This is Lidgett Lane Larder in Leeds 8, a popular cafe serving home-made and locally sourced food. It is also an Art Gallery! Step inside this month, have a cup of tea and see a small exhibition of my tree pictures. Paintings, prints and cards will be for sale.
Late August, the leaves seem more black than green.
I don’t want to go in the woods when they are like this.
Flies buzzing.
Heavy and sweet smells of rotting.
As I went out one morning… I spied graffiti on graffiti. Someone had written NO on a yellow spot that was spray-painted on a beech tree.
Unless you had an interest in yellow spots, you might not have noticed it.
The yellow spots appeared on about 120 trees a few months ago to mark them for felling.
Gledhow Valley Woods, Leeds 8.
Cars go by.
They cannot see
the yellow spots.
Only the walkers –
the dog walkers,
the lonely walkers,
the walkers in love –
Only the nature lovers,
the poets,
the artists looking for inspiration –
Only the commuters taking short cuts and
the school children
on their way home
can see
the yellow spots.
~
Felling of the beech wood Save Gledhow Valley Woods
FGVW minutes January 2015 (see Selective Tree Felling section)
Animating myself painting – with a 10 year-old dv camcorder and stop motion pro software at Leeds Animation Workshop this weekend.
Gledhow Valley Woods, Leeds
Also known as the combat tree. Because camouflage is the art of not being seen, practised by predators, prey, plants… and soldiers.
Saving the Beech Wood
Management proposals – Friends of GV Woods
Gledhow Valley Woods, Leeds
Beech trees in the local woods, marked with yellow dots in a proposed felling plan. I think the spots are giving the trees stronger identities…
Links:
Felling of the Beech Wood – Save Gledhow Valley Woods
Management Plan – Friends of Gledhow Valley Woods
Gledhow Valley Woods, horse chestnut trees marked for the axe
More trees spray-painted with fluorescent yellow dots in Gledhow Valley Woods. These three horse chestnuts are included in the proposed felling plan.
Links:
Site analysis – Friends of Gledhow Valley Woods
Save Gledhow Valley Woods
Gledhow Valley Woods, beech trees marked for the axe
Recently someone has been out spray-painting in the woods. The graffiti takes the form of yellow dots on about 100 trees. It is possible that these trees will be felled this year in a Leeds city council private finance initiative. Allegedly, the council will not benefit from the sale of the timber. The reasons for the axing seem unclear and there is some strong local debate.
This painting is of three beeches on the slope overlooking the lake.
Links:
Save Gledhow Valley Woods
Friends of Gledhow Valley Woods
Leeds Council reveals plans for 66,000 new homes
Plans for homes in Leeds woodland rejected
Indian Ink, Chinese brushes, Czech paper – come together in an English wood.
Trees and houses face each other. The leaves are out, the trees will win – if left to their own devices.
I’m losing sleep tonight. The clocks go forward and in the lost hour it feels like time to stop painting the trees and look for a different horizon.
Here’s a drawing with my eyes shut. It still looks like trees:
Saturday late afternoon
Thursday afternoon
late afternoon two days in a row the sun had been shining the woods were cold
Poetry links:
The wistful whispering of winter woods, Jim Cunningham
There’s a certain slant of light, Emily Dickinson
Woods in Winter, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
And you can see some sketches here.
To coincide with the current exhibition of my new paintings at Otley Courthouse, here’s a look at where and how some of it happened.
The exhibition has been extended from 6th – 11th January 2014, open Mon-Sat, 10am-4pm. (N.B. closed for the holidays between 21st Dec and 5th Jan). The preview event is Sunday 8th December, 6-8pm, and everybody is welcome. Click here for more information.
A pigeon flies past and leaves blow off the trees.
Sunlight through the trees. This is the top end of the road, painted at the end of August. It’s also a homage to John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836–1893) who painted similar scenes of Leeds in the moonlight.
The back of my house faces the woods – it’s like a green wall in summer. I’ve been separating out the trees to give myself a subject. Somehow doing this also makes me feel less oppressed by the wall – a gathering of 10,000 trees that are twice as old as me and twice as high as my house.
I’ve been reviewing my work for the next exhibition. These are the woods in autumn, winter and early spring.
Jo Dunn 