Probably helping with clues – 76 x 56cm acrylic gouache, pencil on watercolour card
Geese returning to Norwood Lake – 76 x 56cm acrylic gouache, pencil on watercolour card
Just in time for starters – 76 x 56cm acrylic gouache pencil on watercolour card
Nana and Pepper prune the Rambling Rector – 42 x 55cm acrylic gouache, pencil on watercolour card
Refugees fleeing alien forces – 40x 40cm collage, pencil gouache on card
Getting ready – 76 x 56cm collage, pencil, acrylic gouache on watercolour card
Star petunias under a lime table – 76 x 56cm collage, acrylic gouache, pencil on watercolour card 490
Space invaders firing on celery – 51 x 41cm collage, acrylic gouache, ink, pencil on watercolour card
Unexpectedly – 30 x 30cm collage, pencil, acrylic gouache on watercolour card
Dew falling from dark stars – 76 x 56cm pencil, acrylic gouache, ink on watercolour card
Rainy gardens – 30 x 31cm collage, acrylic gouache, pencil on watercolour card
Night scented stock under a turquoise table – 76 x 56cm acrylic gouache, collage, pencil on watercolour card
Marmite breakfast – 30 x 31cm collage, pencil, acrylic gouache on watercolour card
Sky goddess sheltering her creatures – 76 x 56cm acrylic gouache, pencil on watercolour card
Himalayan poppies under an apricot table – 76 x 56cm acrylic gouache, pencil on watercolour card
Just the quiet drip of the tap – 24 x 30cm acrylic gouache, collage, pencil on board
Orchids listening to gossip – 76 x 56cm acrylic gouache, pencil on watercolour card £490
Coastal development – 20 x 30cm gouache pencil on card
Tea under apple blossoms – 51 x 38cm acrylic gouache pencil on card
Celestial insurance – 31 x 31 x 4cm gouache, collage, cold wax on card laid to wood
Chess players under pylons – 25 x 29cm collage gouache, pencil
The long call – 51 x 38cm gouache, collage, pencil on watercolour card
Hanging about – 51 x 38cm gouache, pencil on watercolour card
Eucalyptus in a Chinese vase – 31 x 26cm pencil, gouache on card
Stars falling on Smeaton’s pier – 51 x 38cm collage gouache pencil
Another boring phone call – 51 x 38cm gouache pencil on card
Tea with nana – 51 x 38cm gouache on card
Discussing a frozen puddle – 30.5 x 30.5cm acrylic gouache, collage, pencil on synthetic board
Flowers for voyager – 61 x 61cm collage gouache
Supper club at Chelsea Physic Garden – 30 x 30cm collage, acrylic, gouache, pencil
Hyacinths with bar code – 24 x 30cm gouache on card
Next day delivery – 51 x 40cm oil on canvas
Pepper doing a cautious past the hive – 28 x 19cm gouache, pencil on card
Succulent display at the Physic garden – 33 x 27 x 5.5cm 2 piece assemblage in a perspex box
Time through the sweet peas – 51 x 38cm gouache, pencil
At the villa – 30 x 21cm gouache on card
Birds in the brambles – 21 x 15cm gouache, pencil, collage on card
Greenhouse drama – 38 x 33cm gouache, pencil on card
Night raid – 29 x 37cm collage, gouache, pencil on watercolour card
Parrot tulips – 21cm x 15cm gouache on card
Medicinal plants in the Physic Garden – 32 x 40cm gouache, pencil on watercolour card
Seagulls on pedalos waiting for summer – 34 x 26cm gouache on card
Song of breakfast sardines – 30.5 x 30.5cm acrylic, collage, pencil on board
I choose colour and chaos and then pattern comes along and before I know it I have made my way into the peace of the present moment. I choose pleasure and artifice and then disregarded elements filter in from the basement and create my personal world. I choose the vivid and the sensual and am flooded with the mess of reality. Everything I notice slips in and rests its head on my paper while I follow my attention. But we all know these dog manipulation strategies. Apparently doing one thing while secretly focusing on another. We are not fooled but still we let it go. Nature winning out over training, resolutions and best intentions. As true for myself as the dog.
