It is strange the way in which, quite suddenly and out of the blue, ideas for art work can strike. I have had in mind for a little while a series of images, based upon a birch tree in our garden. The tree has now been felled, because it created far too great an area of shadow both in our garden and that of next door. The tree surgeon kindly cut the larger branches and the trunk into pieces so that eventually we can burn them. The colours and textures of the wood have set me thinking about another series of images along the lines of the ones I did based upon a laurel trunk, last year.
Today (as most Tuesdays) has been my climbing day, and I was driving back from Sheffield, where we had spent time at “Awesome Walls”. As I drove along my gaze drifted over to the right, and to a low hill crowned with a row of silver birches. Quite suddenly I had the idea that it would be good to combine images based upon our felled wood, with a background of a woodland-crested ridge. This rather general idea needs some work doing on it, but I’m sure that there is something there. It is curious the way in which this second “wood” project is very gradually emerging from the gloom, brought into focus more and more by little flashes of vision.