Painters, Poets, pies and Northern folk

Great Hill Ridge
 above Roddlesworth

My studio faces a 19C large mill, a blank brick wall and a pinky-red bus stop, its an outlook which I quite like because I have got into watching northern folk drift past and wait for the bus, "theres nowt as strange as folk tha nowes" which is a north east lanky saying and its reht, for here in Bolton, the home of the balti pasty, there exists an eclectic mix of bus stop people, blond miniskirted and short crop t shirt wearers,  some pregnant are very prevalent, even in the most cutting of winter winds and snow, they stand with their strong muscled, sun bed legs or orange tans, bare, chain smoking and waving at people who drive past, next appears to be persons of asain origin, with thin legs, currently wrapped in what looks like their shiny silk duvets and cute white mosque hats, there are also plenty of mums with kids of differing ethnicity, middle aged caucasion lady's clutching their tarten trolley bags and now and again smartly dressed folk and on friday mornings,  my favourite people an old chap wearing a flat cap and another one who wears a stetson, they get on different buses. Apart from this growing social diagnostic activity and task avoiding,  I've also been reading about another northern painter in the Art of England; (my article was in the same mag the month before); John Thompson who is based in Oldham and paints northern Oldham scenes of guys in flat caps stood around chattin,
I'm not sure if it was this prolonged bus stop watching or not,  but I realised that I had caught cabin fever , what was I doing I thought to myself, spending time wondering whether or not I should paint the bus stop folk instead of my current landscapes..So it was of great relief when the phone rang and a fellow cabin fever sufferer's brusk northern voice suggested that we go for a walk, the voice belonged to a fellow Bolton based painter Jim, Jim's a rare thing, he's a successful painter with integrity, his studio is further up the road from me,  he had also caught the same fever and said on the phone that he felt it would be good to get out and about into the countryside...Jim  had decided that he wanted to get to Tockholes, a small village which commands the Eastern slopes above the lower Ribblesdale valley, here the moors are cleft by the mighty River Roddlesworth which after the ruined Hollinshead Hall and its haunted well, enters a small gorge, edged by the outcrops of steep grit stone and shale beds, the river here journey in rills through some beautiful old beech woods;  I'm  still, a day later not sure whether Jim was driven by the express need to sample the home made  meat pie at the Roddlesworth cafe near Tockholes or that he really did want to get down to the river,  here the ice had formed long stalactites on the cliffs; and in parts the river itself had frozen solid the ice making a step that was both delicate and hard....personally I preferred the open cold slopes of the moorland and  Jim the deeper valley so we eventually we agreed over the pie which we had to have first that we should compromise and undertake a circular walk that took in both moor and valley..

I have to say that the north has its moments and in Lancashire one of these moments is Tockholes it has some undisputed poetical/painterly  corners and Turner could have found his sublime here and Wordsworth penned this verse....

"In this still place, remote from men
Sleeps Osian in the narrow Glen,
in this still place where murmers on 
But one meek streamlet, only one; "

Glen Almain or the Narrow Glen  pg 312 William Wordsworth.  The major works.

There we were, two northern painters and landscapes painters at that, not a cloth cap in site, quoting Worsdworth we perched on our respective scaps of bubble wrap, attop a fallen tree and drank our hot vimtos and coffee, most of the conversation was about our work, what influenced us and what was currently important to us...how we went about our daily chores and the almost meditative process of painting...both of us have a feeling that the integrity of the painter is in both the vision and execution of a piece of work in that when it leaves the studio it should be of an expected quality.
I think it was this discussion and walk along with the bus stop that helped me to focus my attention on my next series which is an exploration of Lancashires town and country...an exploration that whilst encompassing the old cloth cap as well as mill chimneys takes a broader almost existential sublime view that could be linked to Ruskins journeys, Turner and Wordsworth and revisit some of the meditative influences of painters such as Corot, Cezanne and Pizarro's which has always been a hidden influence which I have never fully pursued here in Lancashire.