They arrive with the grey dawn. Arrowing through the frozen sleep of darkness they fly to restart the cycle of life. Honking and heralding they materialise the great beginnings of Spring. Non-locality things connect and the unconscious, rich with its profusion of images, sets the stage and joins up the dots. Buds and bulbs waking early are the first responders. But I, I struggle along in the background, changing my mind and then finally waking up myself to the present moment when I hear them passing overhead
I plunge into the shock of white card without any idea of what I am going to do. My hands though rescue me with brushes and green paint. They reach out of the darkness and create their own world. They follow their own trails. Leaf memories and other stories I know nothing about. So we go along together. Somehow ancient friends although we don’t discuss anything; speaking different languages and looking in different directions.
Today I am off with the secateurs pruning back the unnecessary that has crept up on me. Lack of self discipline, laziness and general delaying tactics. Distractions. The slide into unnecessary thought that can only take me away from myself. The distant voice criticising from some dried out stony wilderness. Pepper, helpful as always, does nothing useful. Following her nose to happiness. Being herself. An example to us all.
So at the beginning we had to approach each other tentatively. Almost nothing is known. Slowly. Waiting then, and listening for a minuscule direction. I had some such thoughts a while ago but they petered out. I held my horses. It always has to come from elsewhere; during play or being delighted to step aside and watch and let the stream rush itself into being by itself. Whatever grey it chooses, whatever shape it flows into. Whatever memory arises. Whatever the composition. Not having to please anyone is such a delight. An ambiguous intent. A freedom and an invitation.
My mind is always being changed for me. Energy responding to my attention. The painting I journeyed out on using my little raft of pattern is hardly ever where I will end up. It’s a wonder I ever get anywhere. All around me stuff happens all the time. Monday changes to Thursday. Rain comes and rain goes. Changes. Why would things be different for me? Just like all of us I have been woven into this amazing web of life. So I’m always getting ready, plunging into the flow, filled with delight at just being present. Helplessly tossed among the changes. Loving every minute.
I move towards a red violet but I don’t have a plan. A difficult colour in its full song. A hidden rose in its blood that can emerge from the margins with studied carelessness. Looking for a companion I happen upon a lime green, slaked with cream and honey so it’s no threat. But it took me a while to get there. Looking for companions on speed dating is unlikely to be the best idea. Black-eyed-Susan winks down but says nothing.
Me, personally I don’t like celery. I don’t like anything about it. That smell. That taste. That fibrous texture in the mouth. But as a cook I know of its secret enhancing nature and have to admire the wonderful flavour it surrenders into my casseroles and stocks. Such depths as it melts, gently disappearing into the bubbling sea of vegetables, meats and herbs. Today though, now, pushing back the flimsy boundaries of time and space, I find myself in a primal blue field afloat with ancient avatars. Now I am that child again forced to eat it by the nuns. Now I can shoot it down in a wonderful blaze. Now I am free to eat the things I enjoy and can take delight in doing whatever I like. Now I can leave it all to quantum physics to put everything back into balance once again. The beauty of retrocausality
I never seek happiness. I wouldn’t know where to find it. But still it sneaks up on me like a naughty cat wanting attention while I am busy doing something else. So I might spare it a little tickle while I consider two shapes together. Or while playing with blue and thinking of nothing in particular. And before I know where or who I am I find myself flooded with delight and wonder how it came about? A tiny wren busies herself rummaging about in last year’s leaves and then the sun comes out and everything turns to gold. So it happens for all things.
I’m a very early riser; always eager to savour the day’s untouched energy. There’s an element of stealing to this but since so few want it I have no guilt. The silent city doesn’t notice how my inclination escapes past its orthodox patterns and gets drawn into the personal. Keeping low. Embracing the liminal way. It’s happened gradually with age - this business of working on the margins and not really belonging to the main stream. Thank goodness. What a pointless battle that was for me. So I feel it when the sky lets go and tumbles itself into the garden. Its secret tears misting down. To play. So we can all be as one again. I feel it but I don’t make the rules.
