Original artwork by Vanna Bartlett and photographs by Jeremy Bartlett

The inspiration for the painting came one murky January morning when I was walking through Earlham Cemetery in Norwich. Out of the gloom I spied the bright yellow fruits of a Chaenomeles bush. They were the only splash of colour in a grey, dreary day and were just crying out to be painted. I have one of these bushes in my own back garden and it often flowers very early (December or even November). I gathered some fallen fruits and cut a sprig of flowers from my own plant and painted some watercolour studies to capture the vibrant colours. I did some more sketches in the cemetery and added a Wren to the compostion and then was ready to begin painting.

The Wren is seen hunting for spiders and other invertebrate food but the title of the painting also alludes to the old custom of hunting Wrens on St Stephen’s Day (26 December) when ordinary folk would take to the woods and search for these tiny birds to kill them. The origins of this ritual are obscure, but many theories abound.

In my painting, the Chaenomeles bush is a symbol of the ending of the year – the current year's fruit still clings to the shrub while the buds for next year are already bursting open. The sharp thorns of the plant and the blood red flowers symbolise the ritual killing of the Wren.

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Keen of Hamar

A mad jumbled stonescape with an amazing flora.

The whole picture (left). Plants in the painting include Kidney Vetch, Thyme, Sea Plantain (middle picture), Spring Squill (right), Mountain Everlasting and various sedges.

The Keen of Hamar NNR is a seemingly barren outcrop of serpentine rock on the island of Unst, Shetland. We visited it in July 2007 on a day of low cloud that veiled the jumbled stones in misty murk.

The expanse of dirty brown rocks appeared devoid of life and looked like a cross between a slag heap and lava fields. On closer inspection though, we found whole communities of plants – tiny creeping Thymes whose dark leaves threaded through the rock debris, unnoticed until the eye caught the sudden flush of purple where the tiny flowers bloomed; small grey-green stars of Sea Plantain leaves studded the stones; beautiful Spring Squill, almost overlooked; Kidney Vetch sprawling through the stones and bursting into pale yellow flower from red-tinged buds.

We spent several hours in this weird stonescape, hunting for the odd (Moonwort), the unusual (Frog Orchid) and the rare (Edmonston’s Chickweed). While I sketched and made notes in my journal, Jeremy kept himself busy taking lots of photos of the amazing plants.

Painting the Keen of Hamar was a pretty ambitious project and would have to be done over the winter when I didn’t have distractions and commitments on the allotment and elsewhere. I had the basic composition from my original field sketch but once I’d decided which plants to include in the picture, I had to make sketches of them from Jeremy’s photos and my own notes and drawings in order to be familiar with their forms. I often consult field guides when I need help with these initial drawings but the plants on the Keen of Hamar are very untypical – the harsh environment gives rise to dwarf forms and most of the specimens are unusually tinged purplish - so the books were next to useless. Good job Jeremy takes all those photos!

I finally started work on it at the beginning of November 2008 and finished in mid December. The stones are the essence of the painting with the flowers bringing splashes of colour in an otherwise drab world. The whole picture is pulled together by the little Thyme plants weaving through the smaller stones – rather like the threads in a tapestry.

For more information see the reserve's website.

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Diminishing Returns

I sketched this male Stonechat on a fine October’s day in 2007. We had been walking round Sheringham Park and decided to return along the coast. A lovely footpath runs down from the coast road, over the railway line and up to the cliff edge. The path was lined with the robust dead stems of Alexanders with their coal black seeds and a tangle of wild roses with bright red hips and a sparsity of dark green leaves still clinging on. As we walked along in the sunshine towards the sea, a Stonechat flew off in front of us and alighted again a little further on. We approached slowly but he did the same again. I stopped and sketched him through binoculars as he flitted back and forth from one vantage perch to another. As we continued on our way we spotted a female Stonechat as well. The pair would fly off at our approach only to return part way along the path and resettle themselves. Eventually they got bored with the game and flew off over our heads and landed back on the swaying rose stems where we’d first seen them.

The final composition was partly inspired by a Magritte painting. He depicted a man sitting by a window reading a newspaper and repeated the image four times on the one canvas but subtly altered the perspective each time. I originally intended to paint exactly the same scene each time but from a more distant perspective so that the image would be smaller but encompass a wider view. This would have required great skill and patience so instead I painted a triptych where the foreground vegetation continues on from one piece to the next but the bird is painted progressively smaller until it flies away.

The title ‘Diminishing Returns’ had nothing to do with the current economic climate but I fear it may yet come to haunt me!

