Meet the Maker: Arthur Parkinson
In the Tithe Barn this Spring you’ll find a joyful exhibition of chicken paintings by celebrated gardener and writer, Arthur Parkinson, inspired by his book ‘Hen Party’; an illustrated compendium of common and rare breed chickens. Here, he tells us about his inspiration.
Tell us about your background and what drew you to exhibit your hens at Thyme? ]
I grew up in Nottingham in a town called Hucknall, where all my immediate family lived too.
Back then it was a greenbelt town, so it was a lovely childhood of walking lots from the town into the neighbouring villages of Papplewick and Linby and then summer holidays we spent in the Derbyshire Dales, on a farm not too far from Matlock. I did draw a lot when I was little but then I stopped and sort of started again during lockdown largely focusing on chickens I tend to draw them and flamingos and pelicans with some botanicals, the odd parrot tulip increasingly. I write, my first book concerned a garden I tended to at the Emma Bridgewater Factory in Stoke on Trent then came the Flower Yard books and now chickens, Chicken boy and The Hen Party. I go to various places with a bucket of home-grown flowers to do flower arranging demonstrations and talks, I also have done Create Academy Garden courses online and the rest of the time I’m rabbling about the aforementioned and various other madness and viewpoints on Instagram. And of course, I garden, grow flowers and keep hens. To say I don’t drive I journey across the country at great length of late!
I met Caryn Hibbert, Thyme’s owner a few years ago now and we have a mutual love of birds and conservation, so we’ve kept in touch. The water meadows at thyme are rich in birds and I love Caryn’s paintings they are incredible. I love to stop on my bike and look at the river Leach, it’s such a beautiful, river crystal clear and you see the brown trout. That bit of Thyme as you go into the Southrop village and the river bends and goes into a floodplain like bit of field with Willows, when the daffodils are out its so beautiful. This scene makes you glad to be in England after enduring the winter, it’s very grey in this part of the world it seems during the winter, and I don’t go away for it!
Seeing the trout in the river Leach, reminds me of how we used to spot them in Hucknall’s Baker Street brook when me and my brother were little. This river still runs through Hucknall town but alas these days the trout here are seldom to be found due to pollution. Thyme and the villages around it that I’ve come to know, especially as I cycle through them truly are beautiful. I just don’t do very well with the social side of things that they entail, it’s very London in the countryside socially. I moved to this part of the world having had a relationship with my best friend, the Interior designer James Mackie and I remember one of the first pubs we went to was the Swan and it was head to toe on its outside dressed in warm white fairy light through the Virginia creeper, so classy!
I’ve given Caryn some of my Buff Cochin hens that sometimes wonder up from the private yard they call home at Thyme to say hello to visitors occasionally, which is lovely. I think big courtyard environments lend themselves to the softening and movement that hens give them. I felt that the Tithe barn, would be a nice space to show my chicken drawings in. It has got good natural light and is beautifully quiet when I have visited in the week so I think lends itself really nicely to being a gallery, but not like one of those in London that you dare not step into, the fact it’s a barn makes you feel you can go in with your wellies on albeit ones that have been foot wiped first!
Whether my little drawings can have enough presence within such a big space, we’ll see! I love that Thyme is a place that truly tries to be self-sufficient, growing a lot of the kitchen garden produce to be used in its restaurant from the garden and using local suppliers and local farmers. The eggs used at Thyme are laid by Steph and Paddy’s Cacklebean hens up the road, they are the finest eggs you could buy if you don’t keep your own hens or when hens at home are having a rest from laying.
2. How would you describe your love of chickens?
They certainly, probably are, one of the biggest lifelong parts of my life. I’ve kept them since I was 7 and wanted to keep them from the age of about 2 so I don’t think I’ll wake up anytime soon and think oh I’m going to give up keeping hens.
