A Yorkshire friend who saves American scratch cards for me recently emailed a photograph of this beautiful tree near where she now lives in Virginia. She knows how much I love trees and watched me last month on BritBox in the USA talking on BBC2 Gardeners’ World about my interests in photographing and creating artwork of trees:
I now have several contacts and customers from the USA who saw the programme on television. Jim (also from the state of Virginia) contacted me soon after watching Gardeners’ World via my website. On 17th September after quoting the price for my largest piece of artwork to date, I was so excited to be informed, “Consider it sold!”
Jim has now seen the different stages of how I created the collage. In the photo below I was adding locks of real hair for the female character given to me by a lady I know who decided she wanted a much shorter style. She had saved her long lengths of hair for a charity that uses hair donations to make wigs for children with hair loss. I was offered some before it was sent away and my own dark hair was used for the male character. In the background are varnished pieces of T-shirt material that form a glistening evening sky.
I emailed a photograph from when the completed collage was on exhibition a few months ago at Art In The Mill, Knaresborough:
It was good to read that the customer thought the collage looked “wonderful” in the exhibition. He also admired my tree artwork (see far left and below). He told me that my art has made him so happy as “By Moonlight” is going to be his wedding present to his wife and it’s so special to him already! The day I took it to the Leeds courier service company, I lifted it very carefully into the car. It was very well protected with blankets surrounding it during the journey.
It was lucky to miss those rain clouds! The final stop for me was central Leeds:
The next stage was to safely and securely crate the artwork before its onward journey via a Fedex Priority service.
While the artwork was still in the process of being crated, Jim came back to me with an enquiry as to whether any of my tree collages were still available to purchase. He then told me that he wanted to order The Garden Bridge, also named in Italian “Il Ponticello nel Giardino”. It had been created with recycled Italian scratch cards, given to me by a translator friend who used to live near Rome. I was told about a very special English-style garden near Rome called The Garden of Ninfa. It seemed to spark my imagination even though I have not actually travelled to Italy and seen this magical garden. Of course I know many beautiful garden settings in North Yorkshire where I live so the collage became a combination of many ideas.
Working with recycled fabrics for the tree and brightly coloured red, yellow and orange Italian scratch cards representing the warmth of Italy for the sky.
