I went to Edinburgh this week and I thoroughly enjoyed taking time out in this lovely city. I had not been back to Edinburgh properly since the early 1980′s when John and I exhibited in the Festival craft tent in 1984 and a detail of our Hypericum plate was used for the poster.
This photo shows the exhibitors: John and I are on the right, holding platters.
Exhibitors in front of the marquee
1984
Linocut image: April: by John Hinchcliffe
As a countryman and avid gardener I love both wild and garden flowers. With the New Year progressing it is the bulbs as well as the cuckoo that are the harbingers of spring. In the cold frosty wintry month of February it is the clumps of glistenening white snowdrops on otherwise lifeless roadside verges that give us an indication of better days, however, April is when spring really begins to happen and the flowers are waking up. The stage is now set for some of our most spectacular floral displays whether in woodland or garden. The first is the daffodil then the wild garlic or ramsons followed by the bluebellGiven that the daffodil symbolises spring and also that it is one of the most popular garden and municipal plants with about eight thousand cultivated varieties it was a very obvious choice for my April illustration. Butterflies are certainly beginning to appear in the warmer weather, particularly the orange tip and small copper.
Although there is nothing more beautiful than wild daffodils in the wild, particularly in woodland, this is now a very rare site but I do know a few places where even they can be seen. Nevertheless random plantings of different varieties also look spectacular, as they do planted alongside the private road up to my small hamlet of Higher Melcombe in a wide verge of grass under an avenue of copper beech trees, they are a delight.
Last to appear, but the most spectacular is the bluebell and to experience a walk through woodland carpeted by a sea of blue is a truly magical experience, not to be missed as they are soon gone.
John Hinchcliffe
The avenue this year, the daffodils were over before Easter.
More daffodils.
On Saturday I got down to Portland along with others who were making the best of this warmer weather. Nestled in the rocks on the end of Chesil beachwas this glorious flowering plant which is a stinking hellebore. I knew it was a hellebore but my friend Sue identified it as a stinking Hellebore. Thanks Sue.
This plant was quite close to the sea and one can look down on it from the footpath but is just inaccessible enough to remain safe.
This image was emailed to me the other day by a good customer who commissioned this tile panel for her her house in the Channel Islands,
This was when we had our studio at Sixpenny Handley. Seeing again for the first time in years I am pleased. It looks good still and it is typical of our work in the 1980′s.
March: by John Hinchcliffe 2010
March, whatever the weather, which can still be very cold and variable, signals the spring, the month of the year after a long winter we have all been waiting for. A dead colourless landscape that started to stir in February is now coming alive, and it is hard imagine the dramatic change which will occur in eight or nine weeks. Grass verges and warmer sunshine reaching sheltered banks now prompt celandines, daisies, periwinkle and primroses into flower. In wet areas marsh marigolds start to appear and breaking buds of green and snow white sloe or blackthorn blossom colour the hedgerows. Rooks are loud and busy fussing around their rather untidy nests and many other birds will be similarly engaged.
The one animal synonymous with March, however, is the hare and my list of illustrations would be incomplete without one. Apart from any other consideration they are wonderful creatures, fast, free and solitary as they roam the fields of grass, downs and ploughed land around me .‘Mad as a March Hare’ refers to the strange habit males have of standing on their hind legs and seemingly boxing as they fight with other males over the females in the spring.
Mystery and folklore have always made hares rather special. Like cats and witches they are associated with dark secret places and were believed to bring both good and bad luck , and one of the taboo animals of ancient Britain. It is because of the mystery surrounding hares that they have a long list of alternative names such as ‘the dew-beater, old turpin, old aunt or Sarah. old goibert and the nibbler to name but a very few.
The ‘Easter Bunny ‘ should be and was the ‘Easter Hare’ because it had long been associated with the Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre and with the dawn, rebirth, fertility and the moon. Never the less like the Green Man, ancient trees and stone circles the hare symbolises a reconnection with nature, freedom and the spirit of hope.
John Hinchcliffe
The mantelpiece in summer 2010.
Mock up of mugs: This approach is typical of our method of working. The traditional technique of marbling is revisited and then pieces are left around the house and thus integrated into the Hinchcliffe and Barber or not.
