SNOWY COPPICE .... If you came this way....

       If you came this way  oil/canvas  80 x 110cm   ....  unfinished .....

My husband, Robert, always says, when he sees a new painting, which I think of as half finished ....  or at least arrived at a point where I am maybe beginning to know where I am or what to do ...he  says " dont do anymore ...  dont overdo it "     he is often right ...   


Painting is such a weird and magical  thing ...  I love the ambiguity and endless possibility of it.   One mark,  ten minutes painting can ruin it or make it...   or the pause for a cup of tea change my perception of what is going on.    That is why I love T.S Elliott.....  one of my favorite bits  from Little Gidding ...  and of course the title of the painting...  not snowy coppice but


              If you came this way,
Taking the route you would be likely to take
From the place you would be likely to come from,
If you came this way in may time, you would find the hedges
White again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness.
It would be the same at the end of the journey,
If you came at night like a broken king,
If you came by day not knowing what you came for,
It would be the same, when you leave the rough road
And turn behind the pig-sty to the dull facade
And the tombstone. And what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled
If at all. Either you had no purpose
Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured
And is altered in fulfilment. 


This is (one of ) the most magical heartwarming deeply felt pieces of poetry I know.   ....    I give thanks for it.   For the person who introduced me to it, for the education which enabled me to enjoy it, for the people I can share it with.   Rock on!