THROUGH THE TREES

 

My first attempts to draw trees were like so many other children, a green lollypop on a thick brown stick, however I did recognise that there were branches and drew them sprouting from the green ball. By the age of eleven these branches fascinated me, particularly when leafless they reached out into a winter sky, the seemingly endless complexity of patterns they made in their progression from the trunk to twisting limbs and branches to tiny twigs. It was my art master Mr Palmer at Tregony School who suggested I look again, and this time note how the branches cross over each other, some coming towards me, others growing away. It was at that point that I really started to see the structure of trees for the first time.

I had spent my entire childhood climbing them, and while during my clambering I knew full well the trees dimensional form, I had not understood how to transfer that to a two dimensional sketch. Since then I’ve sketched trees from across the world. Spending hours with giant Tingle, Jarra and Karri trees in Western Australia, the complex tangling of virgin forests of New Zealand, twisting contortions of cork bark oaks in southern Spain, and brooding dark masses of Scots pines in Western Scotland.

 

I will never tire of the challenge, for at times it is truly a challenge as to where to start. Once the first mark is on the page my mind clears, I relax and focus. It is a process of mark making, some might even say scribbling, and not a question of making an exact reproduction. There is always a sense of being with a particular tree or trees. I’m not exactly a tree hugger, but there have been times when I could feel them reacting to my presence and concentration. While others might give those trees only a cursory glance, I sit and stare. Can they tell what I’m doing, I think not, but the fact that I remain with them for often hours on end means I also am being observed.

 

 

 

Trees have had a strong presence in my landscape paintings, helping to frame a view, give depth and even tell the observer what lies outside the picture. Shadows of trees falling out across the grass or the walls of a house immediately indicates that there are tree behind me, not visible but there all the same. 

 

I started my walk to Lamellyn a little too late one sunny afternoon, having spent some time sketching the old yew near the north entrance to Probus Church. It soon clouded over as I made my way down through the village, but my attention, as always was drawn to how the structure of trees frame my view as I passed by Lelissick Farm. The ground was drier and the muddy track across the field easier to negotiate, but still that trusty third leg of a stick came in useful. Crossing the stream I stopped to investigate the deep ditch running down from Lamellyn, fascinated by the oaks that have grown alongside as well as fallen across it. A child’s bicycle had been added to its contents since last I passed.

 The trudge up toward Lamellyn was slow, very slow, but it gave me time to stop and enjoy the view down the valley. One should always leave time to turn and observe what lies behind you. This proved essential when walking deep into dense forest in New Zealand and the bush of Western Australia, where I would need to retrace my steps. Walk only a few hundred yards into this dense growth and you will soon lose all sense of direction. 

At the entrance to Lamellyn I stopped once more to admire the view across to the church and the distance of easier road walking that lay ahead. Probus Church tower is the tallest and most decorative in Cornwall, and also serves as a useful visual reference for miles around.

The sun made a lassie late appearance as I wandered home stopping to admire the Cornish walling along the delightfully narrow winding entrance lane. Today many of these lanes have been mutilated by the ever increasing size of modern farm tractors. The chevron pattern of Jack and Jill construction using schist stone is unique to Cornwall and to this day new roads are more likely than not to be bordered by stone walling that still uses this tradition method of construction.

Growing trees and shrubs on the Isle of Lewis is not easy, but those that I have planted over the past twenty years are now big enough to support bird life. I derive a tremendous pleasure in the knowledge that this simple act of planting a tree can also provide support for nesting birds. This spring we will be planting 1200 tree on the croft, and in years to come this small plantation will be alive with birdlife.

Only a few days after writing these words the most destructive storm for many years struck Cornwall and the south west. On the evening of Thursday 8^th of January the lights flicker on and off several times as we scrambled for candles. A green flash travelled up the length of Tregony road beyond Swallow Cottage culmination in a firework display from the post outside our kitchen window. Half of a large leylandii conifer, bizarrely one of only three trees in the village with a tree preservation order on it had come down, taking with it the power lines. The following morning I checked the roof first before seeing the devastation wrought on the large sycamore that stood above Well Lane. Just as if some wild beast had chewed it off the three main limbs were now prostrate across the pond at the bottom of the garden, a lone pigeon sat in the remaining limb in a state of shock. It wasn’t the only one. At the weekend I took another walk around Lamellyn and was pleased to see that the trees I had drawn were amongst those that had survived. Often those trees that would seem the most vulnerable, standing alone and exposed on a Cornish hedge are the survivors. In the Outer Hebrides it is the clean wind that does the least harm. Once the path of the wind is disturbed then turbulence can prove extremely destructive. On Monday a large team of engineers arrived from the Bath area, and after a full day’s work managed to get the road cleared, the remaining unstable half of the offending Leylandii felled and new cables in place. After four nights without power the romance of candle lit evenings had well and truly passed and suddenly electric light seemed far brighter than it had before the storm.