Mugs: Hinchcliffe and Barber
February
February is often called the gateway of the year. In an otherwise wet, cold and still winter landscape things are beginning to stir, March and April, the spring, is nearly upon us. Snowdrops, catkins and occasionally primroses are now starting to appear. My illustration of a pair of boots and a spade gives the simple message ‘the gardening year is starting’ and weather and soil conditions permitting every opportunity should be seized i.e. pruning, manuring and preparing the ground for March seed sowing.
I have always had a fascination for buildings that have seen better days, wood and tool sheds, apple stores and stable buildings now often neglected but once were so important on farms and large estates.
In common with many of my illustrations this one is the result of visiting more than one place. The illustration for February borrows much from one rather isolated and ramshackle range of farm buildings in an idyllic spot on the downs outside Cheselbourne, Lyscombe Bottom. Here next to a clear stream is a 12th century chapel, beautifully and sensitively restored, sitting on the bottom of this very secluded valley.
The one that I drew and photographed is amongst the surrounding range of flint buildings servicing the flock of sheep grazing nearby. Ivy creeping through broken panes of glass in rotting window frames, lots of corrugated iron and long abandoned birds nests
John Hinchcliffe 2010
Lino print: John Hinchcliffe
Harriet Barber who is my daughter is exhibiting at the Quest Gallery in Bath until March. On show are her paintings of the River Stour as it flows through Bryanston.
River Stour: Harriet Barber 2011 currently at Quest Gallery
Harriet has been painting the Stour since her mid teens. John Hinchcliffe would show her how to stretch, size and prepare her canvas, tell her to find her subject and paint, as no painter is ever made unless all day every day is spent so doing.
We lived in Charlton Marshall in those days and Harriet only had to cross the road and take a few steps down River lane to get to the river. Later we moved to Bryanston, up river from Charlton Marshall whichis where the canvas above was painted.
The water meadows provided a wonderful environment for many happy hours and picnics when my children were young. It is the riverscape Harriet grew up with.
A very different approach is demonstrated by my friend Rosalind Freeman who is exhibiting just around the corner from The Quest Gallery at the White Room.
Ringstead Bay: Rosalind Freeman, an image from a previous exhibition.
Her elegant wash, brush and pen images, many of which are the painted in situ on the Dorset coast are very special. Her recent paintings currently exhibited at The White Room are to do with movement are very original and beautiful.
Both these painters were trained at the Slade, Rosalind and I were there at the same time.
The days are starting to draw out and the longer daylight hours prompt me to think about getting down to Portland, this year is different of course. The Sailing Olympics will change everything and other venues must be found for painting seascapes.
Chesil Beach at Fortuneswell. Crayon Wendy Barber
Rocks at Portland Bill: oil on canvas: Wendy Barber
Hinchcliffe’s block printed sailing fabric really gives a sense of excitement of all we have to look forward to, providing that screens for viewing the Olympic races are erected in public spaces and on the esplanade at Weymouth.
I doubt if we will see much across the bay from Durdle Door or Ringstead Bay.
Block printed boat fabric: Hinchcliffe and Barber
John wrote this for Dorset Life Magazine on 9 November 2009: It was published in January 2010
January
My illustration for January is rather more poetic than it is accurate, most people would agree that the worst of the winter is yet to come, given that some of the coldest days of the recent years are in February and March. Nevertheless I have tried to convey the mood associated with this time of the year, bleak, empty and desolate. The harvest has been gathered in, Christmas is over and there is least activity above and below ground.
Conifers and deer arouse mixed emotions; there are those that love them and those that hate them. Being prolific browsers, deer are a problem in the same way that large plantations of closely planted conifers sometimes planted in the most inappropriate landscapes can look wrong. In stands of old mixed woodland they have a strange and eerie fascination, dark, dead and still.
Deer for me, in any form,are a delight, a wonderful antidote to this hectic world; they embody a free spirit and are seemingly oblivious of man, roaming at will.
It is the Roe Deer which I see most of in my part of Dorset, often in the water meadows and their oak boundaried fields in the Blackmore Vale, in isolated groups, in downland, stubble fields or crashing through undergrowth in small pockets of woodland especially up here where I live and work near the Dorset Gap.
