Friday 25 February 2011

Tree Paintings #1 Queenswood, Herefordshire

Last night I was doing my usual round-up of the blogs I follow when I had an idea! 

I'd reached Nicki Ault’s blog and I’ve sometimes noticed a similarity between  her choice of subject matter and that of some of my soft pastel paintings, though I’d never particularly thought of myself as a ‘tree’ person. So I had a look through the low-resolution thumbnails of my old, defunct soft pastel painting website and was surprised to see just how often trees are, in fact, an important part of what I call my ‘proper paintings’.

Forests and woodlands have been in the news here recently as the government has done a U-turn in response to the huge public outcry against selling them off! Some say the government never intended to go through with it and used it to show that they are flexible and listen to the people. (It didn't apply to Wales in any case as we are 'devolved'). There’s some information here and do watch the (soundless) video! I thought it was hilarious, particularly the chap to the right who appears to keep nodding off at about 17 secs in!

So, by way of celebration of the protesters' victory, I thought it might be appropriate to post one of my many tree paintings on the days in between my regular posts, rather like Diana Ting Delosh’s daily bunny postings earlier this month.

The trees above are part of the Queenswood, in Herefordshire, which covers the top of a hill between the county town of Hereford, where I lived for four years, and Leominster in the north of the county. Leominster (pronounced Lemster!) is an attractive little town and I originally intended to move there – but in the end, Abergavenny won, partly because it is easier for my family to get here.

2 comments:

Nicki said...

Hi Judy,

I'm excited you are posting these older pieces; we will get to see another side of you! The colours in this are so strong- I feel like I can smell the forest. I also enjoy the movement in the treetops and the tangled busyness of the underbrush.

Nicki

Judy Adamson said...

Hi Nicki - thank you very much for your comments. Yes, it's quite a different process for me when I paint in pastels, as compared to designing greeting cards - far less thinking and more getting in 'flow'. When I look back at some of my older paintings, I can't really relate to what I've done, what I've noticed etc. It's as if I'm looking at someone else's work. For instance, I didn't even notice the 'movement' in the treetops till you mentioned it!

I think the similarity I noticed with your paintings is that we often don't paint the whole tree but just the parts we can see at eye-level.