‘A restless sky,
Beneath distant grumpy hills
Somewhere young greens are stirring,
Lights from clouds create different bolts of green,
We cannot count the sheer number of greens we see.
Sometimes when painting thoughts occur and I am compelled to put the brush down and write these down. Working on the painting Up to Bishops Canning, completed a few days ago these five lines above struck me.
Bishops Canning is seen from the road that runs from Devizes to Swindon. There’s never a place to safely stop. The thought occurs that I should cycle along in my brightest day-glow? However vehicles move a fearful speeds. I remember pulling over to make a sketch in July of last year perhaps my first trip to Devizes.
This whole area, The Vale of Pewsey, is an idea as much as a place. When we arrived, as part of my initiation process, I discovered the book of The Poems and Selected Letters of Charles Hamilton Sorley edited and with an introduction Hilda D. Spear.
Sorley, born in Scotland, was brought up in Cambridge and attended Marlborough College. He was killed in action during the Battle of Loos in October 1915.
Sorley identified himself as from Wiltshire. ‘ I know it is wrong of me’ he wrote to the Master of Marlborough in July 1914, ’but I count myself as Wiltshire’
Spear says in her introduction; ‘History was in the very ground beneath him, and it was rich with the legacy of all the ages but the men who had made history were long dead but in the earth and the countryside, in the trees and the winds and formation of the Downs. They were the starting point for his poems though rarely his actual subject.’
These lines from his poem East Kennet Church at Evening invoke the idea of Pewsey.
I stood amongst the corn, and watched
The evening coming down.
The rising vale was like a queen,
and the dim church her crown.
I go on painting Pewsey. Below the painting Through a morning Hedgerow in the Vale of Pewsey was inspired by and based on a photograph from @visitpewseyvale.
I saw it and immediately sensed it would be a remarkable subject to paint. Below is the preparatory colour sketch which is very different. Both have the notion of peering through to gaze on something secret, something special.
Two paintings inspired by the same place with very different feelings to them.
I end with a painting of Pewsey Hill. During our first visit there, in April, and I was stuck by the bright stone-jeweled fields at the top by the narrow roadside.
It put me in mind of Sorley’s poem:
Stones – the opening stanza
This field is almost white with stones
That cumber all its thirsty crust.
And underneath, I know, are bones,
And all around is death and dust.
I am grateful for the chance to pull this collection of paintings together. Whilst doing this I remembered Sorley’s work. I would recommend Hilda Spear’s to introduce you to some lovely poetry surely rooted in Pewsey.
Extracts in this piece from
The poems and selected letters of Charles Hamilton Sorley
Edited with an introduction and notes by Hilda D. Spear; preface by Lord Butler Blackness Press, 1978 [Dundee]. Available widely including Amazon link
Thanks to our new member Tim Baynes for his contribution of this thoughtful and inspiring piece.
