Displaced curlews at Puerto del Carmen – 27 x 22cm gouache on card
Greylag geese on the Thames path – 31 x 31cm collage, gouache, pencil on card
Tea cakes to the rescue – 30 x 30cm collage, sweet papers, gouache, pencil on card
Coal tits among the winter flowering jasmine – 40 x 40cm oil on board
Cruising with mermaids – 32 x 26cm assemblage of painted card, collage, sweet papers in an acrylic box
Evening delivery – 30 x 30cm gouache, collage on board
Cat on a piano – 21 x 15cm acrylic gouache, pencil on card
Pink tabby in an armchair – 50 x 40cm oil on canvas
Shingle gardening at Dungeness – 60 x 76cm oil in canvas
Mr Fortnum returns – 30 x 30cm acrylic on card
Old Queens sailing by – 25 x 18cm acrylic on synthetic card
Walking home with Skylab – 34 x 29cm acrylic on card
Caravan At the edge of the world – 29 x 43cm acrylic, collage on card
Hyacinths in a mirror – 40 x 40cm acrylic, collage on board
Pepper sleeping under the ironing board – 21 x 15cm watercolour on card
Take two birds – 21 x 28cm acrylic, collage on card
Wind turbines at Black Lake – 20 x 20cm collage, watercolour, guache on watercolour card
Cat influenced by angels – 26 x 18 cm collage, gouache on card
Late tea on Harold Road – 42 x 42 x 2 cm collage, gouache on watercolour card
Life among the utensils – 36 x 36cm collage, pencil, gouache on watercolour card
Celestial sardines – 41 x 41cm collage, gouache, pencil on watercolour card
...And a parcel for number 37 – 50 x 50 x 2cm collage, gouache on watercolour card
Waiting by the holly hedge – 40 x 40 x 2cm framed
Morning in St Ives – 42 x 42cm collage, gouache on watercolour card
Royal problems – 40 x 33cm collage, gouache, pencil on watercolour card
Fairy lights with Aztec cocoa – 45 x 45cm gouache, watercolour, collage, pencil
Pylons in the mist – 21 x 21cm gouache, collage
Desert landing – 21 x 21cm gouache, collage
Night scent – 31 x 31cm gouache, collage, ink
Spring comes to Didcot Power Station – 28 x 28cm gouache, collage, pencil, ink
Tin fish with seashells – 27 x 27cm gouache, collage, pencil
Two admirals and a tea caddy – 31 x 31cm gouache, collage, pencil
World's end gasometer – 29 x 29cm gouache, collage, ink
Cactus garden with helicopters – 20 x 20cm gouache, collage on watercolour paper
Night fishing on Clapham Common – 50 x 50cm gouache, watercolour and collage
Pigeon Street – 30 x 30cm gouache, watercolour, collage
Snails with Auriculas – 26 x 32 x 6cm 3 piece assemblage in a wall-mounted acrylic box, watercolour, gouache, paper, card, wood, glue
Immigrants at Dungeness – 20 x 20 cm gouache, collage on watercolour paper
Jubilee bridge with wildflowers – 31 x 31cm gouache, collage, ink
Boiled egg with tin boats – 21 x 21cm gouache, collage, ink, pencil
Afternoon drama on 4 – 32 x 32cm gouache, collage, pencil
Boiled egg and cooling towers – 31 x 31cm gouache, collage, pencil, ink
February bulbs – 20.5 x 20.5cm gouache, collage, pencil on board
By morning, last night’s stormy winds and waves had disappeared, leaving behind a calm and sunny day. A small flock of Curlews that had been blown off-course were wandering around listlessly between the rock pools. They stayed for a few days and then one morning they were gone. I watched them over the days carefully picking their way across the rocks on their long legs. So many of us have been blown off-course in our lives, so many displaced, so many altered journeys.
Between the boathouse at the top and the river at the bottom lies a stretch of muddy riverbank. Time passes as I paint and this liminal space slowly grows to dominate the painting. It took more and more room for itself, elbowing out more ‘attractive’ features, trying to tell me something wonderful about life, erosion, the passage of time and the secrets of the river. Mudlarks still dig here, unearthing long discarded treasures, remnants of past lives, forgotten and lost objects. So the river of time flows through our lives and our once important possessions disappear into its mud. Life though, continues on in its beautiful way and the Greylag geese continue on theirs.
