colour

The English countryside

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We had a beautiful day yesterday involving a quick trip to Ledbury, and specifically Tinsmiths to sort out post-show details. Our visit to this lovely market town coincided with the poetry festival so we also picked up some verse, locally-made pork pies, beer and ice-cream!

It was so hot in the afternoon sun but we did manage to enjoy the scenery around the Malvern Hills to-ing and fro-ing between trees for shade. It’s a stunning landscape, and one that feels so English. I first encountered the area when I cycled Lands End to John O’ Groats back in 1994 and it left its impression on me even then.

The views from the ridge make you feel as if you are a giant overseeing a toy model landscape but it is with this viewpoint I can capture my key interest in the landscape. If I was to draw the view I would have started with lines that recorded the field boundaries defined hundreds of years ago, the footpaths etched in to the land by endless walkers and roads enabling others to pass through. The lines become shapes and a record of that moment of my experience, but what is also captured is hundreds of experiences, of us, living in this English landscape.

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In terms of colours, I was struck by the stark contrast of the dry grass tones compared to the striking pink of the foxgloves and the very green bracken.

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I’m also a collector of photos of grasses and such-like against blue skies, and so I happily added further imagesummer1s to that collection.

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All in all, a very lovely English day.

Kate Farley – Plotting Prints at Tinsmiths

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It is a very exciting time for me. It has been about two years in the planning and preparation stages and now we are a week in to my show at Tinsmiths. For those of you unfamiliar with Tinsmiths, it is a beautiful textile and lighting shop in the lovely Herefordshire market town of Ledbury. It is a beautifully considered shop, owned by Phoebe Clive, selling a wide range of fabrics as well as home wares, crafted pieces and artists prints.

I have worked closely with Phoebe to translate my lino printed designs inspired by allotments, to become a collection of heavy weight linen, hand screen printed textiles available to buy as cushions. We have also created larger showroom pieces as curtains and upholstered chairs in preparation for selling some of the designs by the metre later in the year.

Phoebe and the team have styled my products throughout the top floor of the premises in such a way as to create a clean and fresh interior space, working with the other products and furniture pieces in the shop. My prints and drawings are set amongst other exciting colour statements in the form of ceramics & lighting with an understated aesthetic. With plenty of positive feedback at the PV as well as sales throughout the first week it’s a really exciting reward for the long journey to this point.

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YELLOW April

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Having noticed this week that the garden has suddenly started to change colour, I set about documenting all the yellow in the garden. Its not surprising at all that the photographs of the same flowers taken at different times of the day varied hugely, but I also recorded the range of yellows in the flowers of this very YELLOW season.

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lines in the snow

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I took these photographs on my way home from Birmingham yesterday and like the way they show the different interpretations of lines and stripes in the snow I recorded. My last blog post was about colour, and so I like the fact that it is almost absent this time around. I’m sure there can be some design inspiration from these.

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a colour survey of the plot

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Today was my first plot visit of the year and I set about digging over the strawberry patch – an important job given the lousy harvest of last year. I also took time to survey the rather heartless cabbages we have managed to grow and this inspired me to record the beautiful colours of the season from all round the plot. This reminded me of my Autumn survey some months ago, recorded on this blog. No doubt these colours will inspire my drawings and prints of the year to come. Sadly I didn’t get a picture of the robin who hopped about glad of the worms I uncovered but he made me smile all the same.

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Autumn Equinox colours

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With the Autumn equinox upon us and a definite chill on the breeze a trip to the allotment today made me think of the preconceptions of seasonal colours we have, emphasised through school as we made ‘splodged’ leaf paintings and we sang the harvest songs having managed to pass on the marrow glut from home to the local community who would have preferred the old tin of sardines!

This morning we picked boxes of raspberries and bunches of sweet peas as well as carrots and beans so I thought I would provide an alternative to the conker colours and rusty hues we expect at this time of year, in acknowledgement to the Autumn sun, with the frost just round the corner…

The tip we received from the wise old-timers at the allotment today was to whistle while you pick raspberries to save yourself from eating too many. I understand the truth in that!