Richard Channer – Discovering folklore of plants

 “This not being pleasing, and less profitable to me, I consulted with my two brothers, DR.

REASON and DR. EXPERIENCE, and took a voyage to visit my mother NATURE, by whose advice, together with the help of DR. DILIGENCE, I at last obtained my desire; and, being warned by MR. HONESTY, a stranger in our days, to publish it to the world, I have done it.”

Nicholas Culpeper (18 October 1616 – 10 January 1654) was an English botanist, herbalist, physician and astrologer. His book The English Physician (1652, later Complete Herbal, 1653 ff.) is a source of pharmaceutical and herbal lore of the time, and Astrological Judgement of Diseases from the Discomfiture of the Sick (1655) one of the most detailed works on medical astrology in Early Modern Europe. Culpeper catalogued hundreds of outdoor medicinal herbs. He scolded contemporaries for some of the methods they used in herbal medicine.

Richard Channer – Watercolour studies

Well the project was based on  folklore in Sussex, and I looked at some of the maps of information about the folklore in Sussex, and I couldn’t really come up with any that I really, really liked,  And so I I looked into plants because I was, I studied a bit of plants and garden and and I have an, an allotment as well. So, yeah, I thought I’d go for sort of that sort of particular research. And, just sort of like, seeing what plants or weeds, that are sort of useful and, trying to discover some of them and also, Someone suggested Nicholas Culpeper and, I went on to look at his stuff in his books and it is vast, but, I just wanted to pick a few plants, and, initially I thought about plants, and, I had some experience, some workshops on plants. And so I thought about going further into discovering the, the good things about plants and what you could get out of them and, medicinal plants and what the folklore says about that, so to speak. So that was my inspiration. And then, then I, I looked into, it’s like sort of like googling, on Google and, and seeing what plants come up with a lot of different plants and different pictures and I found it hard to,  work from pictures. So, I was trying to do it live and, drawing from life and, and that but yeah. So that sort of stuff. Yeah. I want to do acrylics and stuff. And I haven’t used acrylics for some time. I use watercolours quite often and, I’m quite confident and with it. I like the resources and books that I have been looking at. And it gives me a lot of confidence with, the colours that I use and, and the brushes and stuff like that. Yeah. It’s sort of like observation and, and getting, space and, in to the, surface and just see it come together like, like in a 3D illustration and stuff like that. And, just the processes of it and, experimenting like with, studies and stuff like that and, knowing what I’m doing with and the meaning of, plants and their uses and stuff like that is also quite inspiring to me. Yeah. This is, some of my studies and, just to get practice in and, with flowers and plants and stuff like that. Yeah. Just, just sort of sketches. Unfinished stuff. Really just. But trying to get muscle memory going on the on the brushstrokes and stuff like that and experimentations and, bit of calligraphy design, I like doing stuff like that. I like to, yeah, finish off things. But, this in this particular one, I’m trying to look at different angles of the, of the bee and stuff like that. But, I managed to get this the right colours and stuff like that. And, and charts and some more, studies there and I’ve got some framed which I’m completely happy with. And, yeah, so this is another one that might be in the exhibition to come. And, this is some more studies of, leaf shapes and that, I’ve got some books that I go through to get techniques going and stuff like that. That’s another one. I it’s an acrylic. And, I want to try and there’s a technique called.. I can’t remember what it’s called again. But it’s in black and white, and you could use, watered down acrylic to use glazing to get the colours that you want on onto it. And so, yeah, this is a small version which I want to experiment with.