there's so many photos...where do I start?

Here's a few...
 from the underground Seed Lab...

Yesterday was my last day at the Millennium Seedbank...

and it was quite sad indeed to say farewell! I feel as though I made some very good connections ... such warmth through sharing time in close circumstances without the usual distractions of regular life.

I wanted to post a few images that were special and speak to time and a certain continuity...

stored seeds up close

archival material

This book were quite a find... the earliest records were from about 1910. The writing was very appealing BUT hard to read.

This typed record was from 1956. Its interesting to note that

records in herbariums and seed banks etc are approving to be

critically useful in the process of observing climate patterns

 and much, much more.

 There were drawers and drawers of these old seed specimen cases.
I seemed to spend the whole 3 week worrying if i was getting enough photos.... documenting enough as I went! One does have to fight that feeling a bit lest it cancels out one's capacity to be in the moment and just doing what is possible.

Last week I started working on larger paper ...  this was on a lovely water-colour paper and I gave it to my delightful contact person Wolfgang Stuppy who is quite familiar with Australian seeds in his work as a Seed Morphologist.

This one below is not a great photo.. its about a metre square ... on Swedish natural linen ... I stitched the edges using a strong brown linen thread that I was glad to find in Brighton the previous week. Given I was travelling light the challenge was how to create a large work I could give as a gift to the Seed Bank Partnership that would not require framing and yet could be hung and also be long-lasting.

This is effectively a wall hanging but it could be framed at a later date. I had two days to start and complete this 1 metre square work .... a huge task for me because my work takes longer to physically paint most of the time and I personally like a lot of time for the work to mused over, possibly modified, before I sign off. So... had I not been so tired from the frenzied final weekend of painting I guess Id have spent more time worrying would it work...what will it come across like etc.

So... after three weeks of drawing some amazing species I didn't go for something new and risky to pull together in a couple of days... variation on a familiar theme it was. I had a good time working with some new ink and pushing aspects of it in new directions. I used a pen nib towards the end and got some wonderful textural layering that way... impossible to see here.

Guseppe, Marco and Gisele in Brighton recently

I think I must finish with this one! On the train trip back to London yesterday afternoon I thought about the good people I was in residence with over the last three weeks ...and with my laptop open as the train sped along through the Sussex countryside I looked through all the images of my time at Wakehurst Place. 


Cheerio my friends from Brazil, Sardinia, Sicily and Pakistan ...and of course all the lovely people who are permanent on the site.

Efisio... telling Gisele a story at the pub last friday night!