TIM BAKER

I have been exploring further afield this year, feeling a bit in a rut from my usual haunts. I am surprised I kept to one corner of Richmond Park and Bushy Park for so long. So I have been exploring other parts of Richmond Park and further onto newer places like Wimbledon Common, Putney Heath and the hidden local secret that is Cannizaro Park.

Wimbledon Common and Putney Heath have been joined together by the people managing them – my favourite of those two has to be Putney Heath – something very wild about that area. To get into why, you really have to delve deep into what is a common, a heath and a park….usually around how the space is managed.

Common land as it says is common for all, but that doesn’t mean it’s wild or unused. Wimbledon Common is home to one or two rather annoying golf clubs, one of which that squats a remains of a neolithic fort! Horse riders, memorials, a Curling Pond (?) a Windmill (!), houses, roads with cars, even a bloody National Rugger Bugger event of hoorah-henry public schoolkids up at the large fields near Robin Hood roundabout which I had to avoid on one visit!

As a result I feel Wimbledon Common has less diversity and wild nature, it’s very much like the scrub heathland of where I grew up, quite ordered, obviously managed, less interesting to me. Putney Heath on the other hand the trees seem far healthier with moss on them, tree falls aren’t ‘cleaned up’ and big areas of muddy ponds and glutinous paths, like shown in ‘Meerlust’ above. Or the ‘Tree Fall’ drawing below.

Meerlust is a wine that in some weird synchronicity John bought the same day I went to see the King’s Mere at the north of Putney Heath, just by the A3 hence the car. The shape of the wood poking out of the mere has been appearing in a lot of my work. As I did the painting above later on that cold day (it snowed as I painted it!) that gets called Meerlust as well.

I mentioned the windmill, which is a museum (I’ve not been inside yet) and I wanted to draw it with a fine Preppy fountain pen – a nib not totally happy on the rougher 35% cotton Studio sketchbook paper. Not sure I totally got the windmill, it sort of leans slightly. The woman bicycle rider did stay there for the whole drawing and painting…annoyingly so because I wanted to draw the windmill from where she was, but she stood there with her bike checking her phone for nearly an hour? So I put her in the picture.

Just around the corner is one of London’s hidden parks, Cannizaro Park. The Duke of Cannizzaro (yes they changed the spelling for the park) Francis Plantamone, a Sicilian was married to the owner in the early 19th century. This part of Wimbledon is pretty much a short train or bus ride from where I live, but locals here have never heard of this park! I did get some deja-vu when I arrived, although didn’t remember the teapot fountain that was put there around the turn of the millennium.

Turns out I had been there with John once, but I must not have explored the place because I didn’t remember some of the features, like the Italian garden, the hilly water garden or the Belvedere which was rather odd for a temple that would command a view, the trees have grown up so you can’t see anything?

I definitely need to go back and draw the Italian Garden and other parts.

A more recently piece created on the same visit as ‘Tree Fall’ is ‘The Tree Parade’ – a whole line of interesting dead and alive trees in Putney Heath which like the Park I need to go back to…rare for me this is a Tempera Paint Stick landscape piece – I don’t do them as much as I do with portraits. I sadly am starting to run out of some of them, and can’t easily replace them as they are an American brand unless I take a risk with a non-lightsafe version, or find a UK stockist.

I have a lead from Kingart themselves – but you see them in UK shops like TK Maxx, let me know, I will happily reimburse you for them and for shipping as the US shipping is painfully expensive. Mostly looking for replacements for the metallic sets as included in the the 24 set.