I love my compost bin with its fat pregnant belly. I’m in awe of its silence and mystery. The alchemical darkness at its heart. The invisible internal processes. Mouth open it waits for vegetable scraps. All those things I did not care about. Impressions that I thought had been forgotten. A girl passing with an umbrella. Plant life unfolding like the spirit. Rain dripping like tears through leaves and trees. Then, finally, months later out comes the wonderful dark compost like chocolate for the garden. So my paintings are fed with the fleeting impressions of life and then changed.
I set myself about with colours and a peacock blue rolls its eye at me. Opening the cold secret pool in its heart. Hypnotising. A swallower looking for a lilac milkshake to quench its strength. Even a colour can long for its opposite. Small brushes, you know, like a blind person tentatively feeling their way. Silently locked into another world but still doing their best with this one. ‘Love what you love’ I say as they scumble along blending and terraforming. Coming and going. Absorbing and releasing. Leaving their tiny markings. The longer you take, the longer I can stay here with you. What a delight!
Walking through time I arrive at breakfast. A celebration of taste calling us back to life after the darkness of sleep. Tempting us by spreading its feast of colours and scents. Inviting us to share the excitement of flavour that had once heralded the tentative beginnings of our entry into this world. Into the light of day.
We know nothing of reality and that’s a comfort. Personally I’ve never found it trustworthy. Always over-keen to trap me into one set of boring rules or another. Always with the assumptions. Always with unsatisfactory compromises. So I am invariably uncertain and that’s where I make my bed. That’s where I am lost. That’s where I wander aimlessly among the cast-up objects of the shoreline. No guarantee of results. Delighting in the chaos of possibilities.
Today I find myself painting between thunderstorms. Somehow their dark energies reach out and incline me towards a black purple. I wait. The unconscious is here. I don’t paint in any orderly method. Something here, something there. Just whatever happens to come along. Whenever. My attention is captivated by the slowness of liminal clues, the way waves roll in and roll out and leave treasures behind. Inevitably I miss so much through my own witless stupidity and internal arguments. But still. But still I am its creature. Accepting the chaos while stitching together whatever I can gather. Such a delight to be playing in this garden.
Beyond the steamy window crouches the world. Waiting with a mouthful of worries in its jaws. Here though, in the silence of the bathroom and the warmth of the hot water I can doze and bathe. A few moments to myself. A few moments to return to the simple pleasure of the body. Time passes. The tap drips. On his rug the little dog naps.
“Do you remember her?” She asks. A questing tendril emerges. All around us leaves entangling among plants we love, the ferns, the figs. What we knew. What we didn’t know. What we assumed. And I, distracted, taking in small images like mouthfuls of cake, collect shapes and colours. Such choices, rich with nuance, winding among the stalks, talking of this and that. Until I lose myself, the thread disappeared. Only images remaining. No use talking when you’re looking.
I plant my fragile houses on dark volcanic soil. The narrow band of sky above them a misty, difficult blue. Transient, uncertain shapes that won’t come smooth. Tragic somehow in their seeking for footholds and their cautious balancing. Tenuous walls. Misunderstood, unhappy windows. Uncertain futures. In the foreground though, the old sailing boats rip along through heavy seas, matching the flock of seagulls for speed and purpose. They revel in their element, seized with delight, throwing themselves into the foaming waters. Unexpectedly decisive, created for their moment. I have both feet - the wary one and the reckless one. A tricky path….
So I’m compelled once again to start something new. Don’t know why or what I need but my hands seem to grope their way into colours and shapes from elsewhere. And gradually, from some hidden crack in reality, Spring arrives warm from the sun. Showering blossoms and birds and spreading her treasures over our tables. Tones and textures, patterns and memories. Careless with generosity. Heedless of any lack of attention nature persists, throws herself into life. Time and again she returns. Joyous and optimistic. Somehow I have pushed past the pearly grey days, past the cold and wet and accidentally landed here. Maybe this is exactly what is needed.
My brush touches the naked surface of my paper and through the magic of mark making I invoke time and so change flows out in ultramarine. Slowly it walks across the hot-pressed surface and in front of my eyes a flying plane pauses mid-air; pylons are caught striding over hills; patterns arise and freeze as they transform into landscape; rain into crocuses. That wonderful flux, the melting of shape, colour and thought spilling itself out at random. Overhead wheels the night sky, constellations fluctuating while Nut arches over us all, benign as always, casting her veil, entangling us together even when separated by vast distances. We really are ‘such stuff as dreams are made on’.
