nature as art, the beginning.

    Bare branches in the Boboli Gardens, Florence Italy

What a world out there... so many different shapes, textures, colours. And they change every day, even moment to moment while you gaze upon a different leaf, flower, unfurling cloud. 

I'm a nature borrower. I take a shadow, or thread, or run of colour and incorporate them into my own little world of drawings and paint strokes. Here are a few moments I've captured on film, toyed with and coloured into new memories of adventurous days out. Maybe they'll crop up in future works.

And yet they can stand alone, as photographic squares of artistic endeavour in their own right... indeed, the chrysalis or flower are art before they were even captured, pondered, and incorporated into human handiwork.

Nature unfolds time and time again in so many beauitful forms.

       

    Hatching butterflies in The Living Rainforest, Berkshire England

       

    Meadow flowers near Haddon Hall, Yorkshire England

       

    Dried flowers at the Jane Austen House Museum, Hampshire England

moving through the lines.

Very quick sketches that found themselves living in random notebooks. I love the feeling of movement in these, that's something I'd like to capture more often - a snapshot of energy, a scene quickly unfolding.

The dress above will make a comeback somewhere, somehow... I think she's falling into the depths of the sea, I wonder how she got there?

The rain cascades, the leaves unfurl themselves from the trees. A mixture of simple line and more concentrated flurries, could a mixture of depth and lightness be the way to go? Simple shapes standing amidst a furious background. Something to ponder.