Then and now, a short post

 I found a picture of the place I lived as a child. We lived at number six, I think, right in the middle of this row of cottages, with this view. No electric, gas or water though! 

And now we're at today, my car won't start, Gary did not show yesterday,  busy, hoping he will help today. I have a starting kit which I've used before but in this weather I can't get the hood open, my hands not cooperating.

 

I've had better days. 

I think I'll stay away from negative media and writing of all kinds today, already down enough with mid winter. 

A la recherche du temps perdu, Boudly version

Since I joined Twitter, mainly for art purposes, I've also fallen into the company of Yorkshire farmers and tourist promoters, mainly in that part of the Yorkshire dales where I lived till I was nearly five. Formative years, particularly in the visual area.

So I see more and more pix of familiar landscapes, and familiar sounds of sheep bleating, and it made me wonder if the cottages where we lived, a terrace of pebbledashed houses, originally for mineworkers, is still there and unruined.  That whole area is now part of a national park, so it's preserved.  

I thought it was called Gribdale Terrace, since the place was Gribdale, but when I tried that out I got a regrettable picture of suburban bliss in Great Ayton, which seems to have bust out and become Big Ayton. So I may have the name wrong.  People there are trying to fix on it for me.  Maybe Dogonart can shed some light?  I was a bit young for knowing my home address at the time.

Anyway, it's not as if I took a bite of Yorkshire pudding and was transported back there, more that it's always in my mental landscape, blotting out many years that came after and were a litany of illness and woes, just as well to blot them out.

Yorkshire Hills, watercolor 1975

The painting I put up here, yes, art and not in the art blog, how about that, is how I remember the view from our back window across the rocks and moors to Rosebery Topping, which I climbed when I was three.  With a good bit of help, I imagine.  And you see that my memory showed it as it was to a little kid, those giant rocks in the foreground probably pretty small in fact.

But that line, those shapes are always there, and crop up all over the place in my art.  The painting is halfway up the stairs, hence the distortion, and under glass so I had to avoid multiple reflections.  But you can get the gist.  And the sound is always that of the skylark miles up in the air, and a few sheep bleating out of sight.

This was also the first painting I ever exhibited, and one of the few times I felt like doing a realistic image.  Those clouds are definitely authentic, so I think my memory held up pretty well.

Anyway, I'm in search of that lost time, just to see a pic, no particular reason.  One of my overriding emotions when I see pictures of that scene in winter, with Twitter farmer friends working out with sheep and pigs, is pity for anyone who has to tolerate that climate. 

Nothing colder and more piercing than the wind on a July day up on the moors...nemmind the winter!  No mountain range between there and Siberia.  Love to see the pix from the comfort of my warm home now, though.

That general area is known to a lot of tv watchers as the location for the Yorkshire vet series, All Creatures Great and Small.

So that's where I am today. Mentally, that is. And remembering what a huge impact childhood experience of landscape has for your life as an artist.  Or any other sort of life, come to think of it.

What's your childhood landscape?