I’m your man for a pastoral scene.
You’d think that, for someone who wanders about in the great outdoors fairly regularly, the last thing I’d need would be walls festooned with pictures of … the great outdoors.
Some days, I don’t go outside but just stay in and look at my pictures of outside.
It’s almost as good. It’s not so cold. There aren’t any puddles. And you don’t spend ages fiddling with the toggles on your hood.
Places I’ve never been
But, of course, my outdoor scenes in prints at home are all of scenes from other places, some of which I’ve never visited.
I’ve got Chinese mountains, Norwegian fjords (though I have visited these), Sussex lanes.
I’ve also got railway and travel posters, full of happy folk wearing suits to the seaside or stravaiging over the downs in Baden Powell shorts.
Many prints on my wall are of another island where I used to live.
That place is in my soul, though I haven’t been back for many years and, on that occasion – for work – found it odd to be a visitor rather than a resident.
It felt like a chain had been snapped.
I also have a few prints of city landmarks that I miss: a big, decorative public clock, a canal, a neo-classical building.
Islands are not big on architecture and, when I visit cities now, I find my eyes going doolally with joy as they run up and doon cupolas and pediments.
Old buildings, of course. Nothing much to appreciate in square, glass boxes.
The best of my prints and paintings capture something “other” or “extra” in a scene: a mood or an atmosphere or – somewhat inevitably, I suppose – a deep stilless, even when depicting something in motion.
They’ve stopped it and fixed it forever.
‘I swear I got splashed by the sea scene’
I’m afraid I don’t have much original art on my walls, just a sea scene painted by a friend’s uncle, and more sea scenes by the talented cartoonist on my old local paper.
What were they trying to tell me? Get in the sea?
My old cartoonist pal’s paintings in particular somehow capture the motion of the sea or small boats upon it.
I swear that, examining one closely once, I got splashed in the face. Now, when I look at these prints, I always wear a sou’wester and oilskins.
Recently, I thought how it must be fantastic to be able to paint or draw, to capture things for myself.
But I just don’t have any talent in that direction (reader’s voice: “Or any other direction”; cheeky).
I love a Christmas card…
In the meantime, at this time of the year, I must say the house is made even more merry by Christmas cards, be they ever so clichéd.
Indeed, the more clichéd the better: Santa, reindeer, elves, I love ‘em all.
Now, though, it’s time for your Uncle Rab to don his anorak and get ootside.
Here be wind and air and wetness, perhaps even the odd ray of unseasonal sun.
From time to time, I stop and frame a scene with my camera or phone: capturing more stillness.
Here’s a thought: wouldn’t it be funny if we hung pictures of indoor scenes on trees or bushes?
Hope I’m not giving anyone any ideas here.
