(if you’re reading this and aren’t Beany, then you’ve somehow stumbled upon the inspiration images  for Jen’s upcoming tattoo!)

There’s a lot of random information here that hopefully builds up a general picture but I don’t actually have too fixed a vision to constrain your own creativity.

This is the west pennine moorland that I’ve lived next to  pretty much all my life. The hill is called Turton Heights and it is home to Cheetham Close which is a bronze age site comprising of a large stone circle (destroyed in the 1800s) and several ring cairns etc around the trig point at the top. It is wild and peaty, with lots of standing water and grey rocks embedded in the marshy ground.

There are lots of paths that you can take to walk over the moor, and they all create beautiful sweeping shapes when you plot them on a map. I like the rhythm of walking the same paths each day over the course of a year, and seeing how the seasons shift, the earth spins, so it is simultaneously always the same yet always changing.

There’s a ditch/culvert that runs all along the road next to my house, separating the village from the hill. It acts like a threshold that you have to step over to cross from one place to the next.

The plants that really symbolise this moorland for me are:

Hawthorn

I love it in all seasons, lots of the trees near us are old and gnarled, covered in moss and lichen.

Rowan (mountain ash)

Alder

Mostly the little cone fruits!

Wimberries

Known as bilberries in other places, it is more the shape of the little branches and leaves that I like, rather than the actual berries, although they’re delicious!

marsh hair moss

I just love the little stars that peer out from inbetween the long grass! 

and then there are various grass seed heads. There are always magpies on the moor, I particularly like to see them landing. The rocks are covered in lichens and I love the dotted circular patterns that they make- the little dashed circles in your painting reminded me of them
Artistically, I like it where the natural repetitive patterns that occur in nature have been picked out and amplified in a design. I like where the magpies have been simplified slightly to show their distinctive markings, rather than too realistically rendered. I love lino printing/etching, and the kind of constraints of line created by working in textiles. I’m fascinated by maps I also love anything to do with the moon…