Nov 2025
This weekend I’ve spent time in Dartmoor, one of those amazing times when the autumn was full of fog which played with some of the autumn colours.
For me Dartmoor evokes the ages with the incredible Tors and rocks. There are also the huge skies – I’m always very aware that the sky can have changed little over millennia so our ancient ancestors must have seen some of the same clouds and star constellations that exist for us.
Another defining feature for Dartmoor is the amazing lichen. The length and thickness of it is amazing and it hangs like beautiful tresses among ironblack branches.
October 2025
A New Forest feature I’m fascinated by is the standing water which arrives in the autumn but is gone by summer. The New Forest sits in a flat area of Hampshire without the rock formations of other landscapes and layers of sand and clay leave an usual facility to create patches of shallow, standing water. The reflections in these dark pools are stunning and often interrupted by leaves or vegetation which makes them a fascinating visual puzzle.
September 2025
Part of the Florilegium and Friends exhibition
April 25
I’ve started on an exciting new project around several of Britain’s most beautiful landscapes. I’m lucky enough to spend regular time in the New Forest, Pembrokeshire and Dartmoor. These are all areas I know well and have been fascinated by their differences as well as their commonality.
A walk in the New Forest this week has made me think about the characteristics of each landscape.
The New Forest is managed through animal husbandry – ponies, donkeys, pigs allowed to roam and browse at will. The browse line they create is fascinating and allows transverse light into areas which would otherwise be dark so this unusual habitat allows rare plants and insects to thrive
March 25
Exhibition at The Old Waiting Room, Totton
Unusual exhibitions in unusual places are always fun and certainly having part of our publicity as station announcements was very entertaining!
January 25
An Exhibition with artist Wendy Hall at Harbour Lights Gallery.
March 2024
This year’s second exhibition for me is in the West Wales Arts Centre. The gallery is a hidden gem and a centre of culture for North Pembrokeshire. They have a range of music projects on the go which always result in some amazing performances, sometimes accompanied by a delicious lunch! So I’m really proud to be exhibiting in the gallery which has such an array of quality artworks on show.
January 2024
We’ve just handed over a series of paintings to St Barbe’s Museum and Gallery as part of the Planting Ideas Exhibition. We’re there until March 2024. The New Forest Botanical Painting Archive is a project set up to record some of the incredible plant diversity which makes up the New Forest. We’ve been helped by the New Forest National Park and are gradually building the archive among about 12-15 artists, all very talented botanical painters including teachers and illustrators.
September 2023
Finally hung the exhibition in Exbury’s Five Arrows Gallery and went down with Covid! Luckily I’d gone a day early to put it up with help from my son so it’s really great to have got it all done before I figured out that the intense headache and flashing lights weren’t a migraine!
Anyway hopefully we’ll all do ok. It’s such a lovely location to have a show.
30th August 2020
The countryside is buzzing with people but also nature which has thrived over lockdown. Birds are chirping loud and strong, the bees are greedy for the heather and gorse, and the butterflies dance on the wind.
Summer on Carningli brings bright yellow from the gorse mixed with the ochres of the drying tall grass before the sun has bleached it white. The rocks are mostly weathered to white but now and again frost cracking reveals the sparkling bluish tinge beneath the surface. The raw power of nature seems to fly on every push of wind.
Gorse, Rocks, Heather. Carningli
12th August 2020
It’s so hot this week that painting outside is impractical. Paint dries too quickly to be able to work on it, even with a slowing medium. So shady walks outdoors, watching the light and the shadows have been the order of the day.
I will be grateful for the storm to break like everyone else, but the light has a fantastic quality through the trees. I’ve played with sketching apples in the late evening too and there is a real drama to the shadows which is exciting to draw.
I’ve been thinking for some time about the translucency of leaves. A particular dogwood that I pass often has beautiful red bark and green leaves that the light shines through so I’ve spent a few hot hours in a shady corner painting with inks, trying to capture some of the light and layering of the leaves.
Red Bark, Green Leaves. Ink on Paper
5th August 2020
Painting outside is never easy.
The clouds and the light are both wonderful, although ever changing of course, but for some reason my favourite places to paint always seem to be accompanied by free-roaming ponies, for whom I have a healthy and quietly distanced respect. These moments of encounter are not the Black Beauty moments of childhood fiction.
Ponies are attractive and fascinating but I have found them occasionally unpredictable. Quite frankly they’re a lot bigger and can kick a lot harder than I can. In some of my regular spots they now know I am of no interest but their presence does add a fricson of danger as I’m never quite sure that everyone knows the rules – I’ll ignore them if they ignore me!
Anyway ponies aside I managed to complete a couple of cloud studies this afternoon – sometimes the landscape is just a line to set off a powerful sky!
2nd August 2020
I’ve finished a view of Fishguard Harbour from Carningli, one of the most astounding views in Pembrokeshire. The light splashes off the sea there as if someone throws it down from the cliffs. You can watch the ferries carry people away to Ireland and looking the other way on occasions you can see Snowdonia.
This particular day there was an energetic, blustery wind which made waves and parted the clouds to give a silvery sunlight exploding from the water. I tried to capture some of the day’s energy in my painting and played with a new mix for the back layer behind my clouds. I love the energy of clouds and sea together and every day brings a different combination of light.
Gale and Bluster, Fishguard harbour
24th July 2020
One silver lining from the whole Covid experience has been that society has had a chance to re-assess, to re-think. I know I’m not alone in reviewing my arts practice at this time and with a bit more time on my hands I’ve been thinking about what interests me and what tangents to pursue.
Through my tangential wanderings I’ve gradually realised a few things. I paint better landscapes when I paint them outdoors, with the wind catching the trees and a range of insects landing in my painted clouds. I’ve also realised that good paintings need resilience – to keep working on a painting or an idea until I achieve a result.
Finally, I’ve realised that I can get bored if I don’t experiment and that’s probably a good thing. It pushes me on to play with materials and to take risks until I find a way through. That’s part of the making of my tree funghi series – an experiment with diluting the inks until a perfect ratio was found. After weeks of play I think I’ve found a result that does what I want it to and plays with light, layers and shape all working together.
5th July 2020
As luck would have it I had just ordered extra art supplies as we went into lockdown so I was well prepared for what became a daily ritual – an artwork a day. Subjects gradually became smaller and smaller as lockdown wore on and I moved from wide open landscapes to the curl of individual leaves. Until eventually the New Forest opened up as my playground again in June and it feels so good to be out in the open! Lots of sketches in the sunshine.
The routine of at least one artwork a day has paid dividends though, like recording a sky whenever I can. I’ve captured so many different connotations of clouds, all as fascinating as each other. And I’ve started to work on very different treatments and subjects. All power to hardwork and practice!
Below – outdoor painting again!
Caroline Rackham 