Take to the Trees

Margaret has a major exhibition in Bolton called "Take to the Trees" - it featured a number of pieces of work from both Blawearie and Scotts Woodyard near Wooler.

A review of the exhibition can be found on www.notestothemilkman.wordpress.com

THE GALLERY AT ST GEORGE'S HOUSE

2 St George's Rd. Bolton, BL1 2EN

"A NEW CONVERSATION"

16th June to 28th August 2012

Monday - Saturday 8.30 a.m. to 3.00 p.m.

An eclectic exhibition from 2 artists (Jason Simpson and Margaret Jackson) and 3 writers (Scott Devon, Ros Davis and David Jackson) that showcases painting, drawing, poetry, prose and sculpture.

There are two Blawearie paintings by Margaret Jackson in the exhibition: 'Raven / Rowan' and 'Moonpool / Alders', plus some of her other Northumbrian based work.

Availability of Paintings

For more details of the paintings and prices etc., plus exhibitions and things, please go to www.neoartists.co.uk

A WALK TO BLAWEARIE

We park the car by the farm, and start to walk up the snow covered track, past the cottages where Jane Grigson watched her grandmother bake ‘Singing Hinnies’. The snow is thick, and the way up the hill is a ribbon of ice, more a frozen stream than a path. We pass through the gate and climb upwards, with the steep, tree-topped ramparts of the Iron Age fort on our right. We pass out of the valley and out onto the flattened tops of the moorland. The snow is deep here, and the path hard to follow. Ahead of us we can see the ruins of the steading, the roofless house and barn standing in its grove of trees at the foot of the rock outcrop.

Two miles later, we are close to the Bronze Age burial cists, and she says we should make a detour to look at the ring of stones standing in the snow. It’s cold, and we hurry back to the main path. I try a short cut, but misjudge my way and sink to my waist in a deep drift. Her laughter rings out over the moor.

‘You always fall into something’ she says, remembering the midnight descent when we’d come up here to watch the stars and took the wrong way down. Somehow, I find myself back on my feet on firm snow and heading on towards the steading.

We pass the point on the track where in late spring, the young adder slithered across our path, too quick to catch on camera. We pass the stream that runs down into the valley, we can’t see it, but we hear it gurgling under the snow. Now, we have reached the steading, and enter the flat platform of land that used to be the farmyard. To our left are the ruined buildings and as we walk on over the bank where in younger days on a late summer’s evening we once made plans for a future far from Bolton, we pass the ancient plum tree whose fruit we gathered in Autumn. Ahead lies the wall of rocks that encircle the secret garden, hewn out for a Victorian farmwife all those years before, the initials of long departed farmers carved into the stones. Ahead is the flight of steps that will take us up the wall and down into the garden, and on to the alder shrouded pool beyond.

The great beech tree that, all the years we have come here, stood guardian over the entrance lies fallen in front of us. It lies half covered in snow, like the body of a slaughtered giant at Ragnarok.

It fell in the early spring gales. The winds that give this place its name finally triumphed over it, and brought it down. We found it on this year’s first visit. Her painting is its memorial.

It is a winter’s land indeed, and no sign of a spring to come. Bleak and cold like these snowy, eternally windswept hills, the future stretches before me.

She calls to me from the top of the steps to take a photograph of her, in her green coat, face pink with cold and the happiness she always feels in this place.

We move through the abandoned garden, and through the snow covered bracken towards the pool below. A perfect circle, ringed with alder saplings, it is an eerie, magical place, conjuring notions of myth and moonlight meetings. Today the pool is frozen, and she is entranced by the patterns of ice crystals forming on the reeds.

The winter days are short, the dark is falling, and we turn our steps back down the hill, back to the waiting car, and the journey back to the coast. It is New Year’s Eve

From 'A Walk to Blawearie' by David Jackson (2011)

FEBRUARY 2012

Three new pieces of work - from this year's visits to Blawearie. 'Raven and Rowan', 'Moonpool' and 'Woodhenge'.

Woodhenge is actually from Milfield over near Wooler.

Moonpool - 80 cm x 100 cm - Oil and Wax on Canvas

Rowan and Raven 80 cm x 100 cm - Oil and Wax on canvas

The Raven

In the high valley of the Harthope Burn

In a solitary rowan, the raven,

The guardian of memory and thought

Mythic messenger, summoner of souls,

Seeker of the slain, hunter of the hanged  

Sat alone, in the wolf-months of the year

Waiting to see which way the world would turn

Angered by our impudent intrusion

He hauled his heavy body aloft

And uttering his strident ‘pruk, pruk’ cry

He flew from rowan to rock, rock to rowan

Criss-crossing the steep sided valley,

Waiting to see which way the world would turn

Beneath his rowan roost

On grass white as frost with his droppings

We stooped to gather the feathers he had shed

Black as the night, black as the pit

Together, in a place that has abandoned time

Waiting to see which way the world would turn

And now, as life returns again to the land

And the adders stir from their winter sleep,

To slither over the ancient graves

The raven tumbles in his Spring flight, and

We climb once again the remembered track,

Unsure where our destination lies, still

Waiting to see which way the world has turned

The Raven - David Jackson (2012)

Woodhenge - 80 cm x 100 cm Oil and Wax on Canvas

LATEST WORK

Fern Circle

50 cm x 40 cm

Encaustic Painting on Canvas

(a work in progress)

Silver Birch and Bracken

72 cm x 102 cm

Mixed Media on paper

Cups and Rings

66 cm x 101 cm

Mixed Media on paper

Steps into the trees

Mono-print on paper

Using the new printing press

Blawearie Print #1

32 cm x 22 cm

Collograph

Moss Spiral I

27 cm x 38 cm

Collograph

Moss Spiral II

27 cm x 38 cm

Collograph

Moss, Bark and Lichen I

32 cm x 22 cm

Print from Collograph Plate

Moss, Bark and Lichen II

32 cm x 22 cm

Print from Collograph Plate

Collograph Plate

Bark, Lichen and Moss

(found at Blawearie)