Here is a simple invitation to take a break away from the worries of the day and share a cup of tea (or coffee) and a foil covered Tunnock’s tea cake. The cup and plate, with their tilted surfaces, offer an invitation into this joyful little scene. On the left a hyacinth bulb is starting to open, glowing with the promise of spring. On the right a self-important Imari teapot emits a puff of fragrant steam. Everywhere the surface is alive with the happiness of dots, dashes, patterns and glittering sweet papers that hypnotise the eye.
I sit in a side road. Traffic jam. Waiting. The thin winter sun comes out unexpectedly and shines on a garden wall with its cascade of winter flowering jasmine. Two coal tits tumble and chase each other among the flowers. London life is starting to wake and move towards the Spring. The playful surface of tangles together stems, flowers, birds and buds and sets them off against the underlying firm and rhythmic shapes of bricks and trellis. A contrast between the random chaos and fertility of nature set against the logic of a man-made urban environment.
These lovely fat mermaids. Such a joy. Letting themselves go among the waves. Abandoning ‘good’ taste (thank goodness - I’ve had quite enough of that). Throwing themselves at the prows of passing ships.
Somehow, my hands choose a direction and the memory of a visit is recreated. At the end of the day, the clouds turn to coral. The fading light changes the meadow into a soft green sea, stirring in the evening wind. Somehow it happens that as I paint I find myself walking and talking through time. Somehow I begin to explain the things I see to myself and then, leaving these behind, I descend and take soundings from the depths. Here strange transitional flowers bloom and hover, arranging their patterns, holding back the known, marking a boundary as I slip between worlds. Further below russet ferns curl over a wall and then a Mail van is on the move. Now I have come to it - uncertainty. The possibility of parcels and letters, gifts unknown, gifts awaited, chance journeys, chance meetings, news, invitations, problems. Schrödinger’s unbroken wave sits happily right here on the lower ground with nothing known or resolved.
So there he is on the piano. Beautifully posed. Wilful. Exactly where he is not supposed to be. No matter what I may say or how many times. Inevitable. He has his places and that is an end to it. It’s best to pass by and pretend I can’t see him. That’s my compromise. He doesn’t do compromise.
A striped pink cat does the careful staring of uncertainty. But I was looking for patterns. Looking for their minuscule variations. Their transitions. How they can be contained. How they can arise over an entire surface - leopard spots, animal stripes, a Josef frank cushion, blue and white china, leaf patterns, textured surfaces. How they combine to release a number of flat shapes from which images emerge and blend back into patterns. Uncertainty.
This is the story of two worlds meeting at the edge of the sea. In the far distance the buildings of the old nuclear power station at Dungeness crouch silently along the horizon. Behind them rows of grey, misty pylons stretch along the skyline. It’s an austere, industrial construct built on a seemingly unpromising shingle wasteland. In the foreground though, an undaunted gardener and her dog are busy planting and caring for new life that burgeons even in this difficult terrain of shingle dunes and cold winds. Although there are no clear answers or judgements here, it’s a meeting of opposites, and if I stay with it for long enough, of hope for a future of co-existence. I am a hopeful gardener.
Whenever I can I paint in the garden and I’m often investigated by neighbouring cats (probably art critics). They come over for a quick look or sometimes even for a nap in an empty box. Over the years I have invented names for them and I called this one Mr Fortnum because of his blue eyes. I was painting some arum leaves this spring when came along and sat behind them and gave me a long look. It was an irresistible moment that I caught and added to a favourite tin from Fortnum and Mason.
They rise at night these old queens, drifting fragments that exist in a timeless continuum. Thoughts and feelings that roll slowly and fade away into mist. Heavily collaged objects swelling up from the depths and floating like ghosts on the surface; seaweeds, branches, dim shapes and lost jewels. These old queens reach out to us across a sea of memories and fantasies whenever we dream, trying to draw us back into the discarded worlds of the past. Always whispering of old crowns and secrets. Always receding, washing away, leaving behind the debris of past lives.
