I think as a child there’s so much you don’t understand in the world around you, and it all goes into a sort of ‘pending’ folder in your head waiting to be filed later when you know where it belongs. And where it will make sense. And these, now, are times which, again, we don’t know how to file. A brief crisis? A temporary dislocation of our habits? Or a profound change to our understanding of life and our social structures? Until we have a structure to fit it in we are looking in from the outside.
Sun, Wind, Sea 52x65cm, mixed media on handmade paper (sold)
One of a pair of smallish ‘farewell Brighton’ pieces, on handmade recycled paper. The light in late afternoon over the sea is often stunning. I could watch it for hours; a meditation in itself. The view is near the iconic West Pier, right opposite the lovely gallery where these pieces were first exhibited. (The gallery sadly had to close after two years because of its owner’s illness.) These are more about mood than detail. I have used the roughness of the handmade paper surface and the sparkle of silver leaf to bring life to the whole.
Universal (Dis)Order 85x61cm, mixed media on handmade papers
This forms part of what is becoming a personal library of images of cosmic, universal and our own small-world disturbances. Last year we were in the middle of political confusion and mayhem, accompanied by floods and fires and famines in various parts of the world.
The Covid-19 virus? Never heard of it. So much worse to come…. In the past, malign influence or the wrath of god might have been blamed for these wide-scale disasters. Now people might single out sun-flares, global warming, even barometric pressure. A combination of natural forces way beyond our influence…plus human behaviour.
Here we are, trying on other worlds for size, and we can’t treat our own with respect. Global warming, climate change, species reduction, loss of habitat…and Covid. Fire, drought, flood, famine and pestilence. If we look at our world over and across time it’s clear it has had cycles of cooling and warming and this is not the first climate emergency. But this time we have knowledge and pooled information and communication. The situation has been plain even to non-scientists for a long time. I’ve lived with it for much of my adult life. And the underlying fact is all these things are interconnected. Why oh why has it taken so long to become generally accepted? The famous haven’t spoken out; the infamous have shut their eyes and continued to make big bucks from disastrous practices.
Origins, Tree of Life (sold), mixed media on handmade paper
The painting shows the earth, the sun and a stylised Tree of Life (a so-called cladogram, a diagram used by anthropologists to illustrate man’s descent).
This painting was done on a specially-made piece of heavy cotton paper. It also incorporates sheets of paper made from other plants including nettles. The idea was to use all natural, elemental materials – even if they weren’t all available in prehistoric times. It makes use of both printing and painting techniques and I added inks, dyes and earth pigments (some from India) as well as water-based paints. This combination of materials gives particularly dense, rich, matt colours on the slightly absorbent paper surface. I added gold leaf as a contrast, to convey the power of the sun.
I think about trees a good deal, Palaeologists are now saying that the tree analogy for the beginnings of human life is misleading. It suggests a single source diversifying and spreading out. The preferred new image is like an interlaced series of rivers running in and out of each other, drying up in places, re-emerging in others. Half a million years ago…but that’s a long story.
Transient Nature 65x85cm, mixed media on board (sold)
Jill Tattersall
The unmistakable, iconic curves of Cuckmere Haven again. This year they were obliterated when the land flooded. The decision has been taken not to protect this coastline against sea-level rise as the climate warms. It’s only a matter of time since these silvery curves disappear for ever.
What am I inspired by? Well, I could say colour, but I am more driven by colour, it’s in and around me. What inspires me to put pen to paper, pick up a brush, start playing with a pencil is…patterns. The patterns of nature we see everywhere, and the patterns we then recreate all round us. We’re made up of patterns ourselves. Blood vessels, fingerprints, cells. They recur all round us, vast and tiny: galaxies and microbes, sandstorms and snail-trails. Force meet counterforce, something has to give – and a pattern is created.
Night of Freedom, mixed media on canvas
Mixed media with pigments and silver leaf on canvas. The night sky as it was when Magna Carta was officially sealed in 1215. This painting is at present at the Dark Skies Observatory in Kielder, Northumberland.
It’s not an idle conceit to research and portray the arrangement of the planets and stars on such a night. Those nobles and politicians and soldiers would themselves have been looking upwards, and wondering what the omens were. The soothsayers would have been in high demand. This is not the place to go into the what or when or where of Magna Carta. But in the end, it was a great deal better than nothing. Which is how improvements tend to happen, though we wish we could get there faster…. .
Orange Haven, mixed media on handmade paper panels
This shows the unmistakable, iconic curves of Cuckmere Haven in Sussex. This year they were obliterated when the land flooded. The decision has been taken not to protect this coastline against sea-level rise as the climate warms. It’s only a matter of time since these silvery curves disappear for ever.
Composed of two sections of handmade paper, this uses paints, inks, pigments and dyes to build up intense colour, with the addition of gold and silver leaf. The advantage of using my own handmade paper is that I can keep it slightly absorbent so the paint settles into all those tiny pockets and fissures to build up a three-dimensional depth of colour. Lots of washes are need to create that intensity, and each has to dry, so it’s time-consuming. But done right, the paintings glow quietly, even in low light.
And then there’s the magic of silver leaf. Not a lot, just little touches which bring another whole dimension of light to the piece. Paintings with silver (and to a lesser extent gold) leaf change totally in appearance according to the angle you view them from, and the amount of natural and artificial light. I particularly like some of my pieces when the lights are low.
