Liquid gold

I can remember the first time I saw rapeseed growing in the UK. I was travelling by train, through my home county of Cheshire, heading northwards to the Lancashire seaside coast. I gazed out of the window in amazement at the fields of shocking yellow that lay either side of the track, so different to the countryside around my hometown with its gentle buff and ochre fields of grain and lush green pastures populated by herds of mainly Friesan cattle.

Rapeseed is BIG money now in the UK and Ireland and many of the local farmers seem to be growing it in preference to all other crops. Leaving aside its visual beauty, the crop has other far less attractive impacts, as those amongst us that suffer with hayfever will tell you only too well! Additionally, after the crop is harvested. our homes and gardens are usually infested with swarms of tiny homeless insects (we call them thunderfly) that often decide to take up residence in the oddest of places; it is not unusual to see them under the cover glass of paintings and photographs and even under the seams of wallpaper!

This 10-15 minute watercolour was developed from a sketch I did in pastel pencil recently whilst on a local bus route that passes alongside fields of rapeseed. The stark yellow of the field is punctuated by the swathes of green from the growth below and heightened by the dulled ultramarine blue of a blustery Cambridgeshire sky above. The small roundish trees and hedgerow of the field boundary are dwarfed by the distant line of giant poplar trees of a neighbouring field, planted by farmers as a frail windbreak against the cold, brisk winds that blow almost totally unhindered across this flattest of lands from the North Sea.

Happy painting!

Liquid Gold, watercolour and watercolour pencil on Langton 140lb Rough, A4