Today's flood warnings are turning my mind to rivers and their catchment areas. On a map, catchments don't usually appear as shapes but have to be traced. Yet they're real, physical things, just as much as seas and mountain ranges.
In 2019 I made a journey along the River Lune from the sea at Sunderland Point to what is regarded as its source, a spring high in the Howgill Fells. Having grown up in Lancaster, it was like coming home to my roots. I recorded the places I visited in a sketchbook as a series of pen and wash drawings, of which this is one.
A lot of rain-soaked hills feed the Lune, from Shap Fell to Ingleborough and the Bowland Fells. In 1967 the Lune's tributaries, the Roeburn and Hindburn, swept away two bridges and several houses at the village of Wray. When storm Desmond struck in December 2015, it was the Lune that carried the greatest volume of water.
An idea I'm pursuing is the boundary between human-made and natural features in the landscape. The imprint of human activity goes back as long as there have been humans, I suppose. In the British Isles, any traces prior to about 12,000 years ago have been erased by the last glacial period, but that still leaves quite a stretch of time, in which many layers have been superimposed on the raw gravel, sand and silt debris of glaciation. The plants that colonised the newly-accessible wilderness were followed by animals, and the animals were followed by people in search of game at this edge of the habitable world.
About halfway through this 12,000-year-old story the people began farming, in patches, and with setbacks due to climatic cycles. It took millennia for settlements to emerge that were any more than hamlets, and field systems to become more widespread.
I don't know how far back these field systems near Malham go. What attracted me when I took this photo was not just the pleasing pattern, but the uncertainty about what's natural and what man-made. The little strip-fields – lynchets – merge into terraces caused by the river's erosion and deposition in the valley. The contours are emphasised by the fish-net tracery of dry-stone walls, and the patches of woodland on any slopes too steep to cultivate.
After a summer break from painting, spending a few days in Grasmere last week has got the ideas flowing again. I've stayed there many times, and always find new and interesting subjects. This was the first time I'd combined cycling with sketching. It worked well, covering a wider area than on foot, without the encumbrance of a car, and still have sketchbook, folding stool, pencils and watercolours to hand. The bike's water bottle was handy for the watercolours!
The slate farmhouses, miners' cottages and even hotel buildings sit so comfortably in the landscape. Interlaced with drystone walls, they grow out of the ground itself, their mossy walls and roofs merging seamlessly into the bedrock. I'm looking to express, in a contemporary, "un-picturesque" way, how the buildings share the geology and are subject to the same processes of weathering and erosion as the ground they stand on.
This is a detail of a painting I've been working on, on and off, since March. Some years ago my wife and I were walking by the River Derwent in Borrowdale and the sunlight filtering through the glade was spectacular. I've tried to do it justice from photos and memory.
I've had a long period of painting austere rock subjects, so the textures of tree bark and mossy ground were a refreshing change. The textures seem to call for different paint handling but I was seeing if I could adapt my "rock" brushstrokes and palette. I look for an economical technique, but am always tempted to add more. There comes a point when you have to stop fiddling. SO I'm calling it finished. For now....
The completed plot.