Painting native oysters

I’ve been painting and sketching native oysters, Ostrea edulis.  I buy them from oyster fishermen at Mylor in Cornwall near Falmouth. It was bitterly cold then and it’s pretty cold now.

It takes a long time to establish a native oyster bed. They were a major source of cheap food. In 1851, for example, a round 500 million oysters were sold through Billingsgate. Our oyster beds were destroyed by a series of cold winters, surely not the first though, in the mid 20th Century, and then pollution, the parasite, Bonnania Ostrea, the beastly slipper limpets and oyster drills which drill holes into them and eat it contents, they are a big threat for commercial oyster farms.

Now they can only be collected under license in Scotland.

Oysters change back and forth from female to male according to the temperature of the water. You get in the bath nice and hot, go to sleep, and wake up in cold water, surprisingly different. Well, surprising the first time, but native oysters can live for 20 years so they may get used to it.

Native Oysters, acrylic on canvas 50 cms x 100 cms

You can see my work in London at the The Flying Colours Gallery and at Oliver Contemporary

All photographs by James Forshall

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

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

Gurnard’s Head

I’ve been sketching on Gurnard’s Head.

We walked down to it through a farming hamlet.  A cat looked at us from  the top of a pile of old tyres.  Black and white cattle waited in a yard. The sun shone through a cold wind. We walked over fields walled in granite, past flowering gorse.

Gurnard’s Head is a thin promentory of rock, jutting out into the Atlantic. On the sheltered eastern side its slopes are covered with short wiry grass, on the west side black rock cliffs fall vertically to the violent sea.

It’s very steep and I suffer from vertigo. Although I love this wild beautiful place I am not sure if I could live here. It is so dramatic, so elemental. I think I would find it very tiring, even though I think it is one of my favourite parts of Cornwall.

But it is  inspiring.

It is  exhilerating.

Gulls coasted on the wind, and further out we could see gannets fishing. These beautiful birds dive from great height to prey on shoals of fish. They hit the water at 60 miles an hour. As they fall they bend their wings back making a W shape, allowing them to refine their aim, and in the second before they hit the water they fold them completely, making themselves into a streamlined, blade of white. On impact they vanish below the surface and in the same instant throw up a white plume of water. It is as if the bird has been atomised. They can dive as far as 50 feet. Their eyes face forward giving them binocular vision, allowing them to judge distance. Their nostrils are inside their mouths and their chests are padded with sacs of air against impact. We lay in the grass watching the gannets work, and fell asleep in the sun.

Sadly gannets, like so many other species, are under threat from the number of humans and the amount they consume,  a story which started around about the time the wheel house of this abandoned tin mine was built.

That this wild, beautiful place remains so unspoilt is almost entirely due to the National Trust. Become a member:    https://join.nationaltrust.org.uk/join/start

Photographs © James Forshall

Spider Crab

I’m sketching a spider crab on paper. I propped him up with a shell.

The spider crab (maja squinado) is common in British coastal waters. For some reason he or she is not a popular food here. Perhaps its their thorny appearance.  They are very strange looking.  Here most that are caught are exported to the continent where the strange appearance of food is sometimes part of it’s attraction.

Seen from above the body shell is almost heart shaped, though lacking the indentation in the top of the heart, but coming down to two horns either side of the small eyes on storks.  It has eight walking legs and two large front claws for fighting and harvesting.  Oddly the front legs on the one I’m sketching are thin and undeveloped. Perhaps it is a juvenile.

I like their spiky architectural appearance combined with their curves.

Photographs © James Forshall

Good Luck Clam

I have been in France for a week. I wanted to sketch the River Dordogne. I was looking for the autumn colours.   I was hoping to see lots of autumn leaves floating down the river. For some reason there were not many. Downstream the river was in the late afternoon sunshine. Where I was sitting it was soon hidden by the limestone cliffs: not many leaves and soon not much sunshine. Walking along the shore I found small brown clam shells. I was not sure what they were.  Fresh water clams.  Later I identified them as the Good Luck Clam. Good luck for me, not such good luck for the local variety, who are being wiped out by these non natives. Corbicula Flumea was brought to America with Asians in the 19th century. They were first seen on the River Dordogne in 1980. No wonder they are invasive. A single self fertilising individual of these rather dull, muddy shell fish can produce between 35,000 and 47000 baby clams a year. Self fertilisation! Where do they get the time?    

All photographs © James Forshall

Razor Fish (xyrichtys novacula) in Menorca

I am in Menorca.

     © James Forshall

We are staying with an old friend on the other side of the harbour and yesterday when the others went off to an organ recital I went to the fish market to sketch some of the local fish.  The market is surrounded by a windowed cloister where the merchants have their stands selling squid, octopus, spider crab, tuna, bass, bream and the friture of the mediterranean, small rascla, gallina, cerrano, cerrano imperiale, salmonetes, and Jureles.

          © James Forshall

A small orange fish with black and yellow eyes, a small mouth and blue stripes down the side of his face caught my eye. The local bye laws only permit him to be fished for a week a year, from the first of September. Fishing outside this period incurs a fine of 150 euros. When threatened he dives down and buries himself in the sand.

© James Forshall

 

Fish scales              © James Forshall

 

I had never seen this fish before and had to ask the fishmonger to write down his name, Rao, Lolitos or in English Razor fish, though I hazard the name Razor fish is the local name Rao anglicised by the English sailors who were stationed here after the island came into British hands falling the treaty of Utrecht (1713).

 

     © James Forshall

We went down to the harbour,  where some men, their equipment moved around in liberated supermarket trolleys,  were mending nets and where I did some sketching and then lay on one of the  pontoons between the boats, dozing in the sun.

                             © James Forshall

 

Lolitos, Rao, Razor fish sketch                          ©  James Forshall

                 ©  James ForshallFish sketches      ©  James Forshall

I will use these sketches for some large scale paintings when I return to Britain.

 

 

In a Cornish Garden – Sketching Magnolia Stellata

I’m very lucky. The garden I’ve been asked to paint is so beautiful. It feels so loved. I’m down here to sketch studies of Magnolia Stellata. Just being here makes me feel happy, and in the spring sunshine….

Magnolia Stellata, I love this flower. You only have to look at it to see why, but like all the magnolias its petals bruise easily. By the time I had finished the sketch this one was smudged with Indian ink too.

Photography © James Forshall

Sketching Cornish Spring

I’m sketching Cornish Spring.  It’s a camelIia, Cuspidata Japonica.

The tea plant is a camellia. The first camellias grown for their flowers in this country were those of Robert James, Lord Petre of Thorndon Hall. Other plants were brought to Britain by the East India Company.

 

Photography © James Forshall