I find it very easy to get lost, which won’t come as a surprise to many people I’m sure. Anyway, there is a view section of road that I drive along every now and then that can really get me lost to everything for a while.
I obviously don’t mean I suddenly need to find a road map to set me back on the right track, but lost in a World of my own where the landscape around me transports me in an instant to a World of fantasy. It’s easy to drive by rolling hills dotted with trees, cows, and sheep without seeing anything but the grey in front of you, but it really is worth stopping the car every now and then and getting out to see what surrounds you.
This particular stretch of road makes me want to paint scenes from Shire, I know I’m a bit obsessed about Tolkien at times, but I ask you, if you’ve read either the Hobbit or Lord of the Rings how could you not feel the urge to illustrate a page or two when you are standing in front of a view like this –
larger version link
Perhaps it’s the greens that shout Shire, or perhaps it the way the hills roll away from you, I don’t really know – as an experiment I tried one of the images in black and white and it still inspires me you splash paint on paper for a while.
Splashing a little paint on paper may not be enough though, maybe I need a huge canvas and attempt to drag the images out of my brain and into reality, who can’t see a couple of Hobbits wandering down the side of these fields, maybe stopping for a picnic by a tree for a while –
Finally I took two images of the same scene 13 hours apart, and whilst the first image says ‘the Shire’ the second one, taken just after dawn screams of magic and unknown adventures.
