 Photo
taken
on May 7th 2006, by a lane near Higher
Metcombe Farm, close to the hamlet of Patsford on
the Fullabrook Wind Farm Site
|
Christine
Lovelock
|
| 2013 This page was made in 2006-2007, with a 2008 update. Links on the right give more up to date news on the situation in Devon now, as do Blog and Facebook postings. We are winning the battle as far as public opinion is concerned, as latest council election results show, but Labour/Conservative/Lib Dem leaderships remain wedded to Big Wind and have made the fight to stop wind turbines through the Planning System more and more difficult. This website is, and will always remain, non-political. We welcome and show work from artists of all political persuasions, but we also feel it is right to recognise that the rise in popularity of the only political party that opposes wind energy, UKIP, is at least in part a democratic response to the failure of the other three main UK parties to address this issue. |
Later
windfarm walks: 2009 Taw Estuary 2009 Nant-y-moch plus Fullabrook walks and videos of Fullabrook construction, turbines, etc, 2009-2013 artistsagainstwindfarms.blogspot.co.uk We also have an Artists Against Wind Farms Facebook Page Films : Europe's Ill Wind Lost Horizons |
Paintings and Photographs |
 Under the trees,
Castle Hill, Great Torrington |
I live in Barnstaple,
North Devon and I paint landscapes in pastel,
acrylic, oil and (rarely) watercolor. My paintings all
grow out of walks that I take in the countryside, which
is why so many of them have paths winding into the
picture. I am very interested in the texture of grasses
and leaves, water and sky. I want my paintings to feel
real, so that you can imagine walking into them, feeling
the earth beneath your feet as you do so. |
 Marleycombe Down,
Bowerchalke |
My paintings are also about places that mean something to me. This is Marleycombe Down, in Bowerchalke, Wiltshire, my most favourite hill of all. When I worked for my father, James Lovelock, in the 1970`s I used to walk over Marleycombe with him most days, and he would talk about the idea he had that the Earth was a self-regulating system (Gaia). As a family we have always cared about the environment, and I like to think of myself as a "Green Artist" - I don`t drive a car, and use public transport nearly all the time. Nearly all my trips to wind farm sites have been on foot, or by bus, coach or train. |
 With the statue of
Gaia, in Bowerchalke, |
This is a photo of me at the time I was working in the "family business", with the statue of Gaia in the garden in Bowerchalke. The footpath in the painting "Marleycombe from the footpath" is just above the hedge. One of my jobs was to take sunphotometer readings (all to do with Global Dimming although no one called it that, then) I also helped enter chlorofluorocarbon data from the Shackleton into our (then) state of the art computer. I was an athlete in those days (running under my then married name of Curthoys) and South Western Champion at 800, 1500, 300 and Cross Country. I ran the fastest laps in the National Road Relays in 1973 and 1976, competed internationally and later (after having three children) won the World Veterans 10K Road Race Championships (Overall winner). It was great competing, but what I loved most about running were the early morning runs over Marleycombe and into the woods of Verndtch Chase. I used to see paintings in my mind that I wanted to do, and I am working on some of them now, many years later. |
 Hungry Hill, Bantry Bay
West Cork |
This painting is of Hungry Hill in Bantry Bay, West Cork, my favourite mountain. It may not be very high, but it is impressive, rising straight up from the bay. My parents bought a bungalow here in the 1960`s and it was during the long summer holidays then - when not climbing Hungry Hill - that my father started looking for industrial tracers in the haze that came from Europe. His electron capture detector was so sensitive that it discovered CFCs not only in the haze, but in the clean Atlantic air.. Eventually the bungalow became an atmospheric monitoring station, run for many years by Michael O`Sullivan, and. I carried on handling the data from it until 1986. |
 On Hungry Hill |
This is a very old photo of my father and me, up on Hungry Hill. He was taking air samples. If I remember correctly, he then flew to America with them, and there was some amusement at US Customs about containers filled with "fresh air from Ireland". Hungry Hill is a marvelous mountain to climb, made of Old Red Sandstone, the slabs of rock often at just the right angle so that you can run up them. From the summit you can see both of the adjacent peninsulas and you feel as if you are on top of the world. |
 Great Torrington
|
This is the view from Mill Street In
Great Torrington, another of my favourite places. I
lived in Torrington from 1986 until 1998, and walked on
Castle Hill nearly every day. The town itself is built
on the hill, and surrounded mostly by common land. It is
made of the same kind of rock as Hungry Hill. Walking
down the hill in springtime, when the air was rich with
the coconut smell of gorse, I often felt as if I was in
Ireland again. |
 Barnstaple
|
This painting is called "July,
Manning`s Pit". Manning`s Pit is the field just beside
my house in Pilton, Barnstaple. I have done many
paintings of it, and Tutshill Woods nearby. I live on
the edge of the town, so I am lucky enough to be able to
walk out into the countryside each day. The
Fullabrook Down Wind farm is over the hill in this
painting. It isn`t close enough to effect me
personally, but having walked those hills, I know that
they mean as much to the people who live there as
Marleycombe, and Castle Hill and Hungry Hill.mean to me.
Great Torrington, Bantry Bay, and the hills to the west of Barnstaple are all now threatened by giant wind turbines. Only Bowerchalke is safe from the threat, for now. (September 4th 2008: the threat comes closer to Bowerchalke too. I learnt today that there are 6 giant turbines proposed at Silton, that will be higher than the nearby hilltop town of Shaftesbury and be visible from Cranborne Chase. As an athlete I was South West Counties Cross Champion when running for North Dorset A.C., a great little club based in Shaftesbury in the early seventies, and I used to run up into Cranborne Chase from my home in Bowerchalke) |
More Paintings |
My personal walking and painting wind farm protest:these are just some of the paintings that I have done(since setting up this website) after visiting various wind farm sites in England, Scotland and Wales |
 Knowlwater bridge (Fullabrook Down sub-station site) North Devon |
 Church of St. Michael de Rupe, Brent Tor, near Dartmoor Devon |
 Auchencorth Moss, Penicuik near Edinburgh |
 Trees on the Tarka Trail Devon |
 Threatened Welsh valley Mid Wales (in progress) |
 Threatened Welsh valley Mid Wales in progress |
 The road to Quince Hill and Rose Ash, North Devon Two Moors Campaign area |
 May morning, North Tawton, near Dartmoor |
 Blackcraig Hill, Dumfries and Galloway Scotland |
 Across Den Brook valley, North Tawton, Devon |
 Daisies at Darracott Reservoir, Higher Darracott, Torrington, Devon |
 Morwenstow North Cornwall Crimp Turbine Site |
 Craigenputtock, home of Thomas and Jane Carlyle, Dumfries and Galloway Scotland |
 Batsworthy Cross near Exmoor, Devon |
 Yes Tor from Hatherleigh Devon |
 Sheep and lambs on Fullabrook Down Devon |
 White horse, Fullabrook Down behind |
 Looking towards the Taw from Pippacott (Fullabrook Down site) |
 Bradworthy before the turbines Mid-West Devon |
 St. Michael and All Angel`s Church, Great Torrington, from near Higher Darracott site |
 Witheridge Church near Pillivan site Two Moors Way Devon |
 St. Michael and All Angel`s Church, Marwood, Fullabrook Down Site |
 Looking towards Knowstone, from Exmoor Two Moors Campaign area |
 Hen Harrier hovering over the slopes of Blackcraig Hill Dumfries and Galloway |
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