Set-aside land. Unregarded. Bordering vast hectares of commercial grain. Field edges dense with accidental mixtures of wild grasses and escaped corn. Across the upper ground pylons block out the sky as they stride across distant hills. Corporate energy coming for all of us. But here in the foreground the wind blows freely through the flowering weeds and the day lilies nod and bow. Here on the margins timelines cross, random events happen, nature continues. Characters from ancient paintings play board games, saplings spring up, hybrids flourish, birds shelter. Here I have somehow become entangled with memories of a long distant paradise that echo in my mind. Perhaps we all remember. Now unregarded but still there in the margins.
Across the background an underwater fantasy unfolds ‘When fishes flew and forests walked’…. Chesterton’s poem seems to blend in with mustard gouache laid over lavender underpainting. A dreamlike dance of sea creatures surrounds a bathing figure. On the phone as always. But the little cat is determined to recall the figure back to reality. Staring daggers.
Ah yes. Women and cats. An old alliance. Well known and well reported. Not completely understood. Partial theories exist. “For I will consider my cat Jeoffry.” We don’t know. That’s the joy of it - stumbling into something so familiar and at the same time something not fully understood. A moment of connection, a moment of quiet companionship (but thankfully saved from drama by cat silliness). A transient portrait rising out of a dark cobalt blue while the velvety textures of gouache reflect comfort and softness. Watercolour fur. “For every house is incomplete without him and a blessing is lacking in the spirit”. Embraced by a moment of happy tranquillity. Before serious comes stomping in with its big boots.
At some point on a dull Monday morning, while looking for something else, I came across my old Chinese vase and fell (once again) into the pleasures of painting. I thought I might try one thing and then another but something else, trapped silently beneath seemed more keen to emerge than any of my wavering ideas. So then I took myself off out of it and allowed the simple nature of my eye to dictate details, exaggerating the shape, enhancing the colour to match, selecting tiny details…. Only towards the end did I manage to take a back seat and perceive how the early buds on the eucalyptus sprig had emerged from something so old. All by themselves. So surprising. I’m just such an old donkey!
For those of us journeymen, outliers who have yet to find their place. For those of us without directions or maps. For those of us who seem to know nothing useful and find ourselves unable to trust in the usual signs. The lighthouse with its steady comforting beam. The fixed stars following their clockwork intricacies. These may not be for us as we trudge the narrow paths instead of the clement way. For us at night all we have are the stars coming down gently like snow flakes in our dreams. Nothing clear cut or gainful just small premonitions.
When phone calls become interminable. When no amount of cute will provide a distraction from endless talking. When the tedious treadmill of daily life threatens to overwhelm. Then, having observed the ways of teenagers, I craft small revenge strategies. Singing to myself with unhappy music at 3 in the morning. Grubbing out the contents of my litter box. Shredding objects of disdain. Disinterring and gifting something recently dead. Some may say ‘attention seeking’ but I say ‘teaching opportunity’. Some may say ‘use divergent thinking’ but I say ‘why would I use anything that diverged away from me?’
Teas at Nana’s house were always happy events, a great exciting rush of pleasure and colour that have remained stored in my memory long after they were over. Even now I find myself drawn into those half-remembered warm moments in the garden in summer or in the kitchen on cold days. Sometimes we would eat her treats under the trumpet flower arch or beside a huge bunch of flowers on the table, teddy bears and toys joining in the fun. Happy eating while taking in colours and scents is a different kind of eating - like feeding your spirit with the best impressions of this generous world. Nana’s generation was not very demonstrative but she was an excellent dressmaker and cook and used these gifts to show her love. Here I have tried to paint the memories I have without concerning myself about reality, so often over-rated.
