Kingfisher

Marshscape Collage – the view from the studio window at high tide

Yesterday I saw a kingfisher. I was sitting outside the studio, looking at the ebbing tide with a cup of coffee. Taking a moment just to be.

Suddenly, driving fast and low above the surface of the draining water, a flash of iridescent blue. My eyes lock onto the speeding blur it as it passes directly in front of me and, as if they are joined to it by strings, they follow the wink of coloured light as it races fast and away to the right until out of sight. 

5 seconds of wonder and excitement. 

I strain to see it again. Hoping it will turn and come back. But the miraculous bird has gone, and I am left with a feeling that something special has happened.

How, I ask myself, can I capture that brief sense of movement, absorption and marvel in a piece of work?

Swallows

I’ve just spent a lazy hour sitting in the shade at the studio looking at what was going on and watching the swallows swoop and dive around me.

These small, elegant black and white birds arrived about three weeks ago, (or maybe a bit longer – I can’t remember exactly)  and they will be here now for the rest of the summer.

Swallows feed on the wing and their flight patterns are mesmerising as they hunt for insects. So of course I grabbed a pencil and started to draw – flight path, over flight path, following their movements with my eyes.

Another page and the side of a graphite stick varied the marks,

and on further page a few more jottings.

The words read:

Swallows fly past

Now high

Now low

A glide and then a short flap of wings.

Rise higher and another glide.

A sudden, flutter and turn, flutter and turn – switchback

Falling – wings back – they chirrup.

From the left a straight, confident path,

swift and low

to rest on the far bank.

 

I have used the swooping shapes of a swallow’s flight in my work before but it is always a pleasure to have another look.

Finally, on another note, you may be interested to know that I am giving an online workshop for TextileArtist.org as part of their new TextileArtist.org Stitch Club. The workshop starts next week and in it I talk about how objects can tell a story and take you through the processes I use for making small containers for some objects that you have chosen yourself. I think the last day for registration is tomorrow!