Great Fosters

"A painter should be able to make a good picture of any subject, but it is done, not by literal statement of formations, but by work which shows his application of the nature of the scene-its dignity, or repose, the desolation of it, or its association with human beings. Perhaps its individuality must be insisted upon; or lost in a larger idea that is suggested by a mood of nature, the heat of the day, the softness of the spring air, or the gales of autumn.

(Rex Vicat Cole)

"The lesson I have thoroughly learnt, and wish to pass on to others, is to know the enduring happiness that the love of a garden gives."

( Gertrude Jekyll)

Merry Christmas

I hope you all have a good Christmas and New Year and thankyou for visiting the Fine Line Blog over the past year.

Barnes and Friday Street

"I keep drawing the trees, the rocks, the river, I'm still learning how to see them; I'm still discovering how to render their forms. I will spend a lifetime doing that. Maybe someday I'll get it right."

(Alan Lee)

" It taught me that there are three versions of things: the one I see in my mind, and the one that carries onto the paper, and then what it ultimately becomes."

(Lauren DeStefano)

Syon House

"My attitude towards drawing is not necessarily about drawing, it's about making the best image iI can make, it's about talking as clearly as I can."

(Jim Dine)

"Drawing is a form of probing, and the first generic impulse to draw derives from the human need to search, to plot points, to place things and to place oneself."

(John Berger)

Florence

"Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of lifes longing for itself....

You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams."

(Kahlil Gibran)

"All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with white carpets is one of them."

(Erma Bombeck)

Richmond Park

"For the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver."

(Martin Luther)

"I willingly confess to so great a partiality for trees as tempts me to respect a man in exact proportion to his respect for them."

(James Russell Lowell)

Richmond Park

"Tree planting is always a utopian enterprise, it seems to me, a wager on a future the planter doesn't necessarily expect to witness."

(Michael Pollan)

"Trees are as close to immortality as the rest of us ever come."

(Karen Joy Fowler)

Paris

"When Victor Hugo was buried, you couldn't find a whore in Paris, they were too busy paying their respects. That was a man-and he still has a show in the west end."

(Hanif Kureishi)

"At five o,clock Paris  always has a current of eroticism in the air."

(Anais Nin)