Golden Harvest

Description

Every land has a guardian spirit…

I live near Dartmoor and the guardian spirit of this land is called Old Crockern. He is a giant as strong as granite with a beard of lichen and eyes as black as peat pools. He protects the land from land grabbers and for one such greedy farmer he issued a warning .

“If you so much as scratch my back with a plough share, I’ll tear your pockets out!”

There will be no prosperity for those who try to impose their will and take more than they return, the spirit of the wild lands can not be tamed.

Every land has a guardian spirit..

I painted three pieces for this poem all reflecting my vision of how the spirit of the moor, Old Crockern my Granite King, who appears in different areas of the moor. Each piece reflects the three seasonal changes we experience on the moors and the energy I feel at specific spots. The growing season, the harvest season and the long cold winter, are all represented in this series. Each piece has been inspired by a particular Tor I find sacred on the moor. One person described a special Tor to them as their temple and I thought this exactly the way to describe these places and the meaning, the feeling they give us when we visit them.

The pieces go in this order:

‘Summer Celebration’ is a depiction of Grea Tor Rocks and I have imagined the people dancing in the growing season atop the tor, burning the Beltane fires and throwing in their wishes and offerings for the season of growth.

‘Golden Harvest’ is a depiction of the scene looking from Saddle Tor rock across the autumn moorland towards Grea Tor Rocks and Hound Tor. The wild horses are grazing in the evening light, taking in as much nutrients as they can before the coming cold season of food scarcity and biting cold.

‘Winter Storms Coming’ is a depiction of Dewerstone Rock as I imagined it back through the mists of time, when winter was the season of danger and death. When the moors loom above us huge, dark and menacing, where only the brave dare to tread. A perfect analogy for being wary of the dangers of travelling in the coldest and darkest winter and depicting the granite king and spirit of the land as not always benevolent or forgiving.

I also chose this tor because of its legend which is quite dark and one that would have been told round the pub fire on long, stormy winter nights.

The Dewerstone legend talks of “Old Dewer,” a Dartmoor name for the Devil, who haunts the Dewerstone Rock on the River Plym. According to the tales, he appears as a black-clad huntsman sometimes accompanied by a pack of spectral hounds, he conjures fowl weather to drive lost travellers to the high crags (or guides them up depending on the version) where they inevitably fall over the edge to their deaths.

  Below are the words from the poem ‘Granite King’ which inspired this piece

King of marsh

King of moor

Gazes from a granite tor…

King of rock

King of stone

Ruling from a granite throne…

King of frost

King of rain

When all is gone, he’ll remain…

King of antler

King of horn

King of leaf and king of thorn…

King of beast

King of man…

The king of granite guards the land…

(excerpt from the book Queens of Avalon)

The rest of the poem and many more old tales and artwork can be found in the Queens of Avalon book.