|
 |
KATE LYNCH
Paintings and drawings with Somerset Voices
Foreword by David Bellamy |
"This collection of Kate Lynch's atmospheric
paintings and drawings, with their Somerset voices, is a tribute to the
people who cultivate the willow and craft its wood."
Kate gives talks with
slides about this and other projects.
E-mail enquiry.
WILLOW
KATE LYNCH
Paintings and drawings with Somerset Voices
Foreword by David Bellamy
Kate spent three years on the Somerset Levels
and Moors
recording the willow farmers and craftsmen:
|
"Eddie Barnard tapping the willows down tight"
oil 69x55cms
|
''In getting to know the land, I met the willow
growers and basketmakers whose families have farmed this flat, often wet
landscape and hand-crafted its harvest for generations. As I was drawing
the local growers and basketmakers, I was not just in the here and now,
I was time-travelling back 200, even 2,000 year, for willow growing and
basketmaking in Somerset go back to the Romans and beyond''.
Kate Lynch
|
The atmospheric paintings document the people in the
landscape and in their sheds, with the willow harvest, traditional
boiling and stripping, the making of shopping baskets, balloon baskets,
willow coffins, spars for thatching, cricket bats, hurdles, bower seats
for gardens,
willow sculpture and woven river bank conservation.
Along with 40 paintings and drawings are the voices of
30 traditional Somerset willow growers, basketmakers and other willow
craftsmen, collected as part of the Somerset Rural Life Museum's Oral
History project. In the recordings the growers and willow makers tell
their stories, from their deep relationship with the Somerset wetland,
then travelling into the rivers with fishermen, up in the air with hot
air balloon baskets and back in time to the two World Wars with woven
pigeon baskets and airborne panniers.
Many drawings are made with Somerset willow charcoal,
the same willow grown and woven by Somerset farmers and craftsmen.
''We were making pigeon baskets for quite a few
years. It gradually faded out, but other things seemed to come in, like
the fishing baskets and we made thousands and thousands of picnic
baskets. Then I had a phone call one day and the voice said 'can you
make large laundry baskets?' and the guy turned up with a balloon
basket, and it grew from there.''
Aubrey Hill
Somerset Willow Company
|
"Aubrey Hill randing and waling balloon basket"
willow charcoal drawing 93x62cms |
|
"Brian Lock in the pit with withies for stripping as white"
oil 68x64cms
|
''From Christmas you're busy, boiling for buff and
you've got people wanting brown, last year's withies, and the moors
might flood, so you just cut what you can and put a few in the pit each
week for the white. That keeps them artificially alive, then in the
spring they start to sprout, what we call 'moor out' and leaf out and
then you can strip them white, when the sap's in them.''
Stephen Pearce, willow grower,
Stoke St. Gregory
|
WILLOW – THE BOOK
This memorable and unusual collection is commemorated
in a 100 page, full-colour hard back book (34 colour illustrations, 6
black and white), with more than 30 extracts from the recordings, each
opposite a related painting or drawing. David Bellamy, celebrity
botanist, has written a lively Foreword to the book.
|
The Whitening Season, oil 63x65cm
|
''I've had a good life minding willows, I enjoy it, it's something
you take to or you don't, but if you really like it and take to it, you
wouldn't really want to do anything else''.
George David, willow grower
''My scribbles in sketchbooks, charcoal drawings and
paintings celebrate the people I have met. I am envious of their deep
involvement with this haunting landscape and the willows they cultivate
and craft, an involvement begun generations ago by their ancestors. I
have travelled with my sketchbooks and paints little more than ten miles
from my back door, but I have visited other worlds.
It's been a great journey.''
Kate Lynch
The exhibition toured venues in Somerset,
Norfolk, Lancashire and Devon 2003-4
The project received the Wessex Watermark Award, and
support from South West Arts, Somerset County Council, District
Councils, The Lark Trust, Littoral and the Somerset Levels and Moors
Partnership.
|
