Looking back, I am still conscious of how lucky I was to be able to call this place my home for a few years. This place, a tiny, remote stream meandering through bluebell woods framed by a dappled canopy was literally only a few hundred metres from my house. Although I walked through this space often and I felt like I knew it well, this piece reminded me just how different your awareness and relationship with a space becomes when you spend hours simply being and watching the changing light over a day. Mostly I sat painting but a few times I walked around to regain blood-flow in my legs, filming details of the place such as this in film in which the sun breaks out from cloud and illuminates the river bed and in turn reflects back up, flickering onto the underneath of the lower leaves in the canopy.

The warmth, quiet gurgle, insects, birdcalls and occasional gentle breeze through the leaves became quite hypnotic as I painted, suddenly from nowhere a young deer emerged from a coppice amongst the ramsons, walked down to the brook and had a drink. It stood for a while, glanced at me took a few more steps, paused for longer and then slowly walked off the left of the view. Amongst other animals I have encountered dormice, hares, falcons but due to its size and casual appearance this meeting felt particularly special. There is something unique about an encounter such as this where an animal comes across you that is so different to coming across (and possibly startling) an animal whilst out hiking. There aren’t many activities which enable us to sit in such silence for such long periods of time and of the many thousands and thousands of hours I have sat silently watching nature the fact that I have only a handful of memories such as this one highlight how special these moments are.