Happy New Year!
Happy New Year 2025!
Hello, I’m back! After not using my blog for the last 18 months, this year I shall be using it regularly – probably once a week – to document my new Twelve Months painting project.
If you’ve followed my work for long you will remember that I have previously completed three Twelve Months painting projects. In 2016 I did Twelve Months in an Essex Wood; in 2020 Twelve Months in an Essex Field; and in 2022 Twelve Months on an Essex Island.
This year I am going to be working on Twelve Months on an Essex Country Estate. The estate in question is Markshall near Coggeshall in North East Essex, just a few miles west of Colchester. The Hall itself was demolished in the 1960s, but the estate that remains has a large walled formal garden, a huge lake, an arboretum, and acres of natural woodland.
I went for a ‘recce’ visit with some friends before Christmas and I was more than convinced that there is plenty to keep me busy for the year. Here are a few of the photos I took that day, to give you an idea of the place.
The lake is full of huge carp which we were able to feed – free fish food is given out in the ticket office! – and we had a lovely time wandering around the lake, the arboretum and the edge of the woodland areas. As my friends had their dog with them we were not allowed in the formal garden, but I have been in there on previous visits, so I know how lovely it is sloping down to the shore of the lake, with beautiful old brick walls and gateways.
My plan for the year goes like this – this is what I aim to achieve by December.
- 12 acrylic paintings 40cm square, of different parts of the garden, one from each month
- 12 pastel pencil drawings about 24cm square of ‘Pickings’ from the estate, one from each month. If you remember my ‘Snippings’ drawings from the Essex Field, and ‘Findings’ drawings from the beach on the Essex Island. Obviously I can’t ‘pick’ from plants, but I am really meaning ‘pick up’ – so think leaves, twigs, feathers, fir-cones, etc. Anything which will present an opportunity to draw natural objects in detail.
- 12 small ‘Flowering’ paintings, in either soft pastel, or gouache of individual flowering plants, one from each month. I will choose something in the gardens, and either work en plein air, or draw and take photos to paint back in the studio.
- I will make notes each month of everything I notice, that I see or hear, changes in the gardens, in the trees, birds, insects and other wildlife.
- I will experiment using a Gelli printing plate to make mono prints of the gardens or individual plants.
At the end of the year, as well as all the original paintings, I will have the material to make a fourth Twelve Months book, to make two new sets of coasters, two new tea towels, and a calendar for 2027.
That’s the plan!
I am excited to get started in a couple of weeks, and have already started gathering art materials that I will need. I am also going to be researching the interesting history of Markshall – or Marks Hall as it was previously know. I already know that it has two interesting links with my own family, one through my father, and one long ago in the 1600s!
I plan on giving you an update here, every week, so check back regularly if you are interested to see what I’ve been up to!
Exhibition update
Just a quick update that our Anglian Arts Project exhibition at Little Bentley, due to have taken place this weekend, is not now going ahead for various reasons. We intend to have a long weekend there next year.
Instead I am having a two day Summer Open Studio event on Friday 14th and Saturday 15th July at my home, The Anvil House, 45 Heath Road Lexden CO3 4DJ. We will be open each day from 10.30-4.00, and I hope to see some of you there instead.
The Family History Project
You may remember in my New Year plans I explained that I was going to paint all the places in North Essex where my Pudney family, and those who had married into my family, had lived, since the first record of the name in 1372 . . . .
I’ve made a start with the first two paintings, both of Fordham.
Fordham Barn and Church
The first record of my family in Fordham is the marriage in 1752 of my 6x Great-Grandfather’s in this church. He was William Pudney, and he married Susannah Sawyer on 19th December that year. They had a sad start to their marriage, as they had three baby boys, in 1755, 1756 and 1758, all called William – and all died in infancy. Their next child they called James – and he is my 5x Great-Grandfather, baptised in 1766, although I think probably born earlier, as on that day they had another son, not a twin, also baptised. It was quite common for families to get their children christened in batches!
The family stayed in Fordham until my Great-Grandfather, James Edward Pudney, moved to be a shepherd at Frating Hall Farm on the other side of Colchester, sometime in the 1890s.
In the 1891 census, James Edward was living in Colne Road, Copford, which is now part of Eight Ash Green, with his wife Rebecca (nee Firmin) and their four children, Ada, Walter Berned, Bertha and George who became my Grandfather. Their cottage was next door to Jubilee Cottage, near the Brick and Tile Pub. His brother Joseph was living in Porter’s Lane, which led then, as it still does today, to Great Porter’s Farm. I think it is highly likely that Joseph worked at this farm, and fairly likely that James did, too. So my second painting is of the fields of Great Porter’s Farm looking across the Colne Valley. You can just see a glimpse of the river to the right of the little white fence in the middle distance.
Certainly at the time James was working as a shepherd, and the farm still has sheep – including many rare breeds – so this is a good example of the farmland in Fordham where they lived and worked.
Great Porter’s Farm
As my Pudney family lived in Fordham for about 150 years I am planning on one more Fordham painting before I move on to Wormingford – back in time – to where William was born.