A Field One year apart. 2022/2023

This field lies about a mile north of the village in the flat low meadows of the Hollowmarsh. A field fringed with Oak trees, densely filled from spring with wild flowers and high grasses. Then last winter as I walked the field edge I saw it had been sprayed and ploughed. The ring of burnt oak branches that had lain at the field edge for years had gone. The earth claggy, sticking to my boots, scored marks from the plough, claw marks through the turf.

I avoided walking the field for a long time, too worried over what I would find when I next walked its boundary.

Seeing this photograph of the field full of buttercups in the summer of 2022, I knew I needed to see the damage done if only to make a record of the desecration. I revisited the field exactly a year after the buttercup photograph was taken.

This might be a small and fairly unremarkable piece of landscape, but still. What we so casually destroy.

A yew tree grew in the garden of the house where I was born.

A yew tree grew in the garden of the house where I was born.

Some remnant of Victorian planting,

incongruous

in this moss green northern valley

of Beech and Oak.

It loomed,

Needled, bitter green,

studded acid red with berries,

tempting as fruit; forbidden.

Climbing high into its wide embrace,

a crows’ nest, a secret tower

of sun dapple, skin shadow

branch, twig and scented bark.

Beneath the tree,

slippery flagstones

slimed with fallen berries

and the leaf matter of years.

I went back there once.

The tree had gone.

A wound of naked wood, ringed with stone.

The flagstones dry and clean.

An old, old, place...

The village where I live “is an old, old, place…” (Aurthur Mee, 1936, In A Guide to St Marys Church and the History of Litton, by Christopher Booker 2019). Centred on the 14th century church, itself replacing one far older, bounded by ancient Oak, Ash and Yew, encircled by the Mendip hills and the river; the Domesday Book records three watermills powered by the fast flowing Chew, Litton being Anglo Saxon for ‘a settlement by a torrent’. Traces of medieval ridge and furrow fields to the east; holloways tracing ancient routes, hewn deep into the ground. It is a landscape which gives tangible expression to Ingold’s ‘dwelling perspective’ whereby “the landscape is constituted as an enduring record of and testimony to- the lives and works of past generations who have dwelt within it, and in so doing, have left something of themselves” (Ingold the temporality of landscape prologue)

Hollowmarsh

A walk to Hollowmarsh. I am fascinated by this small area of land which runs from the northern edge of Litton along the valley floor.

I had thought that the field systems were recent, maybe imposed since enclosure. They are actually far older, evidence of a medieval ridge and furrow system which divided the land into regular parcels in order to dole out strips equally.

Along the boundary of one of the fields the oak trees and hazel has been cut back. The oaks are gnarled and ancient.

Photo etching on porcelain paper clay.

My practice has always seemed divided by the fact of 2 and 3 dimensions. There are the sketchbooks I fill with photographs, drawings and prints; and the ceramic work which feeds off this accumulation of material. Finding a process which enabled me to combine these two areas has been enormously exciting. Photographing the landscape where I live and turning these images into photo etching plates, led to some intriguing images on paper.

The depth of the engraved image led me to wonder whether it would be possible to repeat the process on paper clay. The book ‘Ceramics and Print’ was very useful on the practical details of printing onto wet clay. It is crucial that the paper clay slabs are at the right consistency- too wet and the etching plate sticks to the clay, too dry and the clay slab splits and cracks.

I mixed 3 inks using a mixture of copperplate oil, manganese dioxide, black iron oxide and black body stain. Using a small off-cut of the larger plate, I trialed these 3 inks on porcelain slabs. The results were very exciting. The image was reproduced in all the fine detail you would hope to gain from a print on paper, whilst being part of the clay body itself- leading to all manner of possibilities.

These 3 slabs are high fired porcelain paper clay (1260 degrees) with black body stain, black iron oxide and manganese inks.

I also enjoyed the way the paper clay splits under the pressure of the printing press on the image on the left.

Photograph of a puddle.

A photograph of a puddle, taken from above in low winter light; twigs and leaves from the hedgerow and rotting leaves suspended in the water. This image has become crucially important to my ongoing practice. It seems to combine for me many aspects of what Tim Ingold describes as the ‘Temporality of Landscape’. The bridle path to Hinton Blewitt through Hollowmarsh, where this image was taken, has existed for centuries, worn into the landscape through footfall and hooves and cart wheels; the puddle and the leaves the work of one season; the Oak and Ash trees bordering the lane hundreds of years old.

My Home Studio - Litton, Somerset

This space has had many lives. Built as a calving shed in the 19th century, the terracotta feed channel still remains, running along the wall under the sink. Converted to a garage and boat store, an enormous white metal 1970s up and over garage door made the space both dark and freezing. Replacing the garage door with vast aluminium windows, facing due west towards the Mendip Hills, flooded the space with light. Everything else has been left untouched. The walls still peeling lime plaster over stone, concrete and metal dividing the space, on one side the kiln, sink, drying shelves and glaze materials; on the other tables for clay work and a dry table for print making and drawing. The studio is embedded in the landscape, looking out over fields and woods and the garden. Stone walls and terracotta pan tiled roof like so many Somerset buildings. It is a space I could spend all my days in.