Sketching Sea Thrift at Gwenver Beach, Cornwall

We’ve been down to Gwenver Beach. We walked along the path towards the cliffs in the evening light. There was quite a swell and the waves were breaking on the rocks.

The next day we picnicked on the beach. Even though the sun was bright the wind was cold. I sat sketching in the dunes. I’m working for a show to be called ‘Coast’ at the ‘Flying Colours Gallery’, Chelsea, in November. There is a lot of work to do. I’ll be showing fish and shell paintings but also paintings of flowers associated with the sea.

Much of the sea thrift was already pollinated and had gone to seed. As well as the bees it attracts a daylight moth, the Five Spot Burnett, Zygaena Trifolii, and a small snail, the name of which I do not know, which happily munches its way through the pink petals, pollinated or not.

It’s a lovely place, not far from Sennen Cove in Cornwall. There is a long steep walk down but it’s worth it.

If you would like to be kept informed of forthcoming shows please email me at catherineforshall@yahoo.co.uk

All photographs © James Forshall

Goblin Gloves: painting foxgloves

The weather’s filthy: wind, rain. It’s gusting 60 mph down on the coast. So it’s nice to be inside painting something that reminds me that summer really is here…somewhere. It’s certainly not outside.

Aren’t they strange? They must be one of the largest British wild flowers. I remember as a child being drawn to them, taller than me, graceful and yet..what is it. They had presence. They beckoned. An old saying about Foxgloves is ‘They can raise the dead and kill the living’. I remember, doing as all country children do, taking off the flowers and putting them, over my fingers. I didn’t know then that everything of the Foxglove is poisonous, leaves, flowers, stem, pollen, roots but I came to no harm.

The flower is mentioned in a list of flora compiled during the reign of Edward III, (1327-1377). The botanical name is Digitalis purpurea, but there are lots of lovely folk names for them, Goblin Gloves, Dead Men’s Bells, Fairy Gloves, Gloves of our Lady, Fairy Caps, Fairy Thimbles, Witches gloves, bloody fingers, Virgin’s Glove, Floppy Dock, Foxbell, Flowster-Docker, Finger Hut, Flopper Dock, King Elwand….. The Celts considered them the most magical of all herbs and called them Lus Mor, the Great Herb

The painting will be part of a series of canvases of wild flowers with the sea in the back ground for a show called ‘Coast’, which will take place next November at the Flying Colours Gallery in Chelsea.

If you would like to be kept informed of forthcoming shows email me at catherineforshall@yahoo.co.uk

All photographs © James Forshall

Candles (Aesculus hippocastanum) at Great Fulford

When I think of horse chestnut trees they always seem to be in public places: a village square in France, near a statue, by a park, on the edge of a cricket pitch. Perhaps that is because they are so flamboyant, exuberant, decorative. They are not really natives being imported from northern Greece or Albania in 1616, the year that Pocahontas, her husband John Rolfe and their son Thomas arrived in England,  and the year that Sir Walter Raleigh was released from The Tower to lead his doomed quest to find El Dorado.

The nearest one to our cottage though is hidden in the woods, near the tennis court at Fulford, which is also hidden in the woods and which as a result spends a lot of the year covered in moss and leaves.

The tree is on the edge of the track which leads through the woods to the house, so perhaps it used to be a more public place. Now, though, it is almost hidden and probably not seen in flower by anybody from one year to the next. When I see the candles I know that spring has sprung and summer has begun. I walked up to the wood to sketch them, breaking off a candle and pushing away the branches to kneel among the bluebells and ivy in the shade of the tree with my sketch books.

Later I took the some flowers home to paint. They don’t last long. I had to work quickly.

Detail from Candles and Sea painting

You can see my work now  at the Montcrieff-Bray gallery near Petworth in Sussex.

The show has just started and is on until the 20th June.

http://moncrieff-bray.com/exhibitions   

All photographs © James Forshall

Snake’s heads

I’ve been sketching snake’s head fritillary in the spring sunshine.

Aren’t they beautiful, …and strange? With their checkered petals, drooping heads and narrow tendril leaves. I wish I could say that I found them growing in the wild, but I bought these in B and Q.  I find they have very good healthy plants.

By coincidence, well not exactly coincidence, since it at this time of year that they flower, I found another snakes head, this a Mediterranean plant, called Widow’s Iris, which is cultivated in this country by a Cornish grower.

That was a few days ago. Since then we have had little but grey skies and rain.  The well outside the house is full and oozing rusty water into the ditch.

Now I’m painting the flowers as part of a seascape.

All photographs © James Forshall

Periwinkle

 

I’m painting periwinkles. There is a shell fish called a periwinkle but as you can see this is the flower.

I think of it as a southern European plant. They were some of the earliest flowers to come out around the house when we lived in France. At the end of January I was surprised to see one flowering in the Devon lane which leads to our house. The snowdrops are out and there are couple of very bold primroses which have been out for over a month encouraged by a heating pipe which leads to the studio. I love the violet blue of the periwinkle and the modest, simple, five petaled structure of it’s face. It is an omen of warmer days, of shorter nights, and spring.

 Photographs © James Forshall

Meadow Clary

 I’ve been painting a series of wild flower paintings.  When we lived in France I used to paint landscapes and flowers.  The pictures here were taken early one morning in the fields around our house there.  I wanted to do studies of Meadow Clary. It is a very common flower in this part of France,  coming out to decorate the fields after the hay has been cut.  In Wales I understand it is extinct and due to the intensity of the way we farm only exists in a handful of places in the rest of the country. It is a lovely colour and reminds me of the end of late summer and the rentrée, a time when life quietens after the summer visitors have left, and there is subdued dread and excitement about the new school year after the long holidays.

As usual you look for one thing and find another.

In this case a flower sometimes called Bishops’s Lace, or Wild Carrot (Daucus Carrota).

But we did find Meadow Clary

Meadow Clary’s latin name is Salvia Pratensis. Salvia comes from the word for health salus, and meadow clary was used as an eye bath, the name derived from clear eye, and also as a gargle for sore throats.

21st September to 12th October the Elspeth Montcrieff-Bray Gallery is showing my flower paintings alongside works by Victoria Threlfall, Annie Field, Tuema Pattie, Stephen Palmer, Lucy Powell, Sarah Warly Cummings, Sandra Whitmore, Hannah MacAndrew, Ostinelli and Priest, Diana Tonnison, Diana Baraclough, and Adam Binder

Private View 3 p.m. to 8 p.m, 21st September.

Opening Times 11 a.m. to 4 p.m and after 12th October by appointment.

Moncrieff-Bray Gallery, Woodruffs Farm, Woodruffs Lane, Egdean, Petworth, West Sussex RH20 1JX

07867 978 414   mail@moncrieff-bray.com