Mossy Nooks in Hedge Roots

Nooks
Old twine embedded in branches like bracelets,
Small mossy spaces. 
Limbs that strangle.  
When I was a child (I had a good imagination) I would have imagined gnomes in these spaces - gnomes with hearty white beards,  like gnomes like in my precious Will Huygen book.  

I don't see trees anymore, I see limbs, legs and arms.  90 degree angled arms like traffic conductors on busy box junctions illustrated in my old copy of the Highway Code.  

There's something poetic about this but I'm reluctant to launch into word - painting, making, photographing and constantly singing and occasionally dancing - (or maybe it's just arsing around for the woodlouse's amusement) is enough for now.    To respond to this place, I will make it my playground.  There aren't many people in West Somerset, so no one's watching - apart from the sheep and a few woodlice and it's quite liberating to play at being a tree.  

My work has always felt seasonal, documentation in the summer, when my tenagers are constantly hungry and I spend more energy making sourdough than painting.  But I never stop looking, especially at shadows at this time of year, looking at how they fall.  I love Phyllida Barlow's drawings - the strong shadows and wonder if she decided where the shadow would be in a drawing, or whether she made the maquettes, shone a light at them, and her shadows are true?  

I have a young assistant, who at 14, doesn't mind curling up in a tree nook for me - this is so useful, for the documentation and when the nights set in, and everyone's back at school and university this will inform new art.  I always follow the unknown, and approach things with a very open mind, I love not knowing what the art work I'll make will look like after a couple of months of playing amongst these trees.