I live on the high ground of the East Moor among the tors, with the rivers Lynher and Fowey to east and west, each only a few minutes away by car. The Withy Brook, a founding tributary of the Lynher is just a ten minutes walk from home to an ancient tin stream that runs from Minions to Trebartha in the next parish. These rivers make their way down from the moor through ancient wooded valleys dominated by native trees of oak, birch and hawthorn, but most especially by mature stands of beech. All these bring their glorious colours to the season of the fall. As a landscape artist these woods are a rich source of inspiration.
Along the rivers, which tumble over granite-bouldered beds, you will see dippers, wagtails and the occasional kingfisher, with song birds, woodcock and woodpeckers in the woods. You will hear ravens, buzzards and other moorland birds calling from open areas above the woodland edge.
But October is a quiet month in the woods – maybe the occasional short, seasonal chortle of a robin will be all that you hear, apart from the rustling of crinkling leaves in the branches above and the sudden tap of acorns as they tumble into the leaf pile below, in hues of rust, copper and gold that deeply strew the ground beneath.
Here, in this painting the splash and swirl of the river is all that disturbs the quiet solitude of the day as a dipper watches on from a favorite rock. Gentle rays of the morning sun lift the last of a mist which formed close to the river before dawn.
The largest trees, with their longer vista of time, feel as if they have seen many generations of walkers pass this same way on days such as this. In the passing of the seasons and in our communion with Nature such woods lend a perspective of their ‘time’ to our own time on this beautiful earth.
This painting will be part of the exhibition which opens the newly reorganised and refurbished County Art Gallery adjacent to the County Museum in Truro. A call was put out for artists, amateur or professional, living and working in Cornwall to submit just one painting each for consideration for acceptance as part of the exhibition to celebrate the re-launch of the County Art Gallery this autumn. The exhibition will run from the last week of October for three months until the end of January, 2026.
I’m excited to see the work which has been chosen to celebrate the wide range of artists now active in Cornwall, in 2025. I’m sure it will be a great showcase for art in the county, long known as a haven for attracting artists to its rich land and seascapes in harbours and havens, and among the wilder places at the end of the line.