BACK TO THE SOIL
If you dig the garden
in
an ancient city like Winchester, you dig up archaeology. Looks like
rubble
to me but (according to our local museum) the flints littering the
garden
are chippings from a Stone Age workshop making scrapers for
animal
hides. Most of the other things I've found come from the 19th and 20th
centuries, old china, glass (often iridescent with age), bones,
seafood
shells and broken clay pipes.
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| Soil photograph | On site drawing of same view. Mixed media drawing |
As my previous attempt to paint from this garden building site (see Maps) didn't produce a result, I took some photographs of the soil surface, which focused on the network of dried leaves and grass threading between flints and shells, reminded me of beaded and knotted strings used by some cultures as writing. Tried to draw them as written characters without much success (imposing my ideas rather than letting them teach me), found a more conventional drawing isolated their their calligraphic quality. Drawing is a such mysterious process, succeeds more often than not by demanding an intense, almost religious communion with the subject.
My interest in the more metaphysical aspects of the garden might be triggered by reading A. S. Byatt's Possession, and watching a TV documentary on Pre-Roman Britain by Dr. Francis Pryor - both uncovering remnants of our lost Celtic past. Perhaps one of the most spectacular prehistoric sites was found in a Norfolk estuary in 1998, first sighted when tree roots were exposed by very low tides, protruded upwards from the water. Excavation proved the site was once dry land, an enormous oak trunk buried upside down inside a post circle. According to Dr Pryor, it may have been inverted as an offering to Celtic gods and ancestors, who resided underground. There's more information and a stunning series of photographs by Andy Burnham on the Megalithic site.
My late parents were dedicated gardeners, it's comforting that one day I'll join them down there, in an upside down, oak-shaded heaven. What a relief not to spend eternity with all those folks who rant on about evil and original sin.
