chriswoodartist

For the last couple of years I have painted every day. I have worked primarily in watercolours and the subject was very close to my back door – namely my tiny Southsea garden. I captured the march of the seasons and the ever changing weather patterns. I tried to capture light but as any plein air painter will tell you, light is very elusive ! As a teenager I used to earn pocket money by doing light gardening for the neighbours and this sparked a lifelong interest in plants. Then I went to art school and quickly forgot about gardening, which wasn’t deemed to be cool, so new hobbies included learning to play the guitar, sailing and girls.

it was only when I started living in a garden flat in Wimbledon, (SW London) that I revisited my former interest in plants. The deal was, I paid £10 a week and did 8-10 hours gardening each week and in return I got a self contained flat with a large lean to conservatory, which latterly became my summer studio. The house was an enormous Victorian pile that had been split into about 12 large bedsits. The garden was vast. A large front garden, bordered with 8 foot high Holly hedges, a circular driveway and a large circular raised flower bed of chrysanthemums. The owner was an octogenarian lady who once lived in the big house but on the death of her military husband, she downsized into a new bungalow that she had built at the end of the garden. My job was to cut the lawns, trim the hedges, weed the driveways and try to keep on top of the planting. It was an impossible job, made all the more difficult by the owner, who was from a previous era. I was referred to as “Wood” , which rankled at first but I learnt to tug my forelock and suck it up ! When I got the flat, I had just completed my post graduate year at the art college and was looking to move from my digs in Merton Park. As someone who was about to put their foot on the first rung of the career ladder, it appeared to be a perfect solution. In between mowing the lawns I had the time to go to interviews and kick-start working as an artist.

I digress, the garden had been “let to go” and required not a part time gardener but a full time one, who was prepared to turn their hands to anything “the lady of the house” required. I became disenfranchised when I discovered the extent of the job, which turned into a chore rather than a delight. That said there were compensations, the garden was teeming with wildlife and I enjoyed watching Jays, squirrels, jackdaws and urban foxes. The flat itself was in a lovely house and fully furnished.

The gardening in the “big house” was not at all creative and was “fire fighting” and it was only when I decided to move in with my partner and get another local ground floor flat that my former interest in gardening was rekindled. The garden was overgrown and we had to dig out a lot of brambles and ivy before starting in earnest but it was our patch of soil !

We grew vegetables and although the soil was not particularly good we experimented and despite our very low budget, we managed to transform it into a little haven, bordered with passionflowers, honeysuckle and forsythia. I didn’t want to see another chrysanthemum but we did have a tiny lawn and a pond.

Next we bought our first house, again in Wimbledon but possibly the wrong side of the railway tracks ! It’s crazy to think that 50 years ago a three bedroom terraced house was only £14,500 and now it’s nearer £600,000. ! it was here that I really got the gardening bug and designed and built the entire back garden.

We had a front yard which was really a concrete gap between the front of the house and the rather dodgy wall that was knocked down by a Morris Minor car ploughing into it when it parted company with its nearside front wheel !

I won’t discuss every move and every garden that I have had in the last 50 years, suffice to say that building a career came first and the gardening took a back seat until my recent health scare that lead to me to working closer to home ! As I mentioned at the start of the blog for the last couple of years I have painted every day and not only was it very good therapy but it lead to not only painting the various plants and shrubs but pruning them and rejigging what I was painting. The process now begins with planting a bulb, sowing seeds, watching them grow and documenting their journey. I’m very much an amateur and rely on my Friday fix of Monty Donn on BBC 1 to guide me through the pitfalls ! Once more I am on a low budget but the time is my own and the labour is very cheap ! I also rely on purchasing reduced price, bargain, plants from a well known DIY store !

Moving on, I am thinking about developing and synthesising my sketchbook studies into new formats. I could add scale to my way of working and do the “retirement thing”, visiting stately homes and gardens and following a time honoured tradition but for now, I want to continue the personal investigation of my own space. I also have had fun including elements of weather in the compositions.

Rather than producing framed watercolours I want to push the boundaries of drawing a little and have a desire to make a three dimensional drawing, similar to a Pollocks Theatre, with layers of imagery, creating depth. I also like the concept of audience participation – so watch this space for future artworks . . . .