Levens Hall Topiary

"A wind has blown the rain away and blown the sky away and all the leaves away, and the trees stand. I think, I too, have known autumn too long".

(E E Cummings)

"At present, I am mainly observing the physical motion of mountains, water, trees and flowers. One is everywhere reminded of similar movements in the human body, of similar impulses of joy of suffering in plants".

(Egon Schiele)

Levens Hall Park

"The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature as all ridicule and deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself."

(William Blake)

"The best friend of the earth of man is the tree. When we use the tree respectfully and economically, we have one of the greatest resources on the earth."

(Frank Lloyd Wright)

Cartmel

"It is only by drawing often, drawing everything, drawing incessantly, that one fine day you discover to your surprise that you have rendered something of its true character."

(Camille Pissarro)

"I have never seen bad drawing destroy a good idea. On the other hand I've never seen a good drawing save a bad idea."

(Paul Conrad)

Lydia

"Women are young mens mistresses,companions for middle age and old mens nurses."

(Francis Bacon)

"I feel there is something unexplored about women that only a women can explore."

(Georgia O'Keeffe)

Frampton on Severn

Frampton on Severn. The gale raged here with great violence. Houses were partially unroofed, chimney stacks blown down, and some of the finest trees in the locality torn up by the roots. At the bell inn, the chimney stack fell through the roof of the bedroom occupied by the housekeeper and the servant maid.

(Gloucester Journal 23rd Feb 1861)

"I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than occupy the most splendid post, which human power can give."

(Thomas Jefferson)

Paris

"The national characteristics...the restless metaphysical curiosity, the tenderness of good living and the passionate individualism. This is the invisible constant in a place with which the ordinary tourist can get in touch just by sitting quietly over a glass of wine in a Paris bistro."

(Lawrence Durrell)

"All Art is but dirtying the paper delicately."

(John Ruskin)

Paris

Look back at your struggle for freedom

Trace our present days struggle to its source;

And you'll find that mans pathway to glory

Is strewn with the bones of the horse.

(Unknown)

"No preparation, even executed with the greatest care, holds to me any value if it does not demonstrate a new fact or the resolution of a debated issue."

(Georg Ludwig Rumpelt 1779)

Paris

"The Divisions of perspective are three, as used in drawing; of these the first includes the diminution in size of opaque objects; the second treats of the diminution and loss of outline in such opaque objects; the third of the diminution and loss of colour at long distances."

(Leonardo da Vinci)

"Drawing is like playing chess: your mind races ahead of the moves that you eventually make."

(David Hockney)