This vibrant card ‘Over the Hills’ comes from my ‘Lessons of Darkness Lessons of Light’ series. I engaged with the Edward Thomas poem of the same title, creating this piece with warm reds and earthy yellows, contrasting with the sharper lemon yellows and cool blues. To chime with the poem and its theme of nostalgia and remembered camaraderie and my youthful days working with my father and grandfather on their respective farms in the Pennines.
Over the Hills – Edward Thomas
Often and often it came back again
To mind, the day I passed the horizon ridge
To a new country, the path I had to find
By half-gaps that were stiles once in the hedge,
The pack of scarlet clouds running across
The harvest evening that seemed endless then
And after, and the inn where all were kind,
All were strangers. I did not know my loss
Till one day twelve months later suddenly
I leaned upon my spade and saw it all,
Though far beyond the sky-line. It became
Almost a habit through the year for me
To lean and see it and think to do the same
Again for two days and a night. Recall
Was vain: no more could the restless brook
Ever turn back and climb the waterfall
To the lake that rests and stirs not in its nook,
As in the hollow of the collar-bone
Under the mountain’s head of rush and stone.
