Llyn Tegid

The last painting I did was in December. That is a long time. I hadn't really seen anything I wanted to paint. I wasn't really looking either. I even began to wonder if that was the last one. There'd been a few blogposts, a couple of fillums but little photography and certainly no painting urges.

Me, my partner and my two sisters visited Llyn Tegid (or Bala Lake) in North Wales last Sunday for a walk, part-way round the lake. It was dry and overcast but during the afternoon, the sun came out and lit up the hills and water below. I hadn't taken my camera but my partner had. It is from one of her photos that this painting has started. I did try to copy it but something else happened. Over a day or so of looking at that lovely photograph, I wanted to try to paint it, to have a go, in old parlance.

So, in no rush, finishing my jobs, aiming for an 11-ish start, I sat down at my table in the kitchen a little after 11. Why was I bothered about time, anyway? I gave myself permission just to paint, to enjoy myself.  There wasn't any need to finish a painting. If it happened, good, but I could always carry on with it another time. As it happened, I finished it not long after lunchtime.

I'd thought, maybe, to paint on a canvas, but, not having painted for these 4 months, I put it back and turned to the A2 paper instead. At least, whatever happened would be big...to do justice to the scene. The grounding, I felt, had to be something of blue, green and yellow, so I mixed universal blue with cadmium yellow, later adding aqua green and light violet blue. I'd tried to sit for five mins in stillness, considering the lines, proportions, reflections...while listening to music, something I don’t usually do. But I thought Composer of the Week, Hildie of Bingen, on radio 3 would be good painting company approaching Easter weekend.

And so, I painted, first, the sky,  mapped out the scenery, and then the lake. I went over sections, adding shade and texture, trying out different brush effects - not worrying too much, if it worked or not. The pleasure and sense of peace while painting has remained with me into the following day. I feel alive to be creating again.

It was nearly lunchtime. Does that need a little something..? Put the brush down and go eat! So, I did. And when I returned, my eyemind was clearer and my stomach satisfied. It surprised me that only a little while longer, I felt it was finished. I laid it flat on a table in the sunny living room to dry, while I shared with family and friends on social media and began to clear away. I sat it on two A-frames on my window sill and waited for the magic of paint. Marks I'd made to show ripples on the water turned into rocks and tracks. I'd struggled with the peak of a hill, yet it looked amazing now. I''d recently read in Jim Perrin's poetic writing, called The Hills of Wales, the tale of Ceridwen, Tegid's wife, chasing her servant, Gwion, around these hills. He had accidentally spilled some of the liquid from the cauldron he was guarding onto his fingers, licked them, thereby gaining the knowledge and wisdom, meant for her son. To escape, he changed into the form of a hare, while Ceridwen raced after him as a greyhound bitch. I tried to imagine some of this in the painting.

And last evening, sitting under a lamp in the semi-darkness of my living room, I sat up suddenly, thinking I’d seen a figure walking towards me by the lakeside. 

So, yet again, what started out as a practice piece turned into something special for me