Why I am not painting the North York Moors

I have just returned from a few days in my hometown Guisborough on the edge of the North York Moors national park. In many ways it is a beautiful area, the open heather moorland stretches for miles and recent legislation allows us to wander away from the paths and feel a great sense of freedom.
This landscape has been the subject of many of my paintings and numerous locations are still 'magical' to me, places haunted by memories of childhood. I used to think this was a wild and natural place teeming with wildlife, but then I was embedded in the culture. My father has always been a regular shooting man and the language of the gamekeeper informed opinion in our house. We often ate what he shot; rabbit, woodpigeon and occasionally pheasant or duck.
I always appreciated that the moors were used for the rearing of red grouse, there are shooting butts everywhere (places where wealthy men hide with guns awaiting the grouse which are driven towards them by local peasants known as 'beaters') and the heather is burnt regularly to keep conditions suitable for grouse to thrive.
Now at entrances to the moors there are intrusive new 'information' boards where it is claimed that these conditions are also good for a hand full of other species such as the curlew (rarely spotted, wonderful cry) and the merlin (never spotted). What is not mentioned is the active persecution of other species which might predate upon the grouse. You will never see a buzzard here, a legally protected bird now so common elsewhere, I have even seen them over Nottingham. This month three gamekeepers from the area were convicted for laying poison traps to kill birds of prey, they were fined a few hundred pounds, moor owners will earn £150 for every pair of grouse shot.
Unexamined too are the effects of lead shot sprinkled in abundance over this 'protected' flora and fauna and the huge heather fires lit between december and april. Not only do these choke the valleys and villages with thick smoke they must have a huge carbon footprint and are continually destroying other plants and food-chains. I await the reply from the North York Moors park authority on this matter, but it looks a glaring anomaly to me. In all other areas we now recognize the urgency in limiting carbon emissions, why not here?
Why not let some of this vast grouse-farm return to the wild or even plant trees to offset the emissions. Let there be forests on the moor like at Birchover in Derbyshire. Let it become a wild place again to benefit the lives of the town-hunched folk rather than the tiny minority of super-rich from elsewhere. Let there actually be the biodiversity proclaimed on these notice boards rather than the destruction caused by this cruel and elitist victorian hobby.

This is what I see now when I visit. Yes the heather is lovely in august, but mostly its brown, gray or blackened. This is a spoiled landscape. No longer the wilderness of childhood.

Affordable Art Fair, London 2008

I will be showing new paintings at the Affordable Art Fair again this year. It runs from 13 - 16 March at Battersea Park London. My work will be among that displayed by Gallery Top and will comprise of wilderness pictures of Scotland.

New show

Thanks for everybody's concern over my migraines, I seem to be slowly getting back to normal vision. At least I am back to painting with no problems and have spent much of the last 2 weeks working on new, larger pictures of Skye.
I have been drawing inspiration and new perspectives from the excellent 'Wild Places' by Robert Macfarlane, a writer who sleeps out in Britain's most remote wilderness and articulates both what it is and historically was to engage with raw nature. A book I don't want to finish, it is making me fidgety to get away from the city.
Yet it is a good time of year to be getting on with pictures, the constant january grey is good for painting under. I can also announce my involvement in a new group exhibition at the Gallery Top, nr. Matlock, Derbyshire. The show, dubbed 'Survey 2' runs from April 5th- May 11th.

New drawings from Paul Foxton
Paul is honing something really quite special now he is back to his art. He was always a gifted draughtsman and these latest drawings have wonderful tonal balance and atmosphere. I really like the landscape quality of this table cloth. I urge you to visit his excellent site.

migraines

Since i was ten years old I have suffered from migraines. For a while in my teens I would get on average one attack a week. Then it gradually declined until now I normally get one attack a year. Then last week I suffered eight separate migraines between tuesday and saturday. I have never had such a concentrated cluster of attacks, rather than growing out of this problem I now find I am afflicted as never before.
Each attack proceeds through distinct phases beginning with visual interference known as the aura. This starts as a flickering blindspot somewhere in the field of vision. It slowly grows to form a crescent across my sight, pulsing and flickering in zigzag patterns in my head, superimposed on what I see. Typically this will last an hour and is unpleasant enough to make me have to lie quiet, eyes closed to minimize the disorientation of feeling half-blind. As the visual flickering subsides it is replaced by a full headache originating behind the eyes. My ability with words is impaired and there is a general bluntening of the mind. This continues for a couple of hours and then the end of the attack is signalled by a creeping numbness or tingling across the face and hands.
The doctor has given me some new drugs (zolmitriptan) to switch off any further attacks, results have been inconclusive though i have not relapsed for 4 days now. But I am not yet well. I cannot fully clear my head, my sight is still full of remnants of the aura, especially in the centre of my vision, there are spots before my eyes. Reading is slowed, painting is not possible, I have the tingling around the mouth and finger tips and it will not resolve. I am stuck in a permanent low-migraine and unable to reboot my head. Back to doc tomorrow.

Context

For a few years I supported myself by copying the old masters in pastel upon the pavement. The public gave coins and cleared my overdraft. Here I am pictured, summer , 1986 in York, having transcribed the Mona Lisa I ponder the long bus ride north to Middlesbrough, hoping there will be no Stockton detour.

Here is a feed from my studio cam