Angie Rogers Artist

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Connecting you to Landscape, Nature and The Wild.

Dappled July

Warm greetings from the upper Calder Valley.

It’s been quite a hot month hasn’t it? Dappled woodland is a great environment for summer walks don’t you think? The cooling shade of the leaf canopy with the feeling of moist green life, but not dark; pools of sparkling light illuminating the way.
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I’ve been on a few mini adventures exploring new to me woodland paths on sides of local valleys I’ve never trod. Ultra familiar places suddenly revealing an exciting new aspect, merely by being not the beaten track. Well worth doing if you feel a tiny bit bored with the usual routes.

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Sunshine

This neon artwork by Glenn Ligon caught my attention on a recent visit to Leeds art gallery. In real life it is much more striking than it appears here.

What I like is that it inverts our usual expectation of neon signs where the text is normally the light element. A text about sunshine is written in dark whilst also lighting up the wall behind.
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I enjoy the connection made in my mind between this artwork seen indoors and the sun splashed woods I’ve moved through in July.

For those (like me) interested in the technicalities, the artist has painstakingly painted the front surface of the glass letters to create the pool of light behind.

Ligon says his aim is to “make language into a physical thing, something that has real weight and force to it”.

I wonder if you think he has achieved this aim bearing in mind a photo can never replicate the physical experience of viewing the real art?

A Month In The Country

Sometimes you read a novel that really touches you, stays in your mind for a long time and is a pleasure to read again after a couple of years. That’s how I feel about J L Carr’s poignant short novel A Month In The Country which won The Guardian Fiction Prize in 1980.

I’d never come across it until about 7 years ago, following a recommendation from my sister. The story is set just after the First World War and I imagined it had been written in the inter-war era so it came as a surprise to find Carr wrote it in the late 1970s.

The plot involves a damaged war veteran employed one summer to investigate and reveal a potential medieval ‘Doom’ (Day of Judgement) wall painting in a village church in Yorkshire. The novel vividly explores rural life, recovery from trauma, nostalgia, the nature of happiness, and a love not resolved.

if you are looking for a read that’s definitely not an action packed thriller, murder mystery or gritty urban shocker but is contemplative, calm and beautifully written, try this.

Bringing The Outside In

Open your front door and set off walking. See something that speaks to you, bring an appropriate sample home to enjoy, study, display - keep for a week, a year, a decade. You can always return the item to its source.

Here these terracotta/brick pebbles are about to return to Hebden Water, the local stream. Collected over a year or so, I enjoyed photoing and drawing them but now I need to make room for something else.

Human made and not ‘natural’ the pebbles are just simple fired clay, probably old dough bowls or mill bricks that the river has tumbled and smoothed over many years. They are part of Hebden Water’s story temporarily borrowed by me and so I have no qualms about giving them back to the flow. One by one they drop down and disappear.

Watching the Sky

I’ve continued with watching skies and cloud formations over the Calderdale hills. You can spend hours with a stately cloud dance or minutes with a violent squall. Here’s a couple of the former, observed outside but painted in my studio.

Do you prefer, balmy or stormy skies? As an artist I’m usually drawn to shreddy dark clouds and contrasty shards of light. But I believe change is the only way to develop so in the same way that unfamiliar paths are exciting, I’m making myself explore painting using paler colours and a more tranquil mood. At least some of the time!

Ripples

Thanks to lovely supporters Janet, Richard, Samantha, Annie and Rod who responded to my previous email. Your kindness and enthusiasm is greatly appreciated by me.

It’s another shortish one this month, there’s been a lot going on in my life, all good, and hopefully in yours too. Wishing you happy times in August. Make the most of any sunshine.
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All the best
Angie

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