Slimbridge

On the way back from visiting friends and family in the north of England I visited Slimbridge Wildfowl Centre which Sir Peter Scott set up in the 1960s.I think he was the person who created my interest in birds and so it was wonderful to visit somewhere I had only seen on film as a child . Some of the swans ,Bewick swans , had just arrived from Russia having travelled 3,000 miles to escape from temperatures of minus 30degrees . The setting is stunning and the birds inspirational. They seem to be another strand in recurring themes that flow in and out of my work . For me birds represent freedom , playfulness and stamina. At the moment they are very prominant probably because the trees are bare therefore they are more visibleand there are flocks of birds wintering in the UK . The image of birds roosting in trees is the most haunting as in the image top left . I had been thinking of adding a bird to the Tree of Life Teatowel and had been working with images of birds I had drawn on a visit to the Natural History Museum in Oxford last year on tree paint before Christmas.