Elizabeth Walsh
Elizabeth paints wildlife, plants, trees and flowers from my local district. Fields, hedges, woodland and riverside give her opportunities she can anticipate (foxgloves, honeysuckle) and the unexpected (a tawny owl in daylight).
When places become derelict things happen. Buddleias sprout from a tumbledown wall, attracting butterflies, old unsafe wooden bridge has a profusion of fungi, garden plants escape through a broken fence into the back lane.
The river changes course, sometimes gradually widening a bend, sometimes violently in flood times.
A willow is undermined, falls and is carried downstream to fetch up on a shingle bank. Buried under more layers of stones, several years later a line of shoots appears, and grows into quite a solid barrier. I found this riverside hedge and took a stem to paint. When I had finished, I lifted it out of the water jar. It had grown roots.
