I had many reasons for making the journey to England, after 30 years away. Any one of the reasons is a novella, which is why I am thinking of creating a new blog devoted to travel. Where to even begin? Perhaps with the question posed last week by friends who had just returned from Scandinavia and Prague: why England? To which I replied: The Wind in the Willows. That classic children’s book about Mole, Ratty, Badger and Toad and their bucolic life along the river shaped my idea from the age of 6 of what countryside should look like. I was a child of the wide open west, where barbed wire and naked fenceposts divided the fields, you could drown in the murky depths of a horse trough, and a volcanic mountain filled the eastern door of the barn. Our river was a quarter mile down a steep cliff littered with rusted barrels and stalked by coyotes and mountain lions.
My father gave me the Wind in the Willows when I entered 1st grade. I would sit in bed in the farmhouse and run my fingers over the illustrated endpapers, tracing a green quilt of soft hedgerows, a river you could easily row a boat down, a tiny bridge, a weir, and Pan’s Island, where, in Chapter 7, Rat, Mole, (and every susceptible child) could be awed by The Mystery. Page 133 still holds a four leaf clover and the browned paper on which I wrote out Rat’s failed attempt to describe, in words, the wordless presence of god. So yeah, I went to England to find that. It may explain why I could not stop following the swans. (Click on any print image to see details in shop.)
I built my itinerary around rivers, enchanting place names, history, and the studios of British artists who influenced me. I wanted to see the dead (Ben Nicholson) and the living (Felicity Keefe, Sally Hirst, Karen Stamper, Linda Felcey, and others.) I also planned to visit conservatories and gardens to develop new botanical work for the Gardener’s Almanac stationary. I designed my journey slowly over months of research that included London, Bath, Cornwall, Exeter, Norwich, and Cambridge.
The spark for the trip started last October when I was looking at a tour of Ireland which had unfortunately filled. While I was browsing online a listing in St. Ives came up that stopped me in my tracks. On impulse I booked 6 nights for August on Carncrows Street. This was an intuitive gamble on the dream of a “room with a view,” and my instincts were right. During my stay in St. Ives I was transfixed by third story windows that looked out on sea and sky, and I never tired of simply sitting and looking. Carncrows is one of the oldest streets on St. Ives, and although I don’t know the year the row house was built I do know it can take 10 minutes to get a skeleton key to work in the door when the lock is filled with a century of salt and spray. Charm comes with inconvenience, to remind you to appreciate it.
Every morning I sat at the kitchen window or under the eaves in the oceanic bed and wrote and worked on photographs taken the day before. I had brought 10 pounds of art supplies with me and never opened any of them. Partly it was because everywhere I went I saw landscape paintings, posters and cards of what was in front of me as I walked, and it was paralyzing. What was I supposed to do with a landscape that had been painted by thousands of artists, famous and obscure, and stared back at me from every shop window? After my hundredth sighting of a painting of the bay and a boat I realized I had to work in a different, completely contemporary medium if I had a prayer of finding my voice. My ipad and iphone became a mobile art studio, and formed the bridge between the ancient history of Britain and the modern moment. During every wait for a bus or a train I could pull out my camera, respond, and begin to transform what was in front of me.
These “sketches” have been refined and scaled for prints, a project which has taken most of my waking hours since I have returned. Given that much of my time in England was spent immersed in history, this way of working at times felt suspect. Where were my careful architectural drawings? Or the hazy ideas of landscape paintings I had thought I would do? One of the great gifts of this trip came to me from an artist I had come to know through Instagram. We caught up in London and she took me to see the David Hockney immersion experience at Coal Drop. This hour in the presence of modern genius allayed any doubts I might have about using contemporary media. David Hockney does it all: with freedom, joy, dedication and complete abandon. He does not worry about what is “legitimate.” When I feel anxiety intrude I think of his laugh booming throughout the hall as he narrated a lifetime of work in painting, set design, photography, printmaking and yes … the ipad. Because your fingers can touch the screen of the ipad directly while make creative choices the process feels truly hybrid, somewhere between the physical and the cyber-spiritual. Your hand and fingers can activate intuition in a way that is uncanny and direct, and far more intimate than sitting in front of a computer.
One of the most wonderful synergies of past and present happened in Norwich. I had learned in St. Ives that a quiet and unexpected way to be a “tourist” in another land is to spend an afternoon in the library. It’s such an ordinary thing to do, right? No sight-seeing, no famous backdrop for a selfie, just stacks and stacks of books, and the civilians going about their daily lives. The Norwich library is sophisticated. It has a café, a wine bar, BBC studios. If you sit there on a summer afternoon the entire atrium bathes in reflected light from St. Peter Mancroft Church (circa 1455.) You gaze through the circuitry of information through mirroring walls of glass that transport you through 5 centuries. I marveled, and I looked up at the ceiling. There I was startled to see window washers poised as though walking on clouds.
This was all quite splendid, but it got better. Leaving through the plaza I encountered a man lying on the stairs and squinting through a very expensive telephoto. He asked me, when I asked him what he was shooting, if I had seen the window washers? This is my kind of town.
Which brings me to my questions for you, dear readers. I have a years’ worth of travel stories to unspool. Every day when I walked through the old stone streets new titles for essays appeared, including what feels like an infinite series on Reasons to Travel. My current favorite, in the year of a big birthday: To Make Life Longer. When I was planning my trip I came across a rare blog by a retired professor, known only as “Gerry.” On his platform, titled “That’s how the light gets in,” he shares observations and maps of his walks across in England and thoughts about art and culture. He suggested reading Unquiet Landscape, which became an invaluable guide through the history of British landscape painting. I am thinking of collecting my existing travel writings and adding new ones for a new blog entirely devoted to travel, art, community and pilgrimage. On the other hand, it could be a section of my current website. Do you ever read blogs with regularity? What do you suggest would be the most inviting for you as a reader?
I will leave you with this image of Exeter, glimpsed at sunrise from my room. I hope you will come to the studio gathering, let me know what the new work sparks in your imagination, and share your own travel dreams. I will be sending out more stories and work as it evolves. Check back to see what’s new in the portfolio over the coming month. If you are interested in a piece give me a shout so if you come by the open studio in November I can have it on hand. The Swans are available currently here, and the other England shop additions are in progress.
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