Waders and sketchbook

An unexpected recent outcome from regular wading along the river has been a new series of sculptural extractions. The work relates less to plants along the river than to the experience of the river: its colour, its muddiness, its smell, its relentlessness, its battering of anything dropped in it or left in its way – as well as the continuity of all these things over the years.

The above picture is of some of the metal, wood, glass, rope and objects I have recovered from the river. From these I am creating a sculpture series which will be presented at my next exhibition.

Talking of burdock plants (see my last post), a book I have recently discovered and loved reading is Weeds by Richard Mabey. Described on the dust jacket as ‘the first ever cultural history of weeds’, it has a whole chapter on burdock – which reveals famous works of art with burdock in (who’d have known!) – some of that chapter I thought I would share here…

Burdock on Northcote Nature Reserve last September

Mabey references famous works of art with burdock in them, from as early as the seventeenth century. In Claude Lorrain’s Landscape with Dancing Figures it is painted realistically in the bottom right hand corner, recognisable by its large drooping leaves, but no flowering spikes, and similarly at the bottom of Landscape with Rustic Dance. Burdock has a strong sculptural quality and in Landscape with Narcissus and Echo the plant echoes Narcissus’s splayed legs and arms.

Mabey also reveals burdock in works by Thomas Gainsborough and George Stubbs. Burdock appears, for example, in The Cottage Door, by Gainsborough, but also in a beautiful study of burdock leaves by Gainsborough, held at the British Museum https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1910-0212-256

Mabey puts forward the idea that “what burdock suggests in these pieces is that beauty can reside in the uneven and the asymmetrical – in the idea of weediness in fact”. I so agree!

In the eighteenth century, in Horse Attacked by a Lion by George Stubbs, (on display at Tate Britain) the plant plays a front and forward role, echoing the horse’s agonised head. But interestingly, as Mabey points out, the plant is beginning to die, with patches of brown rust, pointing to the idea of “elegance under pressure – what you might call grace”.

There is so much more in this chapter that I could recall here but I will just draw attention to one other artist mentioned, following through on the idea of “elegance in the business of living and ageing” – in 2008, the distinguished American photographer Janet Malcolm produced a series of 28 close-up photographs of burdock leaves in different states of living and dying, preferring the flawed leaves to fresh new ones – leaves which have lived life. Her portraits give these “uncelebrated leaves” a kind of grace and nobility.

Mabey’s book on Weeds is one of those books that has had a real resonance for me and continues to inform my work.

All quotes above are from the chapter, Burdock, in Weeds by Richard Mabey.

I dug these plants up in September 2024. Each plant was tall with an imposing structure in the died-back, post-summer, nature reserve. I planned to draw them on 1.8 metre strong, light, Japanese Kozo paper, to be hung in the middle of a space. The thin Kozo paper allows light to travel through giving the sense of the plant growing in the space.

Reed

I experimented drawing the reed in ink on old tracing paper. I wanted the drips from the inks to give a sense of the watery river. For now I have hung it from a branch with bull clips but I will find a branch from the river and hang it without the clips.

I also drew the reed in charcoal on the Kozo paper…The charcoal has a soft velvety texture on the Kozo paper.

Dock

The dock leaf is in charcoal on Kozo paper. The leaves were alive, dark-green and exuberant and the flowers and their stalks were brown and gone to seed.

Burdock

Drawing the burdock, I have been experimenting with inks on Kozo, exploring the way they bleed – wanting to give the spiny burrs a soft edge. I made several drawings. This drawing uses compressed charcoal, my hand-made black and brown inks using river water and local oak galls, Windsor & Newton coloured drawing inks, and river water as a wash. I combined the drawing ink with walnut ink to get a beautiful warm sepia brown which seemed to bleed more than the drawing ink on its own – W&N drawing ink has shellac in it which may prevent it from bleeding so much. My favourite ink for bleed is Quink Ink. Not only does it bleed profusely, but the colours separate out leaving beautiful sepia stains. Having just typed this, I have resolved to draw the burdock again in Quink!

I would like to try making my own walnut ink. I could not find many oak galls last year and my hand-made black ink is down to the last inch – very precious!