The first rain

“The rain to the wind said,

'You push and I’ll pelt.'

They so smote the garden bed

That the flowers actually knelt,

And lay lodged—though not dead.

I know how the flowers felt.”

― Robert Frost

W&N watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm

14th September 2013 

Step outside after the first storm after a dry spell and it invariably hits you: the sweet, fresh, powerfully evocative smell of fresh rain. 

We’ve had our first rain of the season here in Tarlton (Gauteng, South Africa), and the world has suddenly turned from brown and dusty to green and sparkling clean! And nothing on earth smells better than rain on our African soil!

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This Blue Gum

This blue gum tree greets me every morning as I open my studio curtains. She is always there. She has always been there, for the past ten years. She's the one I sit and stare at when I'm pondering or deep in thought. I've watched her swaying in heavy winds, watched as limbs have broken off and watched as veld fires have swept her base.

She stands across the road from our property, probably about 20m tall and offers a safe haven for all the birds in the area. I've watched as baby crows have fledged from her branches and yet, I've never looked at her properly.

Today I decided to look at her, with new eyes, and paint her.

I think she's wonderful. 

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Morning is my favourite time

W&N watercolour on DalerRowney 220gsm heavy-weight sketching paper 

Morning is my favourite time when everything is new; 

flowers drink the morning dew and skies are painted in a golden hue. 

Each tree stands tall and stately – different shades and different face. 

I’m viewing morning’s painting, done with Nature’s brush of Grace. 

The sun peeks slowly in the East, then rises with its smile;

Another morning greeting and we walk another mile.

UNKNOWN

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The way of the crow

“If men had wings and bore black feathers, few of them would be clever enough to be crows.”

-Rev. Henry Ward Beecher mid 1800’s

W&N watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm 

Black Crow (Corvus capensis) 

There is little wonder that crows are very often the subjects of legends, folk-tales, and storytelling traditions around the world, all of which is very deep-seated and arising from myth and folklore thousands of years old. Anyone that has ever spent time with a crow will know how absurd these myths are and that Crows are no more ‘evil’ or ‘dark’ as depicted in these legends than a canary in a cage.

I make those remarks in light of the life I shared with Coco, a Black Crow (Corvus capensis), over the span of twenty years. She was keen of sight and hearing, and her other senses were no less acute. As was her sense of humour! She loved to mimic men laughing, producing the exact deep resonance of the male voice. She would also have a conversation with herself, changing voices as she went along, which she reproduced from the garden staff talking to one another. Another favourite of hers was hooting like a car, getting everyone in the household to go outside to see who has arrived. She would also call someone by their name at the top of her voice, also getting that person rushing outside to see who was calling, then uttering a long, low laugh, as if enjoying the havoc she’s causing.

She loved to play tag, pretending to peck your foot, getting you to chase her around the garden. And of course, one ‘myth’ that is absolutely true, is a Crow’s love for shiny stuff. No tea tray was safe unattended outside, as all the spoons would disappear and any jewellery lying around the house was at great risk!

A valuable lesson we could all learn from a crow is that they never “stuff” themselves with food. She would only eat until she was satisfied and then take the rest and hide it all over the garden, ready to be picked up at a later stage.

It is this kind of sensitivity that makes crows and other corvids legendary birds.

Coco passed away at the age of 27 in my garden (Tarlton, south Africa) after a stroke and I can honestly say no other animal enriched my life like she did.

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Gemsbuck (Oryx gazella) Gemsbok

Watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm 12″ × 8″ 

Nothing belongs to you

of what there is,

of what you take,

you must share. 

- Chief Dan George

The Gemsbok or Gemsbuck (Oryx gazella) is a large African antelope, of the Oryx genus. The name is derived from the Dutch name of the male chamois, gemsbok. Although there are some superficial similarities in appearance (especially in the colour of the face area), the chamois and the oryx are not closely related.

There are two “types” of gemsbok: a northern and southern variety; the only difference being that the northern gemsboks have black-fringed ears while the southern ones have longer horns and more rounded ears. Southern Gemsbok are more numerous and live in the Kalahari Desert of Southern Africa, while the northern variant can be found in Tanzania, Zambia, Kenya and parts of northern Namibia in the Khomas Hochland area.
- Info from Wikipedia

This Gemsbuck is listed as Least Concern as the species is numerous and widespread, and populations are currently stable or even increasing. The Gemsbok’s future is secure as long as it continues to occur in large numbers on private land and in protected areas in Southern Africa. Its high value as a trophy animal should ensure further increases in its numbers on private land.

