About the paintings...
Helen Allingham (1848-1926), the artist featured on this website, was a Victorian-era English painter who illustrated the last vestiges of the then-rapidly-vanishing countryside of Surrey, England.
Her work, to me, is a reminder that unruly, chaotic cottage gardens and wild areas surrounding homes can be beautiful places of inspiration as well as havens for wildlife, playgrounds and educational spaces for children, and functional means of both culinary and medicinal provision for one's family.
This I Saw On An April Day
Warm rain spilt from a sun-lined cloud,
A sky-flung wave of gold at evening,
And a cock pheasant treading a dusty path
Shy and proud.
And this I found in an April field:
A new white calf in the sun at noon,
A flash of blue in a cool moss bank,
And tips of tulips promising flowers
To a blue-winged loon.
And this I tried to understand
As I scrubbed the rust from my brightening plow:
The movement of seed in furrowed earth,
And a blackbird whistling sweet and clear
From a green-sprayed bough.
"In April" - James Hearst
