Pennine Farm near Helmshore Lancashire Detail of a Rob Miller painting

Of all the work that I have undertaken this last year Its this series where I revisit the place were I started my sketchbooks that has proved the most interesting on a personal level. The West Pennines or more so those hills bordering the Rossendale Valley.  Here  are a  few  detail shots of  the painting as promised...the place is  Chatterton Farm which lies above the Holcombe to Helmshore Road, all so typical of the Pennines.  My next piece tomorrow  is another revisit of a similar location, a high moorland farm down the road from todays viewopoint..

I've attached below a section from my diary, which I keep next to the easel in the studio so that I can keep the memory of a living landscape alive and moving in my mind...

Chatterton FarmHouse

Chatterton Farm new Barns

Meadow details scrapped palette

Farm house edge detail palatte knife and brush



Sketchbook notes  "For 2 weeks the snow lay over the damp ground and then came rain, damp, cold. On  this January day, even the evening arrived before the morning had come,  its light blue sky fading all to quickly to dusky mauve, and the blue itself was nothing to talk about,  a thin shred that screamed across the sky in a moment, held prisoner by two ragged bands of dirty yellow, grey-white. Crooked walls,  green with algae sprung from the brown sedge and the dead grass that lay between held more light in its creamy soggy stalks than did the sky. Above all this  damp scene a flash of orange yellow caught my eye,  was it a warm fire flickering between the bright green bows of the aspen or the run of heather that caught a  sun blink that even the eye could not see, whatever it was, it was gone now and the night had come in, wraiths of damp cloud and mist merging splitting and merging until grey became greyer and I still hadn't drawn the house details, as I was trying to draw in the strong wind perched on the warm car bonnet, the farmhouse and its escorts  straddled the ridge, just a grey triangular algae wall of damp stone,  a square that was maybe a window and now in its place a spot another orange yellow, but this time a lamp lit in a window, swirling flickering as greyer became night and night became rain and rain became sleet and sleet turned black...The cars old  engine still ran, I turned and throwing my soggy sketch into the passenger seat I sat for a while with the car lights off, warming my frozen fingers and watching the light across the fields,  imagining the farmer bent over the hearth, the sheep huddled by the lee wall as I turned back towards  my studio in Tesco town..Rob Miller. Chatterton Farm Jan 2011

ROB MILLER 

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