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The Power of Pine

My grandfather, Fred Cownie, used to work for the forestry commission, buying up Welsh farmland and planting swaths of conifer forests. Sadly, I never knew my grandfather as he died before I was born, long before my parents were married, in fact. Apparently, he was a sociable man who was popular with the farmers and forestry workers alike and I like to think he enjoyed his work talking and with people and tramping across the Welsh landscape. Sounds like a great job working with trees and people, not stuck in an office.

I love trees. My favourite trees are the elegant beech trees, with their copper autumn leaves. I also love the scotch pines that pepper the Gower peninsula. There’s a woodland at Whiteford point and also near Parkmill, which I have returned to time and again to paint.

Painting of the Wood at Whitford Sands by Emma Cownie
Wood at Whiteford Sands

Scotch pines are the only truly native pines to the UK. They spread across the British Isles after the last ice age but in Wales, the trees became extinct about 300–400 years ago, due to over-exploitation and grazing. I don’t know when they were re-introduced on Gower but this section of woodlands was almost certainly planted by a local landowner, possibly the owners of nearby Kilvrough Manor.  Amazingly,  mature trees grow to 35m and can live for up to 700 years!

Pine Wood, Gower
Pine Wood, Gower

We walked the dogs here last week and took photos. I like this section of woodland as the pine needles on the ground deaden footsteps and although birdsong can be heard, it seems quieter than the surrounding beech wood. Much of the wood falls into the shadow of a the valley side and direct light does not hit the trees until late morning in the winter.

Colourful Gower woodland painting by Emma Cownie
Slender Light (SOLD)

When the light hits the trees it illuminates their scaly orange-brown bark. This bark develops plates and fissures with age. The twigs are green-brown and pretty much hairless until you reach the highest parts of the tree, 20 to 30 metres high. I love to stand looking up at the tops of the trees, swaying with the wind. On the ground the tree trunks appear stock still. I like to think its a good analogy for life, you have to bend with the wind.

Oil painting of Gower woodlands by artist Emma Cownie
Enchanted Wood 

The great thing about Scotch Pines is that they are so quiet and light, unlike conifers forests which can be pretty dark.

The sun went in so whilst I was waiting for it to reappear I filmed this 360 degree shot, I tried to pan very slowly but I don’t think I was slowly enough! There is a stream nearby that has dried up from lack of rain over the summer. It sounds daft but when I am out walking I often ponder their stoic nature. They can’t move, they have to accept where they are in the wood. Some people believe that they communicate with each other through their roots. I’m not sure what my grandfather, Fred, would have made of that!

 

You can but limited edition mounted prints of Gower woodland here

Woods Near Ilston and Parkmill, Gower
Woods Near Ilston and Parkmill, Gower

 

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Gower Woods: A Slender Light

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Slender Light

This is the first woodland painting I have done for quite a while. This is a section of pine woods called Canisland Woods, near Ilston and Parkmill, Gower.  The slender light refers to the beam of morning sunshine light breaking over the lip of the valley. The pine needles on the ground are soft and deaden any sound. It is a very peaceful section of woodlands.

As an artist, I am always looking how to simplify shapes/colours so that there is an semi-abstract element to them but never losing touch with realism. This is particularly true of my woodland paintings. Although I am working from photographs, I am not copying them but rather deconstructing (in my mind) and then slow reconstructing them (on the canvas). They are like a giant jigsaw puzzle.

It’s painful and I find the mid stage of these paintings a bit distressing until I have faith that it will come together and make a pleasing painting. Some paintings are easy and there is little struggle. Sometimes, the struggle will last a couple of days. I have to ignore the voice in my head that says, “it’s rubbish” and “you are wasting your time”. Thankfully, the negative voice is usually proved wrong.

With all of my paintings, I like to pursue a theme over several paintings so that I get into a “groove”. I feel that I am now in the groove with “Slender Light”.

See “Slender Light” and other available landscape paintings here 

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Bridge to Parkmill – a Gower painting

Delighted to say I have just SOLD this painting “The Bridge to Parkmill” via Artfinder – now off to live in Lancashire England

“This is another form the Ilston Cwn series of expressionist, “refractionist” paintings. This bridge has featured before in the best selling “Bridge series” from 2014.

This time I have painted the bridge from a different perspective rather than “head on” so to speak. I just loved the rainbow of colours reflected in the water and the grassing and variously textured river bank.
There was such a spectrum of colour in this scene with the winter sun illuminating a tapestry of colour from the foreground to the back.
Again it is almost surprising that winter yields the clearest, illuminating light and the greatest palette of nature’s colours.”

