Long shadows and electric-green algae in Coldfall Wood, January 2024

A series following the 72 British mini-seasons of Nature’s Calendar by Kiera Chapman, Lulah Ellender, Rowan Jaines and Rebecca Warren. 

Dear Readers, I have been neglecting my Nature’s Calendar over the Christmas period but here we are again, and today’s theme feels particularly apposite. I have friends who suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder, and for them this point in January, when the distraction of the festive season is over and it’s back to work (and in my previous field, accountancy, there’s often the year-end to cope with too). The third Monday in January has been christened ‘the most depressing day of the year’, admittedly by a travel company who was hoping for everyone to book their summer holidays. And yet, in the Northern Hemisphere (sorry Southern Hemisphere friends) we actually already have an hour’s extra daylight per day, depending on where you are.

In her piece in Nature’s Calendar, Lulah Ellender explains how it’s getting lighter in the evening rather than the morning (due to the differences between clock-time and astonomical time), but that the time between the sun dipping below the horizon and it getting dark is actually shorter at this time of the year, due to the angle of the sun. It’s all very confusing, but I do feel a slight quickening in the pace of life, especially in the garden. Two robins were beating one another up only this morning and the place seems absolutely mobbed with sparrows, who are enjoying the tangle of honeysuckle and bittersweet that stretches up into next door’s apple tree. Plus suddenly the days are crisp and sunny rather than wet and cloudy, which always raises my spirits a tad.

Long shadows in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery

Ellender makes reference to British artist Gillian Carnegie, in the context of darkness not always being what it seems, so I had to have a quick look at her painting ‘Black Square’ (2008), shown below.

Black Square 2008 Gillian Carnegie born 1971 Presented by Tate Members 2010 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T12935

The painting is based on a night scene in Hampstead Heath. It follows in the grand tradition of ‘Black Square’ paintings, with the first one by Kazimir Malevich being painted in 1915, but Carnegie brings a much more naturalistic sensibility to her work. I can imagine myself back in Coldfall Wood looking for spiders, tripping over roots and getting everyone lost.

Kazimir_Malevich,_1915,_Black_Suprematic_Square,_oil_on_linen_canvas,_79.5_x_79.5_cm,_Tretyakov_Gallery,_Moscow

Here is another one of Carnegie’s paintings. She is described as ‘reclusive’, which to me means that we should leave her to get on with her work. She was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2005, much to her horror apparently. I always love it when someone puts their art first, a lesson to us all I think.

Black Square 2003 (Gillian Carnegie) from https://www.londonartroundup.com/reviews/Why-I-Like-It-gillian-carnegie-black-square

For Ellender, the point of Carnegie’s painting is that there is always much more to see in the darkness than you spot at first glance, and she’s right, of course. As the days lengthen in the UK, it’s nice to make the most of the darkness that remains, before the hectic springtime is upon us.