About Drawing Horses, Making and Musing

I draw, I make, I like to think too!

Love a good tale, coffee and the sunshine – mainly the latter because we have a shorter supply of it in Cumbria than maybe other parts of the world!

And then there are the Horses…

I am an artist who live in a small village in the shadow of Cross Fell, where we have the only named wind in the UK.

Apparently it used to be called Fiends Fell, on account of that hurling wind. It can come any time of year – and is usually presaged by a long bar of white cloud, it picks up and can last for weeks – yet go two miles or less, away from the village and there will not be a breath of a breeze…

In my early days here I bought the children a tent to play in – we had a Helm. The next morning the brightly coloured tent had not blown next door – or even down the road -it had completely vanished…

Forever. I never found out to where it had gone in the night.

Legend has it that one day, fed up with the demon creating this awful and destructive gale – a priest was despatched to the top of the fell ( it has a disctinctive plateau at its summit and is the highest point of the North Pennines). He took a cross which he dug into the ground and he exorcised the Fell, they say – banishing the demon; it was re-named Crossfell..

Well, he must have been lurking behind a tussock – for he is still blowing, sometimes for days and when he gets some snow in his bellows…

All the houses were built to look away from the fell – and they still are – no windows face Cross Fell, no eyes have the view of the great summit.

And here I live and paint and make and muse.

Eden North Pennines in a Helm Snowstorm

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