Suddenly, during the night the frost came and when I walked into my workshop it was cold. ‘Lovely’ I thought wrapping up in jumpers and scarves as I sat down. Then I remembered birds, puffed up against the cold, surprised by the turn of events, how things can change so quickly. How the familiar ways are suddenly abandoned and we can be plunged into unknown territory. Helplessly caught, undecided. Whose decision was this? The barren greenhouse frosted over, the frozen puddle reflecting the cold of navy blue, the bare trees. Only the stars wheel over in their established patterns. Unconfused. Unconcerned. Unhelpful
Dear little Voyager, flung out of your warm familiar bed into a bitter sub-zero darkness you speak to me in tiny bursts of sound. A ghostly haptic touch. A brave warrior plunging into the unknown, carrying a scant handful of trinkets like magic charms against the coldness of death (meaningless to metal-eaters or acid sea dwellers). Still you continue spinning ever-outwards, only tentatively anchored to the earth by the most tenuous of numerals. So I send you fruit and flower greetings from your home (sprinkled with a few Louis Vuitton symbols from travellers’ luggage). So you don’t forget this amazing world. So you know we haven’t forgotten you. Entanglement
Sometimes, on warm summer evenings when the old Chelsea Physic Garden breathes slow and deep, an unexpected sense of excitement breaks out and ribbons it’s way along the paths and curls between the trees. Distant music drifts from the shadows, tiny flickering lights touch a table here, a chair there. In my mind’s eye guests pass under the blossoms in twos and threes. With invitations in their hands, they walk and chat towards the supper club and as they flow they become fairy folk, falling into a dream, falling towards pleasure and food, falling towards laughter and wine, falling into the magic of the garden’s ancient spell, waiting for the evening to begin.
Two blue hyacinths in a black vase. One bows over as if the weight of its flowers are too heavy or as if it’s peering at something on the burnt orange surface below. In the bottom right hand corner a barcode on a sticker, a portal to elsewhere. A ubiquitous symbol of the modern world but also mysterious and ambiguous. It might be an indicator of the cost of the painting or of its content or colour or artist or an index or something other which we don’t know and cannot guess. Carelessly we allow the code’s meaning to bypass us. It can only be deciphered by an electronic reader. Maybe meanings are starting to escape us, semiotics covertly moving past our understood consensus of ‘two blue hyacinths in a black vase'.
When your plants arrive” the instructions said “open the box and leave them outside to rest and acclimatise”. So I did. I left them overnight, near the hedge, ready to catch the early morning sun. Next day, coming out with my trowel in my hand I was full of plans about what should go where. I wandered down the garden and stopped in surprise staring at an unexpected development. A neighbourhood cat had made a nest in the straw packaging. “Well” I thought taken aback, “let’s leave it for a while then”. So, like an intruder, I took my trowel, my plans and myself back to the kitchen and had a well-earned cup of tea. Decisions.
It’s early Spring and the bees are just getting started fresh out of the hive. Triangulating. Pepper is drawn to their sense of purpose. Intrigued, but not overly so. They give her a gentle buzzing. She does a cautious as she walks past. Supposedly nonchalant. We don’t know what we don’t know but we can take a jolly good guess. You don’t need to be a strategic genius to work out territorial imperatives. The garden is flooded with sunlight and a lot of stuff is going on and a lot of it is more interesting than this. She takes herself off to the other end. Dignified but alert (should she be needed to sort anything out). Busy sniffing out other problem areas that may need to be tackled. Styling it out just like the rest of us.
Elsewhere life continues. Elsewhere people walk through doorways holding shopping bags - but here, in the warmth of the greenhouse, life is not a casual matter for a succulent or a cactus. Things have to be considered. Time has to be taken. Growth is always a slow and careful component. Where to position the next leaf? How to deal with an impetuous flower? (It won’t last). So I have considered them and taking my time I have placed them in neat rows with companions, singing and weaving their long polyphonic chords together like a choir.
Time is a river that flows through my dreams and then gently passes the Physic Garden where I sit, down among the sweet pea wigwams. Painting and dreaming as I go, the pliable nature of the ancient past comes whispering in my ear and on my paper I see insects becoming creatures and flowers turning into fruit. It seems as if change has been present everywhere, slowly, all the time correcting and adjusting and continuing with its patterns. What do we know? We only glimpse shadows and fragments…….
