Christmas at Moorlinch – exhibition & shopping event

Saturday 3rd & Sunday 4th December 2016 Moorlinch, our village of fewer than 200 people, can boast several artists and arts & crafts businesses despite its size. Welcome to our annual pre-Christmas event: part exhibition, part Christmas shopping, part glass-blowing! I shall be opening my studio, hanging pictures on the walls, and have art, calendars, wrapping paper, cards and whatever else I can find, on display and for sale. Meanwhile up the road there will be more too see. The full line-up is: Jenny Graham – stylised landscape paintings, drawings and photo-etchings of the West Country. “showing a new series…

The Studio is Open for Business!

Somerset Open Studios 2016 The signs are up… (yes, yes, I know it’s now called Somerset Open Studios, not Art Weeks, but there aren’t nearly enough new signs to get you all the way from two possible main roads in two directions to here. Plus the old ones are much nicer, having ‘Art’ in big letters, a pointy arrow, and a lot less text.) The studio has been transformed from this…. …into this. Several hundred greetings cards have been transformed from this…. …into this. Sergeant Stripes has done the stock-taking…. …and we have re-considered the tradition of using ribbons to…

‘Press On’ at The Courthouse Gallery, 14th May – 25th June 2016

I have just dropped off some etchings at the rather fine Courthouse Gallery in Somerton, where I am taking part in an exhibition with the group of artists that I used to work alongside at Dove Studios. I don’t make etchings currently… I’m not saying I never will again, but I don’t have time at the moment, so now is your chance to see some previous works, alongside a lovely selection from 5 other talented artists. Come and meet the artists on Friday 13th May 5 – 7pm, everyone welcome. Opening times for the rest of the exhibition: Tuesday –…

Ditch Dragons

Continuing in my documentation of a Westcountry Bestiary, I am pleased to be able to introduce you to the Ditch Dragons. They are depicted here in their natural habitat on the edge of a country lane in deepest Somerset. For those unfamiliar with my local landscape, the beautiful county of Somerset is, generally speaking, a wet and soggy place, and as such it requires much drainage. The verges along the edge of quiet country lanes are not the solid ground that foreigners may imagine. Take care! Stepping off the road onto the verdant fringe may take one precipitously close to…

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…

Solo exhibition at Ilminster, July 2016

“A Westcountry Bestiary” Dates: July 4th – July 30th Venue: Ilminster Arts Centre, http://www.themeetinghouse.org.uk/ East Street, Ilminster, TA19 0AN Open: Mon – Fri 9.30am to 4.30pm, Sat 9.30am to 2.30pm (please note exhibition ends at 2pm on the last Saturday) The theme of this exhibition was the collection of fanciful and mythical creatures which may, or may not, inhabit Somerset. I have now put quite a lot of the pictures up on this site under ‘Finished Artwork’ and ‘A Westcountry Bestiary’, where you can see them in more detail than below. “Some centuries before the Encyclopaedia, there was the Bestiary,…

Every Street has a Silver Lining

Is it only me who has a bit of a thing over the name ‘Silver Street’? Ever since we moved to Somerset I have been noticing them. Actually I know it’s not just me, I cam across a rather exhaustive essay on the possible derivations of the name, several possibilities including Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian names, no conclusions were drawn. One website for South Petherton claims the origin of its street name was because there was a mint situated on the street, but that in no way explains the other 36 Silver Streets in my Somerset Atlas. The author Lindsey Davis…

How Pigs Fly

‘If pigs could fly’ is of course the standard declaration of scepticism, however in my quest to document some of our local Somerset magical creatures, it has come to my attention that the little village of High Ham, a mere 3 miles from here as the pig flies, cannot have got its name for no reason. This being the case, how is it that we refuse to believe that pigs can fly? The confusion may lie in a misunderstanding of pigs’ wings, always shown in fanciful drawings as exactly like birds’ wings, stuck on a pig. This is of course…

The Winter Tree Demons

Whilst I am on the subject of our very local magical creatures (Rhyne Maidens, Pollarded Dryads), I couldn’t let another winter pass without documenting the Winter Tree Demons. Not so evocative of my local area on the edge of the Somerset Levels, these creatures are visible all over the country in the winter, but particularly in low-lying rural countryside. In the summer you would think they were trees; only in winter do they show their true shape…