Teddington Weir, watercolour on Arches Rough, 10x14in (25.5x35.5cm).
Sometimes, quite often, in fact, the pleasure of a day spent working outdoors in an enjoyable location (with a comforting mug of tea or coffee, if you've remembered to bring one) is not reflected in the painting you get out of it. This was one of those days. I was at Teddington lock, and had tucked myself away on the upstream corner of the lock island, where I was unlikely to be bothered, with a grand spacious view of the weir. It was a very sensory experience to be painting there amid the incessant sound of the cascading waters, the changing light playing across the scene, with a couple of herons busy fishing just below me for company. I tried to convey some sense of this absorbing scene, but ultimately felt that I had failed. There was just too much of it, too much sensation, too much expectation, to get into a small painting. As I was writing this piece, quite by chance I came across this rather appropriate remark of Ruskin's, referring to the minor English landscape painters (I don't know who these might have been, but I expect he would promptly have classified me among them, and I'm sure I would have liked them): ‘They were, themselves, a kind of contemplative cattle, and flock of the fields, who merely liked being outdoors, and brought as much painted fresh air as they could back into the house with them.’* I'll have to get used to the 'contemplative cattle' label, but I did like the idea of bringing painted fresh air back into the house with me