Friday, January 27, 2012

Across the Horse-Jumping Fields



A new landscape by Tarragon, showing us a portion of the village of Compton in winter. One of the most illuminating things about the English countryside is the tracery of footpaths, established by common law centuries old, that crisscrosses the farms and hills. Due to their origin as old peasant right of ways, the contours of the paths are often obscure.

In this picture, the trees on the hill to the left wreath the graveyard and the Watts Mortuary Chapel; another view can be seen here. To get to the chapel from the spot Tarragon painted from, a walker must trek several hundred metres to the right, traverse the trees to the right of the farm buildings and then travel along a sunken road to ascend the hill on its far side.

The system has its advantages. The town of Guildford, population 70,000, is a fifteen minute walk from the same spot. You would never know it.

1 comment:

  1. Drawing is a form of probing. And the first generic impulse to draw derives from the human need to search, to plot points, to place things and to place oneself.
    ― John B

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