Marvellous May
The month in which I go slightly mad.
At this time of year, many of my favourite blooms are flowering, and I become slightly unhinged in the pursuit of the perfect image to use in my painting. I can often be found leaning precariously over garden walls, nose-deep in hedges or walking distractedly into lamp posts and other inconvenient roadside paraphernalia whilst staring into people’s gardens.
It strikes me that this habit comes from spending at least one weekend each May wandering around the Brighton Open Houses with my Mum. Each year, we would get the brochure for the Open Houses, find the pages for our preferred stomping ground (usually the Fiveways area) and plan our route for the day. After parking Mum’s Ford Fiesta under a sycamore tree that would invariably cover the windscreen in an impossible-to-remove sticky sap, we would head off exploring.
I need to note that Mum and I are really very nosy, and more than half the fun of the Open Houses was the opportunity to stroll in and out of people’s houses and explore their gardens. It is on these excursions that I first encountered the glorious Peony.
Peonies are one of my big loves (after A and the kids, of course). They are unapologetically joyous, with their huge, flouncy blooms that come in every shade between porcelain white and the deepest burgundy, with a detour into shocking pink along the way. But what I really love is that despite being large and unmissable, they are also delicate and totally impractical - they are susceptible to slugs (you may recall my distress in the last post) - and they are so top-heavy that they need a frame or cloche to stay upright when in full bloom. This ridiculousness is why I think peonies must be my spirit flower.
Anyway, back to my point. It was on these glorious weekends in May that I developed the habit of whipping out a camera and hinging myself precariously on a garden fence or wall, to capture the beauty of the flowers therein. Even when I had to pay to develop film, my camera roll had more pictures of plants than it did of people. The promise of inspiration in each image far outweighed the financial burden of developing the film.
Over the course of the day, we would break up my peculiar photography habits with visits to the artist studios and homes. We got to know many of our favourite artists and would return year on year to enjoy their work and soak up the atmosphere. My Mum is an innate communicator (read talks to everyone and makes friends everywhere), and these excursions often ended with me having work experience or studio time with artists and craftspeople. The experience also shaped my idea of what being an artist meant. These people were real, their exhibition spaces were their homes and studios, several of them were my tutors at college, and some of them were our friends.
I would love to have an Open Studio. I probably need to tidy up and get organised first, but I look forward to sharing my love for the colour and beauty in nature with friends and family and to building community with other artists and creatives. At the moment, my focus is on my painting and growing my garden into a source of inspiration. Perhaps one day someone else will get as much pleasure from a snoop around my garden as I did on those happy weekends exploring Brighton Open Houses.