Along the narrow strip of foreground someone is out walking their dog. Normal normal. Far below, a mixture of cold blues and greens reveals a night scene stretching into the distance. Undefined shapes and patterns come together and separate - houses, trees, lights. High above everything Spacelab flies silently across space. The Crystal Palace tower stands in the centre and links earth and sky. Transmitting. Signalling. So in the middle of our most ordinary activities amazing things can be happening, unseen links, unexpected networks.
A landscape of grey-brown sand and a flat strip of dark blue sea create an ambivalent atmosphere that permeates the atmosphere. Space stations fly by overhead among the distant stars. Aloes and palms dot a barren shoreline. Night at the beach. The edge of the known world. In the centre, oblivious to the solitude, a pink caravan under its awning seems to glow with happiness. A small light set against the vast indifference of existence.
Walking into my bedroom I catch the air in a swirl, patterns of light thrown out from blocked sunshine. Blue hyacinths, thick with flowers and haloed with scent rise from an old willow pattern bowl. But the dark mirror, reflecting Cyprus greens turns into a hanging blue pool. Staring. Intense. The eye of a liminal world.
When she’s tired of waiting for me and I’m not paying any attention she’ll come upstairs into the workshop to see what I am about. Nothing interesting. Then in the middle of still more waiting she falls asleep under the ironing board and dreams of autumn crocuses with their delicate petals. It’s just a matter of time until she folds me into her dream and together we take a turn outside.
A question of meaning gathers together a random collection of objects. We have the components but nothing is clear. Meaninglessness is the mother of becoming and we have not yet arrived at an answer. In the distance a little Alfred Wallis steamer ploughs its way through a cold grey sea with a destination in mind. But that’s not me. Still looking….
Sometimes, walking out early with no thinking, head bent against the wind, a sudden gust may come and dump its memories all over my head. Flying off then, quickly fleeing elsewhere. Gloves off in my workshop I paint into whatever tatters I can recall. How it had turned and played with the turbines, how it had combed through the grasses, how it had gusted, wailing through the pines. How the grey morning sky loosened her stars, the Egyptian Nut, and washed them clean in Black Lake ready for tomorrow. I dream on. I dream on with paints and brushes making marks as they come to me. Using colours of memory and dreams. I know nothing really.
Like a retablo this painting has been divided into two, showing two different worlds. The soft lemon area at the top describes a heaven populated by two dark Byzantine angels. They watch over the pink sphere below and send down their influence for the good. The pink area that depicts the world fills the bottom half of the painting. This shows a cat that has seen a bird it was hoping to catch. However, the angelic influence from above has confused it and made it forget its original purpose. There’s a lesson here but I’m not sure what it is....
It’s evening on Harold Road and the summer twilight falls over the quiet street with its old houses and gardens. The distant stars have come out over the hills and the shadowy common has been turned into a deep blue sea. The semi-circular foreground contains an inviting warm amber colour.
A whisk and an old silver chocolate pot find themselves conversing under a tin star. Unexpectedly entangled within the illusion of time. They didn’t ask for it. Probability was hard pushed to arrange them just here but in the end everything came together for long enough. I can’t tell you how it happened. I’m just the observer making notes. The shallots though continued to grow very slowly as they moved towards a different kind of reality and were eventually incorporated into a casserole. The transitory nature of still life.
I forget now how it was. An unlikely explanation like socks that seem to fit everyone. Anyway, it was never about making sense. That’s a task for the left brain which only goes to confirm that I don’t know anything. I swim through my own ancient seas and pick up whatever elements come my way. Perhaps a tin of sardines. Perhaps a star chart. Unremarkable and familiar objects and yet each has its own mysterious and hidden life. Moving through its own seas in response to forces I don’t understand at all. How did we meet?
In the evening an Amazon delivery van on its rounds comes to a London street. One of many parcel deliveries across the city. It’s that magical time of the day when twilight is falling and things are not clearly visible. The contrast between the dark houses and the light of the delivery van raises expectations but we don’t know what’s being delivered. The van's open door invites questions. We are all waiting for an answer.
