SIMON WRIGLEY ARTWORK
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To Farringdon and back

7/6/2023

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Up to London to meet an old friend today - sketching from the train window and later as I watched Londoners cross the Farringdon road. 
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W is for Wellington

6/6/2023

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Wellington street - looking out at Broadway and through to the top of Harpur street.

I had to sit on the Kwik-Fit forecourt (with permission) to sketch this view. One of the mechanics described the architecture of Michael Peters' shop as 'iconic'. It's certainly distinctive - as is the building next to it, built in 1879.

I've been busy with a commission and the thirsty allotment, so this quick sketch was all I had time for.

This sketch adds to Alphasketch 2023 - a part of my 'Road' exhibition at the Basement Gallery, 12-16 Sept.




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Pax hill: May trees

3/6/2023

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May trees in blossom along Pax hill today. Has it been a particularly good year for them - or am I imagining that?

I was OK sketching this en plein air this morning - but only because I had a jumper, scarf and jacket. The northeast wind was sharp, despite the June sun. 

Some dog-walkers came and went. I met a man who'd worked with the artist, Clifford Knight (whose work, coincidentally, is currently on show at the Higgins 'We Are Ten' exhibition). 

It's been a long day, and tomorrow I have my writing group. 
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Knuckled roots

2/6/2023

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The roots of a beech tree on Sharpenhoe Clappers.

The trees seem like great arms reaching down from the sky to cling to the chalky slopes with great hands and knuckled fingers. Tethered spirits. In the background the others, bleached almost invisible against the light, seem to stand sentinel like ghostly presences.

I've painted here before.

The place seems sacred - not just because it was given in honour and memory of two sons who died in last century's wars.

From the road, just outside the village of Sharpenhoe, at the foot of the hill, the path rises next to a field and ends in 141 uneven steps.

At the top, the grove of trees cover the plateau. And between their trunks, you look out into lungfuls of air and birds across Bedfordshire.

Makes me think of Edward Thomas's poem, 'Adlestrop'.
www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53744/adlestrop
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I is for Interchange retail park

31/5/2023

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A stump of dead tree, a parched shrub, and the territorial song of the jackhammer destroying a new shop to put up an even more spanking new shop: no wonder the world's in a mess.

​The interchange retail park is a soulless place, a materialist's shrine designed to welcome hundreds of fossil-fuel-burning pilgrims with bank accounts. 
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Photo of retail park 31.5.23
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Ink and watercolour of retail park 31.5.23
The few surviving trees and the grass between the paving slabs remind shoppers of the natural world which their behaviour is destroying. Strangely the pilgrims all looked tired and fed up - despite the invitations to drink coffee, vape, and munch fast food. I wonder why.
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Two quick sketches

30/5/2023

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The first, a few days ago, is of the old railway cutting  - the Old Warden Tunnel Nature Reserve - just off the Southill Road above Cardington. The second, today, is of the old 'Lincoln Arms', now a private residence off Goldington Green.
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Old Warden Tunnel Nature Reserve
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The old 'Lincoln Arms' off Goldington Green
Sometimes it's hard to keep going - overwhelmed, tired, losing confidence. But these sketches come out of such a time, when I've just been pressing on, keeping going. I wish I had a good waterproof ink pen. 
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Fruit bowl

26/5/2023

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The fruit bowl from Siena with four bananas and two 'easy-peelers'.

This evening I went to the opening of the Higgins exhibition 'We are Ten', celebrating the last ten years of the gallery and welcoming some wonderful additions to the collection.

It was good to meet good, thoughtful people and to discuss the place of the arts in troubled times, and to reflect on the compromises that characterise our existence. 

Afterwards I went to the allotment and dug at dusk. And shared a drink with a friend.

The evening sky was very beautiful.
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Three worlds: 'begin afresh, afresh, afresh.'

24/5/2023

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Today I adjusted a previous sketch of Sharpenhoe Clappers, the dramatic Chiltern escarpment just north of Luton.
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Before
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After
The photos look pretty similar but I worked on defining the clouds, and pulling the sunlight over the hill to touch the tree-tops. It struck me that I had inadvertently painted three worlds - field, hill and sky. Trees are the overlap, and since those on the hill are planted in memory of two sons killed in war, that seems appropriate. The solitary sunlit tree starkly confronts with its new life. Larkin - 'begin afresh, afresh, afresh'.
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Q is for Queen's

23/5/2023

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A chestnut tree on Queen's drive this morning.

I love their gnarled trunks and their impossible candles of blossom. Nature - essentially spiritual in its plurality.

W.B.Yeats - 'Among School children' 1933

Labour is blossoming or dancing where
The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,
Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.
O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?


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May 19th, 2023

19/5/2023

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PictureA drawing from 19.5.1973 - 50 years ago: A Fiat 850 in front of 24 Wetherby Gardens SW7
 


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    Simon Wrigley:  teacher, writer, artist, allotmenteer
    Bedford UK

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