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Bridge to Parkmill (SOLD)

Buy limited edition mounted prints here 

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Enchanted Wood

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Enchanted Wood (SOLD)

 

This is a painting of a most enchanted wood, halfway between Ilston and the Gower Inn in the Parkmill area of Gower peninsula in Wales. These woody areas, as many artlovers will have realised by now, are a constant source of inspiration for much of my refractionist and post-refractionist work. This pine wood lies on one side of a bridge with ancient woodland on the other, the contrast between the knarled, mossy twisted ancient branches of the ancient wood across the bridge in clear contrast to the straight, textured, orderly pine trees this side of the bridge. In fact, crossing this bridge gives one a heightened sense of having moved from one region or realm to another, adds to the feeling of having been transported somewhere different.

 

This is the inspiration for this painting, this feeling as we view the clear late October light falling across this woodland path. I tried to catch the fact that the path is covered in layers of pine needles, mulched to make the most soft and slightly bouncy carpet of needles. It is these needles, layers heaped and heaped on each other that softens the light and gives it texture, catches the light in its soft grasp, making it almost fluffy. The carpet of pine needles fall to create a complete deadening of noise in this wood which is quite a beautiful affect, this complete silence. This adds to the wood’s sense of enchantment. The silence makes this almost a world apart, a secret quiet place to escape to and roam and explore and enjoy as a child. It is a great escape to somewhere unusual and oddly mystical. Enchanted even…

The painting has sold but you can buy a large limited edition mounted print here

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Toward Another Place

Delighted to say I have just SOLD this painting “Toward Pennard Pill” via artgallery.co.uk

“This is a refractionist oil painting of a much loved inspiration for several of my works, the wooded area of Ilston in the Gower Peninusla, near Swansea. This brook or pill leads to the sea at Three Cliffs Bay, via Pennard Pill, hence the title.”

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Buy limited edition signed mounted prints here 

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My Ilston Inspiration

Glorious Gower

My present series of paintings which included the recently sold paintings below are all of and inspired by Ilston Cwm a rural woodland in Gower Pensinsula. Gower was the first designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in the UK in the 1950s and is a major influence on my artwork.

I love visiting this area, every weekend to walk my dogs and take photographs of the area.

I like doing this especially in Winter when the rich Winter light catches the mossy barks of tress and illuminates the background behind the leafless trees with pinky purples and silvery greys.

I find winter with it’s seeming desolation much more colourful than other times of the year. The light is more brilliant, thicker and more concentrated  than the light of summer. Less diffused. More clear.

The fact the trees have no leaves allows one to look through and beyond and gives greater depth of perception and a richer array of overlapping colors .

This seems to suit my refractionist style of breaking light down into colour components as these blocks of colour have a greater overlaying depth in winter.

Winter light is also lower in the sky and this helps with a sharper more intense light falling on mossy tree barks.

It is so great to get out of the city to soak up some countryside. It has become a vital part of life, escaping the every day concerns of life and work in Swansea to commune with nature, to get away from it all and to return with a bucket load of inspiration for paintings to be contemplated or painted in the following week or weeks.

It is like getting filled up with inspiration, in fact. Replenished, reinvigorated.

I find Gower a very moving place, inspiring. There is something tangibly uplifting about this peninsula. A special energy, or spirit to the place, a Nature Cathedral.  There is a presence that inspires one and lifts the soul towards creativity, towards play. I am blessed to have such an inspiring place only ten-fifteen minutes away.

 

beech by the brook

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IB2

 

wooden bridge

Down Stream (2)

These painting have been sold but you can buy large limited edition mounted prints here

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Inner Light

“This is another ‘refractionist’ painting and is almost an inverse of ‘Up Cwmdonkin’. Instead of the refracted light creating a stain glass effect falling on the outside fringes of a wood, here it illuminates within the hidden chamber of a forest, which gives it a heightened, magical or enchanted feel. It feels like a secret wood of childhood fantasy and imagination. I like how the brilliant rainbow colours contrast with the jet black and how the inner sanctum of light is framed naturally by the surrounding trees, inviting one into the shower of light and colour.

But is this scene too good to be true? Is there a Brothers Grimm malevolence here, in this painting? Do the black trees signal a menace, a foreboding or do these encircling trees call one into a place of wonder and a child-like joy, where the light and colour, silence and peace rain down and let the soul rejoice? Or is it a broody chimera? Depends on your own imagination, I suppose!”

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