Late evening in a quiet, deserted lane. A little Citroen car is waiting but we don’t know why or for whom. The windows are fogged up and it seems as if someone may be inside but it’s not clear. There is a melancholy feel in the air and the car is half hidden from sight behind a prickly holly bush. Perhaps there are lovers looking for privacy? Perhaps it’s a solitary person? We walk by and leave this little mystery behind.
It’s early morning in St Ives. The little fishing village is seen from a distance. In the top right hand corner Godrevy and it’s lighthouse are still asleep in a mist. Down the left hand side cottages and houses tumble and curve into a semi circle. Their clustered roofs have been collaged or patterned and the church tower seems to lean forward as if trying to get a better view. At the bottom the harbour holds out its arms to the blue sea and crowded into the space between the viewer and the sea hundreds of seagulls wheel and screech their greetings. A magical moment before the business of the day begins.
There are days I’ve never met before but still they tow my old baggage behind them. The bulbs I once planted beside the path to the sea. I want to believe that effect will always follow cause, that tulips inevitably follow bulbs but I know it’s not an unbreakable rule. You may not get what you want. You may not even get what you deserve. Over the years indefinite causality has left holes throughout my life. In spring, my tulips only appear intermittently and I’m happy to make do with that.
“If I see a dress or a quilt or something I liked, I can make it. I just draw it out the way I want it. In the quilting bee time I started using patterns, but I shouldn’t have did it, it broke the ideas I had in my head. I should have stayed with my own ideas.” Nettie Young (no relation) 1916-2010 - a Gee’s Bend quilter. Simple words of advice from an artist who was persuaded to take the easy path used by the majority and in the process lost her own direction. Being a naughty girl at school was the way I survived.
I have spent so much time in my life making things. My hands, like an octopus’ tentacles, seem to have minds of their own. But they are usually too busy and don’t tell me anything. I never know what I am doing until it is finished.
We are all travellers. The mysterious desert stretches around us and the stars turn overhead. We cannot know where we are going or what will happen to us. Sands shift and stars change and our fate remains unknown. A helicopter lands and raises dust. Four blades point in all directions at once and yet it remains in its own centre. We are all travellers in the strange land of time hoping for good to come our way. Continuing in our optimism and hoping for the best.
Perfume dreams while I sleep. Stirring lazily in its bottle. A genie from a different dimension. Minerals and oils, flowers and resins make up its dense blood. A witches’ brew for distilling out buried feelings and memories. Silent and unperceived night shadows reach in with their inky fingers. Drawing secret sigils in the air until the scents and shapes of flowers at the heart float out into the darkness and take on a life of their own.
Didcot power station has now been demolished but in this painting its cooling towers continue to dominate the horizon. Dark and powerful shapes on the skyline set against an arc of cobalt blue that somehow, against all logical thought, promises an open and happy future. In the foreground stands a willow pattern bowl planted with emerging hyacinth bulbs while on either side trees in bud stretch their branches wide. Spring has really arrived, even here among the ‘dark satanic mills’. A painting for optimists and hopeful people everywhere. Not to mention that by a magical coincidence I completed this painting several years prior to demolition.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, these tin fish insisted on popping into my painting. I was on the way to somewhere else when an image I had once seen came into my mind. It was a long time ago but time means nothing to the playful unconscious. So then these inquisitive creatures, boldly outlined with the persuasive power of blue, would not let go of me until I had diligently positioned them in my painting. I don’t pretend I am in charge of anything in my life. The happening of things is something I observe with delight. Life is all around and here to enjoy.
To arrive here I had to let go of things. Logic. I let that go. Perspective. I let that go. Narrative. I let that go. So then a liminal space snuck in with its own constellations torn from elsewhere. Red Admiral butterflies entered for transformation and a play on words. A favourite old tea caddy entered to demonstrate that oriental art had already been here, mapping the same world, never mind. A silver caddy spoon inviting. A portal, a confluence of the known and the mystical. Enigmas from the collective unconscious. I know nothing. So lovely.
As I play among the paints and papers a gasometer slowly emerges from the darkness. Semiotics and lines. Instructions from elsewhere. I hold back and wait just as I do on the road of my life. As always distant things are unclear but I am unconcerned. Things invariably happen as they will. The joyous eye is always with me.
