SEASONAL SELECTION from Frances Hatch

Work made in January 2025 during low lit days of heavy rain and chill. The lanes approaching Dunkery Beacon were awash with devon-red streams. I set an intention to work with and on high Exmoor land. At Webbers Post, snow was melting over Ley Hill over Horner Wood in front of me- and to my left,  birch flaming wet in front of the beacon. Those two noticings became two paintings. And so began 3 days based around the carpark at Webbers Post working under the tailgate of my van when the squalls swept through.   A rich palette of the place offered itself for use. A circle of burnt gorse provided the rich blacks and became the place I chose to work in and from. I foraged to establish what else was available as my material palette… small exposures of pale warm clays.  The racket of the trees during squalls informed the brush marks. The fierce luminosity of birch…lichen and moisture insinuates itself everywhere. I made ‘potions’ with earths, clay and charcoals integrated with acrylic and watercolour paint.     I invite the land into conversation wherever I am. This is a natural extension of my long-held plein-air, site responsive practice. I’ve developed a simple ritual to indicate a shift from ‘common hour’ containment to porous availability by ‘drawing my curtains back’. I make a gesture – one that opens from the heart outwards…as an indication to myself and the land that I am present.