Into the East

Plans are afoot!

At some point last year I found out that Flatford Mill where Constable famously painted his Haywain was mostly unchanged since Constable's time. As an artist that cites Constable and the Romantics as influences in my work (the very notion of the idyllic landscape influencing tourist memorabilia, including postcards) I was intrigued by this. The idea that this kind of place remaining unchanged seemed not only wonderful in modern Britain, that to my mind is losing much of it's heritage but also fitting to the romantics idea of celebrating the English landscape.

I decided that I wanted to recreate the Haywain and produce the same view in my own style. How exactly this will look remains to be seen but I did decide to go visit Flatford mill and see for myself.

This led to wondering how many more of the scenes in Constable's paintings have remained basically recognisable to this day. I found an amazing little map on the internet based on ordnance survey that shows not only the area of Dedham Vale with close ups of the key locations but also recommended walks to explore Constable country but also the location of where Constable stood to paint his pictures.

At the same time there are plans afoot to go to the Cambridgeshire fens region. What the reason for picking that region is I will reveal later when things are more fixed. I am however compiling a list of tourist hotspots that I should visit.

Since both areas are relatively close to each other I decided to split a week in both locations. On the 15^th July I will be off to Ely and staying a few days in a B & B there, taking visits to the surrounding countryside and towns. Doing my usual thing of exploration, buying postcards and getting tourist imagery and photographing anything and everything. I will then be off to Constable country staying in a Travellodge for a couple of days and exploring Constable Country using my exciting new map.