The Fairy Barge

I have been doing a lot of painting and rather less updating of the blog lately, getting a collection of paintings together for my Ilminster Exhibition – ‘A Westcountry Bestiary’. Another one I finished early this year and have yet to show you is this: “The Fairy Barge”. Don’t ask where this odd little group sprang from, I couldn’t tell you, I simply started off with the idea of a barge (as in a flat-bottomed boat suitable for shallow waterways) travelling along the drainage ditches and rivers of The Levels. Of course they are not usually spotted, because they are…

Medusa of the Levels

I finished this a couple of weeks ago – a new Medusa picture. This is Medusa of the Levels. To those not acquainted with Somerset, large areas of this county are floodplain, known round here as The Levels since, being flood plain, they are… level. This is a very special and beautiful aspect of the Somerset countryside, and Medusa here is a bit special. Somerset is short on snakes, instead she has worms for hair: because worms are more important than snakes, except to other snakes. In the background is Glastonbury Tor, just in case you failed to realize where…

The Rhyne Maiden and the Swans

I finished a painting of one of my Rhyne Maidens.  The initial sketches, and explanations of what a Rhyne is were in this post: https://nancyfarmer.wordpress.com/2015/01/29/the-rhyne-maidens/ but in the end I kept the concept and created a completely new image. Rhynes, I discovered, have appallingly unforgiving perspective, and I was quite pleased with how this turned out, but the composition was very much driven by how to handle the perspective. So at some point I shall go back and re-visit one of my original concepts as well. Those who are familiar with the far more common Rhinemaidens, will of course appreciate…

Knowing when to stop.

I have no idea! There I was, embarking on a painting – my first ‘proper’ painting for about a year and a half – and then I just stopped. This painting was not intended to look like this at all, this is my blue underpainting stage, but having added blue tones to the central figure and put in the dark pollarded willows behind her, which were going to be almost silhouettes like my photograph, I stood back and had a look at it, and didn’t know whether to go on. Part of the issue is that those pollarded willows are…

The Rhyne Maidens

No it is not a spelling mistake, I am still pursuing some of the lesser-known creatures of the Westcountry, and we are still down on the Somerset Levels (where yesterday I showed you the Pollarded Dryads). The rhynes are the drainage channels of the Levels. They are the reason why many of the fields have no fences around them: they have their own personal moats instead. When I first came to Somerset I was amazed to see gates standing on the edge of a field with no fence to either side: just a gate, across the entry which was the…

Charity Auction 21st March, and my Medusa etchings

12 Medusa Etchings from the 2014 calendar are up for auction – see below for details. As some of you know it has been a little wet this year: Actually this photo makes it look all romantic, but it’s a lovely photo that Sarah O’Connell was kind enough to send me so I have used it. The reality has been rather messier: The floods have not quite been at my doorstep, maybe a hundred yards away, maybe two hundred… so this is a cause somewhat close to home. Now the floods are receding, but after a couple of months or…