Samuel Palmer

“Oak Tree and Beech, Lullingstone Park”, pencil, pen, brown ink, watercolour. See image at: http://www.themorgan.org/collection/drawings/247415

“Ancient Trees, Lullingstone Park” 1828. See image at: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Samuel_Palmer_-_Ancient_Trees,_Lullingstone_Park_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

I am increasingly interested in the work of Romantic artists, for instance Samuel Palmer. Palmer was prolific around the time he lived at the idyllic setting of Shoreham, Kent, making his most visionary work. His drawings are incredibly intricate but still have a sense of energy. These tree drawings have such a mysterious, other-worldly quality, from another time.In “Ancient Trees”, our attention is focused on dramatic shapes in the centre, and there’s a sense of passing time in the depiction of trees of different ages, both young and fresh, old and gnarled.   

Similarly to my own recent work, “Oak Tree and Beech” also includes watercolour, here seemingly used both in ground washes and as a way to ‘heighten’ the drawing in final stages. The effect is almost like a faded photograph, some details hazy, washing away into the misty ground tone, whilst other parts are clearly defined and sharp. The gnarled surface of the tree is both familiar, natural, organic, and other-worldly looking, something celestial and dream-like. This sense of mystery and the visionary - not simply 'picturesque’ - is something I’m really interested in exploring also. 

With my recent work so far, I would say I’ve been more interested in the shapes and forms of nature, rather than capturing a particular weather, time of day, or season. With this I see more of an abstract approach, depicting the 'idea’ of a tree, outside of time. This is something also I think I see in Palmer’s work here- his trees seem to belong to no particular place or time, unearthly almost in their visionary qualities, which is again something I feel which goes beyond a 'picturesque’ approach to nature.

“A Cow Lodge with a Mossy Roof” 1829. Watercolour, gouache, pen and ink on paper. See image at: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Samuel_Palmer_-_A_Cow_Lodge_with_a_Mossy_Roof_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

I also looked at Palmer for his work looking at more ruinous buildings like my own drawings. Although the building depicted here is still used, not collapsed and abandoned, there are elements of disrepair. The focus of the study is the roof where nature has begun to reclaim with striking, luminescent, almost disease-like mosses, painted with glowing colour, spreading  out across a contrasting delicate, monochrome thatch. The drawings overall atmosphere is quite quaint and idyllic but I think there’s something slightly sinister here also. The mosses seem too yellow/green, with sinister luminescence, bringing to mind how flowers in summer sometimes seem to smell too sweet, almost foretelling of their inevitable decay. I think in looking past the initial impression of the idyllic picturesque here, there can be seen something uneasy in Palmer’s Romanticism - a red, other-worldly sky threatens this pastoral scene, a quickly disappearing way of life. I am interested in looking at darker sides of Romanticism - mysterious of unknown limits in nature and decay, which simultaneously enchant us and threaten to consume with ruination.