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Cape Dutch Homestead

Watercolour on Visual 200gsm 

This was virtually one of my first forays into watercolour painting in the late 80's and done from a photograph I had found in a magazine (I think!)

The Cape Province in South Africa is renowned for the Cape Dutch style of building since Jan van Riebeeck landed on our Southern shores in 1652. Early homes in Cape Town and it’s surrounds were built in the Cape Dutch architectural style, unique to a small area of the world and unquestionably beautiful. The style has sources as widely different as mediaeval Holland and Germany, the France of the Huguenots and the islands of Indonesia.

Houses in this style have a distinctive and recognizable design, with a prominent feature being the grand, ornately rounded gables, reminiscent of the townhouses of Amsterdam. The houses are also usually H-shaped, with the front section of the house usually being flanked by two wings running perpendicular to it. Furthermore, walls are whitewashed, and the roofs are thatched.

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Icons of Africa

W&N watercolour on amedeo 200gsm watercolour paper

Two icons of the African bush - the mysterious and legendary Baobab tree and the powerful, graceful and arguably one of the most beautiful of all the large cats, the elusive Leopard.

Did you know that the Baobab (Andansonia) is the largest succulent plant in the world? It is a tree that can provide, food, water, shelter and relief from sickness.

Solitary, arboreal and nocturnal, the Leopard is a master of stealth and survival. By far the strongest climber, it can haul prey twice its own body weight up into a tree where it can feast without disturbance from other predators.

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Crow wears a silver band

W&N watercolour on Amedeo 200gsm
Cape or Black Crow (Corvus capensis) – endemic to Africa
With thanks to John from Midmarsh Jottings for the use of his beautiful photograph.

Crow wears a band of silver on his ankle, holds it out to watch it glint in the sun like cool creek water. It is noon. He is the only one out. All others have sought shelter under the canopy of live oak, the leaves beneath the chaparral, Crow, the only one among them unafraid to cast a shadow. He is a black body to absorb the sun’s heat, and yet unheated.

He’s silver studded with stones, turquoise to match the cloudless sky. He stretches out his leg again, watches sky and water glisten on his ankle.

He flexes claws and brings his foot beneath him again, stretches out his other, naked foot for balance. His feet are beautiful, furrowed skin like charcoal scales, sharp and onyx claws. As flexible as hands, good for grasping new-hatched thrushes or pulling gate hooks from eye bolts, and sleek. The humans see crow’s feet in the faces of their most seasoned elders, the scars of a learned life spent laughing.

Crows’ feet, the mark of craft and cunning, crow’s feet a sense of humour made skin and sinew.
He swings down on the branch, holds himself upside down and swinging, the silver falling down around his upper leg as he barks in delight. Sky below his feet and swaying, silver pools above his head. The world so beautifully inverted, he cannot keep from laughing. This is beauty: the world turned upside down. You can keep your lithe ingénues, your florid sunsets and cloying sentiment: beauty is all that cleft in two, a cunning spark suspended by crow’s feet, a fall from a deadly height and then the swoop of wing, the thickening of the air beneath splayed feathers. Seeing air rising within air and climbing on it, sun glinting blue-black as night sky off your feathers? Night colours blazing brilliant from your feathers? Beauty is day turned to night and night to day.

Heart beats furious beneath that dark breast, mind burns in onyx eyes. Beauty a glint of laughter in a bottomless dark eye. He barks again.

Sun above live oak, a thousand suns refracted on the earth below. Grasshoppers leap into the air clicking. Wild oats, tawn in the summer heat, lean eastward with the breeze, and a wall of fog on the ocean twenty miles west. All this beauty: all this.
<sup>Story from Coyote Crossing

.</sup>
 

Light and shadow

W&N watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm 

... light and shadow reveal a silent presence on a kitchen counter…

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Solly's house

“Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.” 

― Edith Sitwell 

W&N watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm 

Solly’s house (our handiman factotum) on our smallholding (Tarlton, Gauteng, South Africa) 

No matter the size or location, a true home is one of the most sacred of places. It is a sanctuary into which men flee from the world’s perils and alarms. It is a resting-place to which at close of day the weary retire to gather new strength for the battle and toils of tomorrow. It is the place where love learns its lessons, where life is schooled into discipline and strength, where character is moulded.

 Another sketch of Solly's house that I did a few years ago

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