Wild Light – A printmaker’s day and night
by Angela Harding (£25)
With more than 70 original illustrations, printmaker Angela Harding invites you to look at how the light changes the world around us, and how that, in its turn, changes us.
‘I, like many other people, find great inspiration in the way mornings, evenings or bright midday light changes the way we see the things around us. The bouncing light of a cloud-filled storm sky can change a seascape through a palette of blues, greys, and turquoises. The cool summer moonlight that crosses my back garden sends long shadows that change the mood of the garden from homely to unfamiliar. And whether it’s the low light of an English February afternoon or the sharp, bright mid-morning light of the Cornish seaside, the light and dark we experience affects our moods.
‘But life is busy, and I am as guilty as anyone of being too preoccupied by daily life to just stop and look. This book is a collection of illustrations from those moments when I have stopped and looked; when a particular encounter with nature has been highlighted, becoming a strong image long remembered and one that I wish to illustrate.
‘I hope you enjoy this journey through 24 hours of my collected memories of the nature that surrounds me.’
Angela Harding is a fine art painter and illustrator based in Wing, Rutland. She is inspired by British birds, nature and countryside. Angela is also the book illustrator featured in Raynor Winns’s books, Salt Path, Wild Silence and Landlines.
Join Wayne and the team at Winstone’s for a Talk and signing with Angela Harding on 8th November in The Butterfly Room at Castle Gardens, Sherborne, at 6.30 for 7pm.
Tickets, £5, available from Winstone’s Sherborne or online here
In The Seed Detective, Adam Alexander shares his tales of seed hunting and the stories behind many of our everyday vegetables. We learn that the common garden pea was domesticated from three wild species more than 8,500 years ago; that Egyptian priests considered it a crime to even look at a fava bean, that the first carrots originated in Afghanistan (and were purple or red in colour) and that the Romans were fanatical about asparagus.
Taking us on a journey that began when we left the life of the hunter-gatherer to become farmers, Adam tells tales of globalisation, political intrigue, colonisation and serendipity. Exploring the world’s rare and endangered heritage and heirloom vegetables, Adam explains the importance of continuing to grow these varieties and saving their seeds, not only for gardening and culinary pleasure, so that their stories can be passed on to future generations.
Join Adam for a talk and book signing in The Butterfly Room at Castle Gardens. Doors open at 6:30pm and free refreshments will be provided. FREE event – please register online here
