TIM BAKER

As a night owl it’s always frustrated me that half of the day – or more in winter – you’re restricted by what you can do because there is no light. Well unless you live in some deeply dark place with no street lighting and no stars or moon, that’s strictly not true, there is light at all times of the day. The hard part is putting that on paper as you have limited vision, which earlier this year during the dark winter I put into practice, doing studies of the front window.
I’ve been obsessed with trying to capture street lighting and the light you get at night for years..it’s quite hard, and a pretty crazy idea:

I had a small torch, but most of these were done in available light and by feel – yes including the watercolours, which is why they look slightly odd, quite wonky. I was guessing what the colour was by the position of the watercolours in my field box. Considering that, I got surprisingly close.

So I decided then to try again outside later in the year when it wasn’t so cold – and recently leaving Bushy Park in the dark dusk I came across a tree I’d not seen before near the gate so I could find my way out.

So as well as taking a few photographs, I painted the tree in Indian ink then added watercolour. I could barely see what I was doing, so the colours are approximate like the studies above. Like the Negative Space series, I liked working in the dark – this time literally – and not seeing the result til I got under a street light and home. I’ve done a few more – not enough yet for a series but certainly this image is part of the Dead Tree Series.