landscape

Norfolk lines

/ katefarley / Leave a comment

I’m naturally biased when it comes to the Norfolk landscape but seeing as it has shaped my aesthetic, colour preferences and my approach to drawing I am happy to consider it to be inspirational. I don’t spend enough of my time in Norfolk these days but every time I visit I take deep breaths, and big eye-fulls of the vast expanse of open landscape, the ever-changing light qualities and the endless colours of the land, sea and sky. Here’s a medley of Norfolk from this Christmas including sights of seals at Horsey Gap, a rainbow & the beach at Wells-next-the-Sea, and fields near Cawston and Alysham.

Norfolklines_web

The English countryside

/ katefarley / Leave a comment

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.

summer2

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.

summer6 summer5

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.

summer4

All in all, a very lovely English day.

scale and context

/ katefarley / Leave a comment

During a beautiful adventure in the Lickey Hills, south of Birmingham at the weekend I took these photos that showed how similar the environment close to the ground was to the canopy of the much taller pine trees. It highlighted to me the experience of scale and how important the context is. I tend to record this sort of detail in my garden sketches too and so it struck a chord.

Image

working with nature and nature working with us

/ katefarley / Leave a comment

One of the things that has inspired and influenced my creative practice is how we work with the land; to farm, build roads, wear the paths where we shouldn’t walk as well as create boundaries. These are signs of man asserting influence over nature, and the natural landscape. Of course the way things were thousands of years ago will never return but modern-day farm machinery and larger field sizes are two things that have shaped our contemporary countryside.

I have never quite understood topiary but am intrigued when I see orchards with heavily structured boughs, turning a natural system in to a geometric diagram. We ask nature to do what it does not naturally want to do. We expect plants to grow in the wrong soils, because we like the look of them despite our climate, and we can be unforgiving if a ‘weed’ dares to grow where we don’t want it to.

With this in mind I do like to see subversive and anarchic challenges from nature, and nature trying to make its mark where it shouldn’t. Like graffiti on the wrong walls; art in a gallery, vandalism on the streets, plants do sometimes have their own agenda. I found this beautiful plant surviving, flourishing even, in the mortar of a very old wall in Ledbury. It made me laugh. It wasn’t the usual ivy or buddleia, but a beautiful primula, proud as punch of its achievements. Okay, so the leaves are rather small relative to the flower heads but I couldnt help feeling rather pleased for it too.

Image

Design inspirations 1: horizon lines

/ katefarley / 1 Comment

For a while now I’ve been thinking about what has shaped my visual language and informed my art and design tastes. As a result I have planned a few blog entries in which I will evidence some of my thoughts in terms of influence and my art / design practice.

In some recent press interviews I’ve been asked about my inspiration and I tend to consider the formative years as pretty vital in this regard. It makes sense that we develop strong feelings and bonds to what we experience as children, either to reject them or embrace them – either way I believe those early years help to form our adult judgements.

Looking beyond the windows of the house in rural Norfolk where I was brought up is what I consider one of the greatest inspirations to my work. The open fields, the clear horizon lines and sparse distractions across the farmland of Norfolk have stayed with me in relation to my way of seeing, composition and economy of information in much of my work. Why draw ten lines when I can say it with one? I had a particularly horrid visiting tutor in the beginning of my training who felt that I was lazy in my designing, when actually it was he who struggled with some of the simplicity I was aiming for.

Looking back over some of the works I have made in the last fifteen years there are a few key pieces that explain that relationship with the horizon.

‘Nine Perspectives’, a linocut is made up of diagrams where I explore the land, sea and sky in a variety of ways. I consider the horizon in two-dimensional form, in plan view, elevations and diagrammatic perspectives in order to gain a sense of order.

9perspectives_web

‘Meadows (France)’ is a drawing of a beautifully simple valley near Gourdon. It gave me a perfect view to explore further skewed interpretations of perspectives seen in the landscape. I worked with a sense of the view working round a set square, with two horizons, as I looked in front and to the side of me.

stgermain_webThe final image is from a screen printed artist’s book I made several years ago exploring the idea of ‘half full’ as a state of mind, but also from each side of the horizon line. I have used the blue areas as either half full of water (the Norfolk Broads specifically) or half full of sky above the chickens. The folded structure implies a view through the use of perspective, looking in to the distance or reflecting on oneself.

kf_half-full_web

These three works are very old as far as I’m concerned. I have new creative concerns now but they have helped me to test and explore principles in the way that I see and draw that have been important along the way.

Autumn rhythms

/ katefarley / 2 Comments

A stunning Autumn day today, warm out of the wind & bright enough for sunglasses, it gave us the excuse to escape to the countryside south of Birmingham to play in the fields. Having taken photographs of the outing and having been thinking about my explanation of visual rhythms to some textile design students last week I thought I’d create a piece with that in mind.

horizontal lines – land and sea

/ katefarley / Leave a comment

A short break in Norfolk allows me to breathe the fresh air of the countryside and to refuel. Being Norfolk born and bred the landscape has certainly left its mark in my own visual language, and its always fantastic to collect in my memory the horizontal lines of Norfolk and of course the big skies.