‘Come walk with me, and I will tell
What I have read in this scroll of stone’

Helen Keller

Working at Nature in Art is such a joy. I’m serenaded by the robin each morning, I can watch the cows come bouncing into the field behind and there are a myriad of birds nesting in the walls and sculptures! Baby moorhens potter about with their ridiculously huge feet. The weather is stunning and it all lifts my spirit.

It is such a treat to have the space to spread out in a large studio.

Being able to see all the papers together allows me to see what else is needed for contrast, and to gradually scale up. I have been creating fabric-papers for a short while so that I had a few to work with at the start of the week. I’m also using a couple of boards as a working wall which is getting full with new pieces. Time is divided between printing/lamination and stitching and piecing when I’m not chatting! Here are some of the colours and textures I enjoy. I have yet to develop representations from Keller’s poem but I’m looking forward to that, too. Many visitors have been really interested in Helen Keller, including the Yr school children who were the same as when she met her tutor who opened up her world.

Stone.

Moss.

Lichen.

The figures have a ‘seam allowance’ so the forms will be more refined as I’m still deciding if some will be hanging in which case I will need to back-to-back them with something between.

I rarely attempt realistic drawing and certainly not the human form but I’ve been intrigued how changing a line or an angle can denote male or female. I want the aesthetic of the silhouettes to have consistency, these are a little disparate, but I have left material enough to refine later.

I’m off to soak my complaining back, but there will be a bit more following my last couple of days in this little oasis.