Sunday Morning Fishing - Oil on Board

Mostly I am inspired to paint by something or someone I see. Affection for a locale, love of the sitter, the pleasure of a moment lived, unexpected physical peculiarities, the sheer otherness of a phenomenon in view, the way the joy of perception increases exponentially with close observation, and delight in nuances of colour, shape, texture and light, - any of these can get me composing a picture. On the other hand it is sometimes the case that neither phenomena nor persons trigger the creative process, but a train of thought. This painting, "Sunday Morning," is more a meditation than a practical study, a dream almost. I had in my heart memories of childhood in Southern England, the gnarled hoary-barked willows by the clear streams that come bubbling out of the downlands, and many boyhood journeys through the landscapes of "Old Wessex" in search of its history. Some of it you could quickly find by stepping into an old church. As a youngster this was both a thrilling experience and also daunting. Skirting time-tilted mossy gravestones you passed through a massive creaking oak door still bearing, perhaps, musket ball scars from the collision of Roundheads and Cavaliers, and entered a hushed and musty atmosphere filled with a treasury of mysterious runes. Floor brasses of the first knights who warmed to the tale of Sir Gawain, sculpted effigies of men and women once lords of all the surrounding lands, brooding rood screens, great Bibles, vaulted naves, carved lecterns, worn pews, mediaeval bells, buttresses flying and not flying at all, towers high as the cawing rookeries nearby and old, some of them, before the Normans arrived, all these were reminders of a faith firmly held, but not in any fashion a child wanted to follow. It was always good to get back out into the wind and the sunshine, and after a glimpse at the writing on the headstones telling of whole families that had long departed, take off into the open air.

There was a time when I got to know the little rivers of the Salisbury Plain quite well, the Avon, Wylye, Nadder and Bourne meandering through quiet villages with low yellow stone bridges, where culverts full of the cleanest looking brook water raced into cress-beds, and the rivers split and rejoined in playful loops along the necklace of meadows following the valley floor. In some places nothing much has changed. A photograph set me day-dreaming, and the reverie developed into a painting; It is early on a Sunday morning as the sun rises fast over dewy meadows, clear rivers and fresh rills. While the last of the dawn mist gives way to strong contrasts of light and shade and silhouette, a young man steps into the water, unconscious that he is also stepping into the stream of time. As his dog watches alertly from the bank, he flexes the rod and tests the line. And a glorious sunburst cascades over distant spires.

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