’s been an exhausting rollercoaster of of year – I am enjoying some peace a quiet and I hope all of you are too!
Best wishes,
Emma and Séamas (also Tadhg, Hattie and Biddy)
Happy Christmas!
Tag: stroud
Looking the Other Way
I needed to paint this picture. I have painted a lot of landscapes lately and I was missing the challenge of the human form. Or rather painting light on their clothes and faces. I was spending the week with my parents who live near Stroud. My favourite day for street photography is on Saturdays when there is a farmers’ market and there are lots of people and dogs. I like painting dogs in particular. These three friends were enjoying the autumn sunshine on a bench in Stroud. I liked how they sat close together. Are they related or just friends? The two on the left have a similar style. Perhaps they are married? The street is very steep and although the bench is level, its always as if gravity has pulled the three of them to one end of the bench.
I loved the colours of the woman’s green mac and purple hats and how they worked so well with the men’s pink and blue tee shirts. They seemed to sit in a comfortable silence a lot of the time. The pigeons were not important. They were just hanging around. People often eat here as a baker’s shop is near by. The pigeon in the foreground was in the process of stepping forward, and she is forever preserved as if she only has one leg. When I lived in London, a couple of decades ago, I often saw pigeons with toes and feet missing. They were presumably eaten away by a sort of pigeon leprosy, so I always delight in seeing a pigeon with healthy feet. The man in the pink top looks down, is he looking at a pigeon or just lost in thought. Later on, I spotted this trio walking around the town, the lady in the green mac still in the centre of the trio. On another visit later in the week, the man in the flat cap was sitting on the same bench on his own.
Hay Fever
Hay FeverCotswolds roofs and chimneys
The Cotswolds is an area that takes its name from the Cotswold Hills in Southern England. I think of it being in Gloucestershire because that’s the part of the Cotswolds I am familar with, but it stretches into Oxfordshire, Somerset, Wiltshire, Worcesterhire and even as far as Warwickshire. It is about 25 miles across and 90 miles long, stretching south-west from just south of Stratford-Upon-Avon (where all 6th form students studying English “A” level use to be taken to see a Shakespeare play) to just south of Bath.
Lots of people have lived here for hundreds of years. Domesday Book (complied. 1086) is testament to that. It records the names of the same villages you’d see on a map today. It lists villages full of people and animals, especially sheep. It is from the sheep that the Cotswold originally derived it wealth. From their fleeces. The steep hills later provided the fast running streams for the water-power woollen mills that line the bottom of the Stroud Valleys.
The thing that marks a town out as being part of the “Cotswold” is the honey colour limestone that all the houses are built from. The little village of Eastcombe is no different. It is nestles alongside the village Bussage, where my parents live. I often walk down to the post office at Eastcombe when I am visiting. The part of Eastcombe that I have painted here is accessed down a steep single track road and it can be pretty treacherous in the winter ice. Once upon a time, donkeys carried people’s burdens down these tracks. These days its 4x4s! I like hilly places (I live in Wales, after all) because houses end up sprawling higgedly piggedly up the hills and I find that pattern pleasing. The Cotswold is a generally a tidy, rather manicured place, unlike the wild unkemptness of the Gower. I enjoy the contrast.
Snow Remnant (I found some old snow)
I got to walk on frozen snow earlier in the week. I had to travel all the way to the Cotswolds to find it. There had been a foot of snow the week before but it had almost all gone. Almost. There were remnants left in the cold corners of the fields where the low winter sun’s rays did not directly warm them. It even rained a few times when I was there but these remnants did not melt. It was too cold. So, I got to experience a small thrill as my boots crunched on the ice. It was fleeting but fun.
Stroud from Rodborough Hill
New oil painting “Stroud from Rodborough Hill” – £295 .
“I often catch the train to Stroud in Gloucestershire to visit my parents who live in Bussage, above Stroud.
This painting reminds me of the excited child-like feeling as the train pulls into Stroud train station, when the hill layered houses suddenly start to peek through the trees.
Not only am I excited to be seeing my parents but I am excited about spending time in the glorious Cotswolds.
I have never come across such a beautiful living landscape as the Cotswolds. I have never seen so many dwellings, hamlets and villages all built in gorgeous sun absorbing limestone, hugging hills and valleys. It is a magical place, as if plucked from a child’s fantastical imagination.
The airy anticipation is reflected hopefully in this painting, which is slightly summer balmy in it’s sunny excitement.”
