Windsor & Eton
|
I live in Windsor, and this is the view you get when driving across the relief road from the M4 coming into town. It's the first little signal to me that I'm nearly home. I'm really lucky to live where I do, and while in lockdown it's easy to feel trapped, but it's also led to me rediscovering the best things about the little town I live in. Whether walking along the same old roads or cycling a little further afield, it's good to look at a place with fresh eyes and really appreciate where you are right now, instead of only thinking about where you want to be.
|
|
|
Living next to the Thames and the Great Park, I get to see a lot of wildlife. We even used to have a pair of ducks that would visit our garden. But I will always stop and stare when I see a murmuration. The great big clouds of birds are so hypnotising to watch and in translating them to an illustration it almost becomes surreal, like it could never possibly happen in reality. But it does, somehow, and I will appreciate it every time.
|
|
We're in England, so of course we don't have sun all the time. But I think there's a beauty to be had in the grey days. In the bare branches of the trees and the great open spaces that descend into mist and fog. In seeing your breath in the chill, and wiping the mud off your boots after a good walk. The long walk leads from the Castle to the Copper Horse, and while I don't think I've ever walked the whole length of it in one go, I've done a fair few other walks through the great park, and I enjoy spotting the statues and monuments throughout, marking the way.
|
|
|
Windsor has history. When I look above the shop windows I'm sometimes surprised to see the warped beams, the red brick, the wrought iron as it's so easy to forget to really look at your surroundings. Windsor Royal Station may only have one small platform still in use, but it's a lovely place to sit, have a coffee and a slice of cake, and watch the people go by.
|
|
I used to swim at the pool at Eton College while growing up, and while I don't remember when I first discovered it, I do remember looking up out of the car window on the way there to look at the Anthony Gormley statue, standing quietly and almost inconspicuously a couple of stories up on the side of a building. You have to look up to see him and then of course, a lifesize statue of a man sticking out the side of a building is fairly obvious. But I'm not sure how many people do really notice him day to day. Which is why, I think, I like to look up at him whenever I go past, to acknowledge that he's there, my own little hello.
|
|
|
The last of this series, but definitely not the least. I love living next to the river; I've always loved the water, loved swimming, loved the sea, but growing up next to a river, feeding the ducks, watching the way it moves, has always been an inspiration. Water is one of the most tricky things to capture, because it's never still, it's always changing, even the colour, always dependent on its surroundings. I chose to picture it at dusk, when the swans are beginning to roost, when the street lights turn on and the water is full of reflected colour. When the world begins to sleep the river becomes vibrant.
|