A Quick Trip To England - A few impressions

Yesterday, I returned from ten day holiday in England and brought home too little to declare to customs but so much to unpack in impressions.

Here in no particular order, are some of those thoughts.

• England has so much history. A Christmas Carol, The Favourite, The Crown, Robinhood, Downton Abbey, anything on BBC fuels our sense of it. But I didn’t really get it until I saw foot-wide window seats that meant foot-wide walls, buildings in rows like teeth with new ones ghastly shiny among worn ones that represent bombed homes versus the saved, and foot paths through fields, and hedges like barbed wire, and, Downton Abbey like or bigger or burnt down homes, let alone so many buildings with art. 

• There was hardly a road or town there that we haven’t copied here. 

• The Brits are way ahead of our actions and concerns for the climate crisis. They know their next electric tea kettle won’t be as fast in heating water for tea because it wont pull as much electricity. And, they are thinking about how every citizen should be growing their own food to reduce transport, so have more gardens. They think our cars are too big and that lorrys (trucks) need to get off the road. What’s more is that they are getting their stiff upper lip ready to endure it.

• Cats are out on the street and dogs are everywhere most are on leash.

• Food is good. Take out is the exception. People eat at home more. 

• Wine and beer seem more a part of meals. It seems like better quality but it doesn’t seem to be as expensive for good bottles of wine. 

• Parking is difficult. Everybody walks. I was thinking of driving a mile to pick up some eggs, maybe I would reconsider.

• Brexit is worrisome and causing businesses to make decisions that are making the economy shaky and worrisome for all. 

• The people are warm. Class is still a big thing and I think I witnessed a duel of Queen’s English upsmanship at one point. Not sure though. I had trouble understanding idioms and began to question my hearing as I was asking people to repeat themselves so frequently. 

• At a dinner party, I was told that we were crazy to elect Trump. One man who sat down next to me while I painted the sailboat scene, asked me about Trump. I wasn’t complementary and he told me to be respectful, he is your president. He’s right, but it’s hard.  

The Sketches – My literal impressions…

Though I wasn’t traveling with an artist, I was with someone who supported my desire to paint what I saw. I packed watercolors and white gouache, brushes, a sketchbook and several small pieces of 5x7” or 4x10# watercolor board. Thinking I wouldn’t have a lot of time to paint and knowing that my luggage needed to be minimal, I decided my paintings would be sketches, perhaps to be used for reference later, and left home my typical oils, plein air easel, tripod, wet canvas carriers, umbrella and other gear I typically take for plein air painting. 

Over the eight days of touring, I had time to complete five sketches. There was so much more I wanted to paint, but my photos and memories must suffice. Actually, I painted two inside, one, while waiting for my friend to pack for our excursion, of an exquisite flower arrangement on a highboy dresser in a soft window light.  Another, I painted in the airport hotel after my last night, from a photo I took earlier in the day as we drove through farmland. The cadmium lemon yellow rapeseed fields were in full bloom throughout our days on the road, it’s a perfect reminder of our touring.   

 

Very early our last day, I painted a scene from a couch inside our Thomas Kinkade-perfect Air B&B cottage, of a clothesline of billowing family laundry across the garden. It stood outside the back door of another couple cottage that was equally a couple hundred years old in the village of Stretton. The freshness of the clean clothes juxtaposed against the history of the architecture and gardens caught my eye.  It will help me remember the glorious bird song outside our windows and baaing of lambs loud enough to hear from a nearby field. The day before, I took a few minutes to capture the front of our cottage with its sign that reads “Daphne’s Cottage”; just one of the many who’d lived there before.

I had time to paint two in my friend’s village of Deal on the English Channel. One with sailboats darting up and down and the other of fishing boats tucked in the sand, near the town pier and where I stayed. If you saw the movie, Mr. Turner, you’ve got a sense of the area where I was. He spent a great deal of time in a town called Margate where today there is an art museum, the Turner Contemporary named for him, about a twenty five minute drive from Deal. (BTW, in prowling around, we found an art supply store on the main drag of Margate, called Lovely’s. It wasn’t large but painters and sketchers can find what they needed.)

Ten days is so short. I probably could’ve spent half that time just in the art galleries, and the whole time seeing villages, and half the time finding more pubs, and another half the time just riding bus lines. There are so many more impressions to gain.