Living in New Romney has been by biggest inspiration for landscape painting. We are blessed with beautiful beaches, amazing sunsets and a wealth of history.
Derek Jarman Garden Prospect Cottage
One of my recent paintings has been Prospect Cottage, the home of Derek Jarman (1942-1994). He was an English film director who made a famous garden on the shingle shore near Dungeness nuclear power station.
The poem on the black timber wall of Derek Jarman’s cottage is from John Donne’s poem The Sun Rising and reads:
Busy old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us ?
Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run ?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school-boys and sour prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices ;
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
In that the world’s contracted thus ;
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that’s done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere ;
This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere