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Sketch from a recent visit to Umbria, Itlay. This is the view across the valley.

Mixed media on plywood – 41 x 51 cm.

A mizzling mist sinks slowly down the hillside, brushes through oak and rowan and birch. Gorse is jewelled with fine silver cobwebs. Pheasants, berries, falling leaves.

Leaving the harbour with the smell of diesel under a grey duvet sky, past the Harland and Wolff yard and the sleeping seals on the rocks below the giant turbine. A shag flies over the stern and eider ducks bob. Trying to draw the land from the sea as the boat shuggles this way and that . A slag heap from the old mines, an oil rig out in the Firth. A landscape of energy – coal, wind and oil all within sight. A breif cast for mackerel. Not biting, we head back.

Charcoal, acrylic and collage on wood – 44 x 44 cm.

After the rain the smell of summer rises from the field with the skylarks in tow. Swallows swing on the telephone wires, dive low over the barley. Honey suckles its way through the hedgerow, daisies turn their heads to the sun.

The wind flaps shed doors on too small hinges, ripples a delaminating plywood roof. A constant state of nearly undone. Slatted sun under the pier, rain on its way.