It’s been a busy morning for the little dog. Outside, there is sun and a windy sea and he has been out walking and running with his people but now everyone is back and at last peace has come to the villa. On the terrace abandoned traces of the morning’s activities remain scattered around: exercise clothes rinsed and drying, a forgotten iPhone and sunglasses. But for now everyone is indoors taking a nap and the little dog can finally have a rest on the warm terracotta tiles. Nonetheless, his ear has flopped out so he’s listening and guarding while sleeping. Multi-tasking. Ever vigilant.
The prickly nature of autumn brambles has spread itself over most of the hedgerows and then crept stealthily over the surface of my painting. Only towards the top a distant scene breaks free and allows some release from the clawing shoots. Quietly drawing and observing I sit and wait and when my eye settles itself then, hidden between the thorns, I get to see the secret life of birds flitting about their business. Feasting on fruit, chattering with surprise, showing the young ones. There’s a nod here to medieval imagery kept small like an old jewel with hidden qualities. But it’s only for a while and then the blackberries will lose their bloom and dry up fearfully as winter comes striding through with its white walkers. So for now I’m just enjoying whatever is in front of me…..
Although the visitors have gone and the garden gates are closed, the greenhouse door stays open throughout the warm night. Above it a dim lamp shines down creating a lonely reflective pool. Deep inside, in the gloom, a tiered audience of succulents gaze out and gravely regard an unfolding drama: The frog emerging from the depths like Mephistopheles; Jack the snail slowly climbing the dandelion stalk to safety; the moths like Les Sylphides bowing and dipping and circling their full moon. We are here too, observing from backstage, hidden on the other side of the mirror where things have to be seen to be believed.
At night the Thames’ river mists get into the old Physic garden and lie low, rolling silently over the medicinal flower beds. Chelsea cats, living close by, leave their pussy personalities behind and sneak in, stalking by starlight. They have paid their dues, innocent and sleeping in the sunshine of window seats by day. But now slowly they come. Drawn by the lure of their deep old natures, they return to ancient forests and grasslands. Silently, eyes a-glitter, they pass through tall grasses, snowdrops and hedge parsley, following night noises and dark rustlings.
This bouquet of tulips was an impulse buy from my local Waitrose supermarket. In the middle of a cold early spring, diligently following my shopping list, I was unexpectedly seduced and delighted by these flowers. Everything appealed to me; their colour, the casual green blotches smearing the coral petals, their closed, secret interiors and their innocent blanched stems. Then, at home, placed in a lacquered vase they gradually opened and as I painted, they slowly revealed their yellow stamens and dark anthers. Long gone now and consigned to the compost heap, their memory remains here recalled from a past we shared as we sat together, gently learning something unspoken.
In the background the proud houses all along Royal Hospital Road look over the wall of the Physic Garden but I take my time and walk the footpaths between the beds. Here they are - the medicinal plants - green companions that have travelled with us through time, providing their quiet assistance across the millennia, through plagues and wars and misery. Now they sit in their neat rows, labelled, indexed and cultivated - the devil’s horn poppy and the plantain, the monkshood and the wormwood. The power that names provide as insights into their secret healing magic.
In the foreground, hidden among the damp green scents of hairy bitter-cress a water boatman trundles purposefully along. He stretches out his antennae, he attends to the cycles of life, he lives within the depths of nature - unlike the pedalos, fair weather friends, bobbing aimlessly, pleasure craft abandoned for the winter months. Their sometime companions the opportunist seagulls have colonised this little flotilla. They all look anxiously towards the direction of summer. Constant waves flow across the centre. Time passes. On the far side of the lake the future waits, hidden within the technical drama of the tower, the secret greenings, the solitary walker.
In the blue light that appears before dawn, when the world is still still indistinct and has not yet firmed up for the day ahead I pad downstairs for coffee. No one is up. This is a time I can steal for myself because no one else wants it. Setting out the breakfast plates and wondering what to have, I hear the faint song of the breakfast sardines. They float past in their wonderful varieties as I make the toast. They cluster together, their beguiling voices sweet and harmonious. A favourite lustreware jug with a Hicks-Jenkins bird illustration stands in front of me and raises my spirits. Where does the dream begin and where does it end?
Copyright © 2026 Gertie Young