Two weaponised entities meet in a dry sub tropical landscape. Life is harsh here but they are both armed and equipped for survival. Conflict and danger in a red Mars-like background. A distant military helicopter pursuing its own aims flies over an unfriendly terrain. Cacti and succulents rise from the foreground. These environments co-exist but do not touch and yet mirror two separate worlds.
Eventually night comes to Clapham Common and the traffic and noise die away. Lights vanish from the encircling houses and finally they stand sleeping, dark and silent. Normal life has vanished. A light wind comes and stirs the grasses changing their shapes, tracing dreaming patterns. Beside a pond sits a solitary angler. His fishing rod dips into the centre of the water. Into a transformed magical pool reflecting thousands of stars. He is a fisher of wonderful things. The soft amber light of gentle awareness glows from his tent.
I’m not the one to tell you this story because it’s not mine. After all, language can’t do everything and sometimes unexpected things crop up while painting and there’s no avoiding them. I tried for caution but guile snuck a visiting pigeon into the foreground. So I tried to set it all out and, in the end, everything arrived as it should. I find I don’t have complete control over anything. No worries.
Slow and silent as time come the snails. Ancient enemies of leaf and flower. Purposeful night movers. Hiding their cunning deceits during daylight. Entombed and sleeping while planning their next raid. As if in a retablo the bottom part of this Auricula theatre depicts the negative world (which also has its place in the great scheme of things). Here, two snails, beautiful in themselves, are struggling to reach the flowers in the top half. But for now all action has been frozen, asleep under glass as if in a fairy tale. We don’t know what the outcome might be…
Dressed in brilliant green they look around in amazement. Visitors from foreign parts. Arrived overnight into a surprising, indecipherable landscape of iron pylons and somber colours. Industrial electricity veining across a bare land; power thrown from one place to another. Looking around, they do a cautious. In the distance other parakeets, already familiarised, are breakfasting on new buds. 'It will just have to do' they think. Making the best of it - just like the rest of us.
One night in the summer I take a walk along the south bank of the Thames. Looking down river all the bridges are illuminated and stretch one after another into the distance. Magical crossings. But my eyes linger on the Golden Jubilee footbridge because of its uncanny futuristic appearance. Spaceship lights. A silent and velvety atmosphere. Still water and strange bankside flowers. Who knows what might happen?
I use my imagination for survival purposes. Not everything here is present in reality. Indistinct boats plough their way through a cold grey sea. Some days I feel like that. So, clinging to comforting shapes and colours I paint what I love. At this stage nothing else can be done.
Afternoon radio speaks as I paint. There’s drama. There’s suspense. I paint. There are unanswered questions. There are missing pieces. I paint. There is drama everywhere. There are scissors lying beside the orchid. I paint but I don’t know how it will end. It’s a journey and as I add more white to the blue I can hear the blackbird singing outside. But still there’s no real answer and somehow I will just know when I have finished. The energy seems to run out and it stands on its own feet and I have to go down and start on the dinner….
So I read things and I worry about the environment and then I worry about how we will keep our houses warm and be able to cook. Then all my thoughts pile up together and I let the painting take me wherever it wants to go. In the distance are cooling towers and their smoky clouds. In the foreground there is a simple boiled egg and an old spoon I like. These opposites then hang together like Schrödinger’s imaginary cat experiment (alive? or dead?) until the box is opened. But I can see there is beauty everywhere even in the ‘dark satanic mills’. So, in between these opposites, I slowly start to paint the sweetly scented viburnum blossoms that appear unexpectedly in early spring on bare branches. ‘And for all this nature is never spent. There lives the dearest freshness deep down things’. In the end the painting speaks back and I find that I am an optimist.
Sometimes in the cold early months of the year it seems as if spring will never come. It’s dark and rainy and grey clouds hang low over everything. So then I turn to planting spring bulbs in my willow pattern bowl and in the warm kitchen I watch as they emerge day by day from their brown papery cases. It’s their promise that spring is on its way. In the garden I feed the birds and then I can watch the goldfinches as they sing and squabble around the feeder and spread their brilliant colours over the bare trees.
Copyright © 2026 Gertie Young