Field

Field K Howell 2013 Pastel on Paper 14cm x 21cm

Fields are enchanting. A crowd of grass is about the only crowd I can endure. I like the movement and texture of swathes of moor grasses and reeds, and these clumps emerge like the heads and shoulders of a rising subterranean army.

As a child, I read and reread a book featuring the story of Jason and the Argonauts. To obtain the Golden Fleece from Aeetes, the King of Colchis, Jason drives fire-breathing oxen to plough a field, sowing the teeth of a dragon in the freshly turned soil. An army rises out of the ground, and Jason vanquishes the mass of soldiers by throwing a rock amongst them. In their confusion, the soldiers destroy one another. Brilliant illustration of crowd mentality.

Of course, Jason wouldn't have completed these tasks without the help of Medea. If there's one thing scarier than a crowd, it's a woman whose resourcefulness is disregarded by a man in search of better connections.

There is more snow - I'm off!

Bleak

No Fishing K Howell 2013 Pastel on Paper 14cm x 21cm

I've been neglecting this blog something terrible, but in the hope of returning to some kind of pattern, I'll post something from early January that I left unfinished in order to address Other Things:

Winter without snow still confuses me. I love the stripped landscape, the cold aspect, the shape of the bare world. But a little snow would be nice.

Many rainy days result in liquid paths that stream through the valley, washed out and colourless, like the sky. In a word, Bleak.

The word Bleak is amazing, and I didn't know that it can also refer to a small silvery shoaling fish of the minnow family, found in Eurasian rivers. That distracted me completely, and in the time it took for me to return to the post, we'd had two generous snowfalls.

Complaining to the universe sometimes gets results.