My studio is a wooden hut which stands at the ‘potager’ end of the garden. A few years ago, I made a large oil painting of it, (30×24 inches) Strong and colourful, it’s amongst the last of the loosely representational paintings that I was doing at the time. Since then, ‘The Hut’ has acquired a name plate, hanging over the door. Hopefully you can see it in the photograph. The story is as follows.
On my morning dog walk I occasionally saw an old lady and her gentle old dog struggling up the hill in our Little Hawksworth wood.
Once I saw her by her front gate trying to cut a path to her door through a dense thicket of trees, shrubs, climbers and plants that covered her house and garden. I was fascinated by this wild mantle, because it made her house look like something from a fairytale.
Out of curiosity I found that by standing on a particular bit of pavement, and with careful positioning, I could just see the porch over her door and hanging from it a name board, ‘Valparaiso’. This was a mystery which I thought had to have a romantic back story.
Some months later, I heard that her dog had died and she had gone into a home. Within weeks I heard that sadly, she had died.
I walked past her empty house for several months and then one day the builders arrived. They tore everything down internally and externally as they modernised the property. Eventually the house stood unadorned and ready for paint. I remembered the name board. I asked a builder if he had seen it. After searching through a pile of debris he found the board and gave it to me. ‘Valparaiso’, hand carved and lettered. Certainly not by a European hand.
I brought it home and now it hangs above the door of my garden studio. Despite not knowing its story I feel a responsibility to keep the dream alive. Valparaiso in Horsforth Leeds. I like to think that the old lady knows that it lives on; and that, despite reasons unknown, it’s treasured.
