Somewhere Along the C&W Way, Late Summer

Enjoying working with this wide format approach at the moment. As the last couple of days have been like a final blast of summer, both in Berlin, where I was yesterday and also here in London I wanted to capture that late rich light and colour of this time of year. The pictures I’m producing at the moment are for an exhibition in Whitstable in February, so my thoughts are turning towards that part of the country and I’ve called this one Somewhere Along the C&W Way – the C&W is the Crab and Winkle Way, a track which winds northwards out of Whitstable up into Blean Woods, following the line of one of the oldest railways in the world, the Crab and Winkle Line that took the famous Whitsable oysters to London. The railway has gone, but the C&W Way has now been turned into a lovely walk and cycle track that links Whitstable and Canterbury. I have many fond memories from when I lived down this way. I used to cycle along the track often, and this collage depicts an afternoon when the hedgerows seemed to be full of finches of all different kinds. Stuck here in my office in East London as I write this (I’m on my lunch break, so not taking the mick too much), and looking out at the glorious sunshine, I wish I was cycling along that track now!

Playing with the wider format for some collages for the February show – it does lend itself to the hedgerow subject matter I’m working with at the moment, but it also brings with it a different set of compositional challenges!