TIM BAKER

Showing how my plein air use of media has broadened only since March, here is the second selection of work in Richmond Park. These works include pieces in black woody pencil, bright paint stick works, moody watercolour, dark fountain pen and ink, and inktense paints. Although as part one discussed, there is a desperation and darkness creeping in as I felt more unattached to the subjects and struggled to find something to connect to. My usual strategy is to jump mediums, but that didn’t always work.

I still haven’t gotten to grips with where that came from, I think diversifying my subjects and locations and moving away from representational paintings of trees is the path I need to go. I thought that just exploring new parts of the parks would inspire me – it did, but that was a short term fix. The artistic ennui and creative block was rather more deeper….

This is the earliest piece of this set – scanned in early March, it could be a Feburary piece but came at the end of the day by Pembroke Lodge.

As the sun set I saw the spire of the church – although not a church anymore, note the sad story of All Saints Church Richmond – in red brick emblazoned in the setting sun. This piece is one of my favourites, not sure why I never posted it anywhere.

Rather sad that now that gloriously lavish church, built for an expansion of Petersham that never came, is now home to ‘an indoor swimming pool, jacuzzi and steam room’. Literal sacrilege!

Another early piece is this wintry one of Richmond Park, and starting my obsession with jackdaws (and indeed, that when they started to really make their presence known in parks in early 2022 – I’ve mentioned this online, there has been an explosion of birds moving into new habitats over the last few years, it doesn’t bode well for the environment). The sky was very grey that day.

And the next is a repeat hence the title, I revisited an old friend, the tree stump I did not one but two oil paintings of. It’s something Kirk used to say (well sequels was his version) and he even graffiti’d it on a bus stop once. I have mixed feelings about repeats – in one sense. things change from 2019, and I felt that I didn’t really do it justice with my plein air oil but also I feed off doing new things, new mediums, new views. Going back to before unless it’s drastically changed has little interest to me.

I actually I feel nearly all my plein air oils were dreadful now, I cringe when I see them, partly why I stopped because it was obvious I needed to spend a long time purely doing oils to get to be not shit…much longer than I was willing to give a single medium with that kind of mess and logistical issues. I simply could not do what I did on the Jurassic Jaunts with oils, or I could – but only in oils.

That was the decision because it seems most plein air oil painters have cars or motorbikes or some form of transport. I feel sad, because I still have the oil gear and do want to revisit it one day….but it was very much ‘do this and nothing else‘ and I felt like I was starting from scratch with oils.

Now this is better, a recent work with paint sticks from the middle of June, of again a tree fairly near the car park but more secluded than the previous one. The paint sticks can be highly variable but when they hit, they hit. There’s a nice feeling of motion, which is odd since that day was pretty still and hot. Again a jackdaw came to pose but disappeared before I could put them in.

Around the same time I was attracted to the Beverley Brook running through Richmond Park alongside the horror that is the Richmond Golf Course. Not sure why they hung these rather abstract gates from the pipe – I guess to stop people boating up the Brook? Weird because one side is actually free access. I looked it up on the map and found that the nearest marked point is a wood there called Killcat Corner. No idea why….

While I was there I twice saw a vixen and her cubs frollicking and exploring the opposite bank. They were wary when they smelt or saw me, but a lovely sight, and proves that Richmond golf course isn’t entirely the green biologically dead wastelands they often are, like astroturf deserts. Still hate them though.

Talking of ponds, late one night I was in the Isabella Plantation about to leave and I came across white lilies next to a black-ish pond. I had to draw this, but it needed to be quick so I used my recently restocked Woody pencils….there’s something spooky about this. The pond is called Still Pond after all…

Less spooky was during the heatwave I was drawing one of the trees near White Lodge and saw a pair of lost pink sunglasses perched on one of the trees. So I had to draw it in Stabilo woody pencil and the roTring pump DIY white marker, including a touch of parallel pen ink for the pink colour to try and make it stand out.

Just after I finished the Pink Sunglasses drawing, I did what I intended to do – a quick (ish) drawing of the tree to the right. This got quite violent, with heavy scratching, which was very cathartic.

The title is after something someone said to me recently, and more which lead to an argument and which I think inspired the anger. I must do more energetically violent pieces, I think they come out well…then again I’m not sure I want to go back to that state of mind. It’s not something I can fake or want to dwell within?

And finally one of my favourite watercolour pieces was done in a hurry in the cold back in March at Pen Ponds, as the sun set and it got very dark. A very loose drawing, and a lot of sgraffito, partly because the paint just wasn’t drying and was spreading everywhere! I think this was the real catalyst for that sgraffito watercolour style I have been developing.

I do remember geese, swans, ducks and pretty much the entire bird population of RIchmond Park coming over and hustling me because of course I have my watercolour gear in plastic bags…and refusing to not believe I didn’t have any food!