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Bylaugh Church - Spring

Bylaugh, up the Wensum valley from Norwich, is a lovely spot. The church sits on high ground above the valley and is a fine vantage point to look out over a seemingly unchanged landscape of grazing marsh criss-crossed with dykes, dotted with hoary willows, and the silver ribbon of river meandering through. It’s a favourite destination for a spring bike ride when the churchyard is carpeted with the white of snowdrops.

We cycled out on 3rd February 2007 on the first really warm day of spring. Hazel catkins danced in the hedgerows and we saw our first butterfly of the year – a Red Admiral brought out of hibernation by the sun’s warmth. Strong winds a couple of weeks previously had blown down a big sycamore tree on the edge of the churchyard. At first I thought it had ruined the outlook of the sketch I wished to make but I scrambled down the bank anyway and then turned and looked back up at the church. The tower was perfectly vignetted by the remaining sycamore and a hazel full of lovely ‘lamb’s tails’ catkins. A mass of snowdrops spilled down towards me, stopping when they reached the deep drift of autumn’s shed leaves.

I crouched down to sketch so that the snowdrops were at eye level and the church tower elongated upwards against the perfect blue of a spring sky. A light breeze rustled through the ivy making the leaves flutter and dance like newly awakened butterflies. A white tailed bumblebee (Bombus lucorum) hummed noisily above the dead leaves searching out a nest site and the stillness was briefly shattered by a sudden burst of Wren song, the vibrations of which seemed to linger on the air after the sound had ceased.

Bylaugh is beautiful, but is a place of odd juxtapositions. The church’s lovely round tower with its octagonal top dates from the 14th century but the chancel and nave were rebuilt in the early 1800s. And although the church sits on a slight rise commanding panoramic views over the river valley, if you look through the hedge you’ll find the local sewage works…

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Suffolk Hedge

Suffolk Hedge was inspired during a cycling trip to Suffolk in September 2007. Despite some inclement weather, we covered a fair few miles down narrow twisting lanes lined with thick overhanging hedgerows. There was a bounteous berry harvest – hips and haws and the biggest sloes I’ve ever seen. And masses of black bryony. In the summer the shiny heart-shaped leaves are easily overlooked amongst the other greenery but black bryony really comes into its own in autumn. Then, as the berries ripen, the leaves turn to pale green, yellow and then papery brown and appear to dance in the hedgerows like will-o-the-wisps while the berries hang in great swags, festooning the lanes. I sketched some leaves and berries along the lanes around Sotterley. The dense hedgerows were comprised of field maple, hawthorn, hazel and blackthorn. It was a thick, tangled mass of interlocking branches and the bryony hung over it all, the pale leaves standing up aerially from the wandering stems, the berries in all shades from green through yellow to orange and red. Beautiful.

When I came to do the painting, I included a pair of Goldcrests as we’d seen the odd one or two amongst small tit flocks feeding in various hedgerows. I also added a Southern Hawker dragonfly that we’d seen elsewhere in the week and an Oak Bush Cricket after a couple of dead specimens I’d found in the road while sketching. I tried to convey a feeling of the richness and diversity of the hedge.

The leaves blurring into each other in the centre of the picture and the curving loops of the bryony give an almost kaleidoscopic feel. All the hedgerows I cycled along during that week have been brought together and distilled into a thin slice of Suffolk Hedge where everything converges in on itself. Into this the Goldcrests add a sense of fleetingness and movement.

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Between Tides: Black-headed Gulls, Wells-next-the-Sea

In 2008 we spent an autumnal week in Wells-next-the-Sea in north Norfolk, exploring the coastal strip west as far as Heacham and often following the flocks of Pink-footed Geese as they forayed inland to feed on the fields. The sky was regularly crossed by their dark straggling lines and the air was filled with the soft ‘wink-wink’ of their calls.

At the end of each day, we would take an evening constitutional down the footpath alongside the Beach Road. The light and tide differed every time and I would stop to sketch whatever birds were foraging on the tide line – Curlews and Oystercatchers probing the mud, Turnstones and Ringed Plovers picking over the sea-washed debris. On the last evening I turned my attention to the Black-headed Gulls huddled on the exposed sand banks.

The light was very clear and the colours pure, almost as if they had been lifted directly from my painter’s palette – ochre sand, cerulean sea, and the soft white and grey of the gulls. The clean lines and blocks of colour put me in mind of a well-executed lino print.

Back home, I transferred my sketches onto a large canvas and began painting, working on a simple composition to retain the pure sweeps of colour. I deliberately kept the picture uncluttered in order to capture the sense of stillness in the calm waiting of the gulls.