Tag Archives: environment

My first book cover!

Posted on by

1

Whilst in Cambodia I was commissioned back in the UK for my first book cover. Emma Restall Orr’s seventh book ‘The Wakeful World’ discusses the theme of animism ‘as a radically different, yet mature and coherent philosophy’ for the current times.

‘Providing deep green ethics with a wholly rational metaphysical foundation, The Wakeful World is a compelling view of the nature of existence and the experience of reality, giving solid ground for the now necessary journey to an integrated and sustainable world.’

The image used was a photograph I made a few years ago called ‘We two’. Inspired by Georgia O’Keefe’s sensual studies of flowers I had made the image of the two tulips bending together, a curving tension between them, in the late sunlight at my back door. It’s really lovely to see it used for a book on a subject that I too can feel passionate about, it means a lot to me.

Bring me the sunflower ~ Mothers’ Day

Posted on by

0

When I was a girl on Mothers’ Day we would pile into our rusty old white triumph car with the black, cat scratched, soft top and drive to the forest to see my grandmother. Three generations gathering to say I love you and eat buttery crumpets giving gifts of books and cat statues and filling grannies room with bunches of daffodils from the Isle of Scilly. My grandmother and my mother are now passed and my daughter is on the other side of the world so the below image today is for them but especially my mum, who was a bright whirling sunflower until her last goodbye.

Bring me the sunflower

Bring me then the plant that points
to those bright Lucidites swirling up from the earth.

And life itself exhaling that central breath!

Bring me the sunflower
crazed with the love
of light.

Written by Eugenio Montale

Growing Green Again

Posted on by

2

“Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter. Who would think that those branches would turn green again and blossom, but we hope it, we know it.”
Goethe

That this…

Will become this…

Is just a little bit magical isn’t it…

What a show off!

Posted on by

2

In my grandmother’s New Forest garden was a huge buddleia bush accompanied by a long lavender bed. In the summer I would sit there hypnotised watching the butterfly coated tree and hearing the somewhat
magical sound of peacock and red admiral wings thrum past my ears. My memory tells me there were many many more than hover on the buddleia bush in the New Forest Garden I am looking after currently.

This may though be a case of romantic childhood memories as Butterfly Conservation’s research shows that they have increased, possibly encouraged by the warming climate, in the South of England. BC tells us that there has been a “significant overall increase in the abundance of the Peacock since 1976.”

Well I am jolly pleased about that. The above Peacock butterfly surprised me by settling within perfect focus range when I was concentrating on some mating Chrysolina herbacea on Mentha aquatica…that’s wild mint beetles on copious wild mint to you and me!

Cheeky!

Embracing Experience

Posted on by

0

 

A butterfly loving friend arrived at my door one night with a cocoon. It started vibrating not long after, by the time I settled into my bed a butterfly had been born. Early sunrise woke us both and I took this before opening the window…


Odes to snow ★

Posted on by

2

‘And so The Snow Queen also became a story about the need to seek equilibrium, in our own lives, with the natural world, even within the universe at large.’ Joan Vinge

‘Magic is this layer of peace nature brings us with her frozen tears’ FT

‘The snow goose need not bath itself to make itself white. Neither need you do anything but be yourself.’ Lao Tzu

‘Courage is not the towering oak that sees storms come and go; it is the fragile blossom that opens in the snow.’ Alice M Swain

‘The future lies before you like paths of pure white snow. Be careful how you tread it for every step will show.’ Anon

‘In that moment robin knew hummingbird.’ FT

‘The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of a world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found’
J B Priestly

‘Snow provokes responses that reach right back to childhood.’ Andy Goldsworthy

‘The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many for love.’ Margaret Atwood

‘You are ice and fire the touch of you burns my hands like snow.’ Amy Lowell