down among the wild flowers

This painting is another in my Land series which I have been posting up here from time to time.

I started it early in the summer 2010, but only finished it earlier this year. It came from spending many visits sitting in amongst the bluebells & greater stitchworts that grow in a bank created by the remains of an iron age hill fort on this land. The weather was kind at that stage of 2010, and I sat out there many times drawing in a little sketchbook - not directly on the canvas that time. The sketchbook then inspired the little drawings drawn onto the flower shapes in the painting. During my series of visits out there the flowers began going over, becoming seed heads, & the next plants in nature's cycle were thrusting up past them - grasses, sorrells & the bracken which eventually dominates that area for the rest of the summer.

I wanted to convey the feeling of the layers of teeming life & colour there being drawn up from the earth by the sun. At that point it was a place to go & rest & recharge my batteries, which I was very grateful for. Looking at it now brings back the sense of that place.