I think it would be fair to describe us as a bizarre co-dependence little world, I’m sure some therapists would say it is unhealthy. I’m quite reclusive and I miss my childhood increasingly as I get older so it’s nice to have quiet with my hens and clean them out talking to myself and them especially if my phones ran out of battery or been left in a coat pocket that can be lovely, fresh sweet straw and the hens looking all lovely and perky. That sadly is not always the scene of hen keeping. You have a lot of muck, you have to keep hens very clean, you are battling so many things that want to kill and harm your birds, mites, foxes, rats! It is a lot of management to rear really lovely, healthy, steady chickens and a lot of understanding. Reading behaviours and noticing signs if something is not right. I love an old toothbrush; they are great for scrubbing the gulleys of drinkers. I’m very passionate about breed conservation of the old, traditional breeds because they are so healthy and hardy and also, I think more intelligent than the commercial hybrid birds. I keep my hens on some rented land and it’s a little town of hen houses all on legs to help keep my pyjama trousered Buff Cochin hens out of the winter wet and mud.
These chickens originally came to me from Chatsworth and are what Duchess Deborah Devonshire had at large free ranging in gardens, grandly and gently. They would join us for pecking at our picnic when we visited! Today the eggs laid from them I take back to the farmyard at Chatsworth as we try and hatch as many chicks as we can each year of these rare hens. I take the eggs, once a month from spring into summer by bus to Swindon usually and then onto a train to Chesterfield then another bus to Chatsworth from here, it sounds a lot of effort but I usually am at Chatsworth for 1pm on a good day and then from here I go and see my mum and grandmar in Nottingham for a few days. James collects the eggs for me if I am away for a few days and feeds the hens which is a great help. It is so important to collect the freshly laid eggs every day, otherwise you get too many broody hens who want to sit on the eggs! I also keep quite bossy Burford Browns for their beautiful conker, chocolate, coloured large eggs. Elegant, tall legged, feather tiara wearing Legbars who lay sky blue eggs then I have a little Partridge Wyandotte bantam who makes the best foster hen of all when it comes to rearing chicks of the other breeds.
3. Which materials and techniques are you working with?
I’m drawing onto cold pressed watercolour card of 300 g/m2 sheets and I use my favourite, very finely tipped pens that are of the Micron pigma range. Then for colouring, I use Arteza water brush fine tip-coloured pens. These I can dip very lightly into water to give some impression of watering colour, and they blend well together too.
The chickens start with their eye like dot and their faces first and this really dictates if I then carry on with the rest of the birds body because the face, the lines although its simple and very small, for me I really am trying to capture the feeling of the hen or the cockerels mood and animation without I hope creating them in too much of a cartoon like form. So if I feel these lines are not giving me what I need to feel, I’ll start again at this point. Luckily because I draw them small, I can make several attempts at a bird on the same piece of card. I collect photos of hens I screen shot photos of them most days for references. I probably love the work of Beatrix Potter the most but I’m too lazy to work with real watercolour paint.
For the exhibition, I found a very talented seller on eBay selling handmade frames of the perfect sizes for my drawings but a lot of them I had to bid for as he sells them on eBay so getting the numbers of them took a bit of time and they arrived in the post in batches.
For the framing I did it myself, backing the drawings with quite bold red card, I think the cockerels especially are set off well by this rich colour while other hens are backed by this lovely sandy, straw farmyard feeling given by
4. What was it like bringing your book 'Hen Party' to life?
In terms of the book, it was the nicest time I’ve had creating one as my editor Sam was very understanding and together with Olga who was a brilliant book designer we laid out the book together and I think it’s a beautiful little book, charming and the size of it really suited the drawings being small in themselves. It feels odd celebrating a creature however that is so abused through intensive farming and a society that is distant from food production so I books are important still I hope, especially for children that show farm animals either photographically or through art. So, the hen party book is a lovely visual thing to look through but also to read lightly to help people maybe choose what breed of hen they might keep and have as part of their lives, it’s nice to have books to dream about such things especially if you live in a city or have a country garden plagued by foxes or badgers that mean you cannot easily have any hens.
5. Which chicken are you most proud of?
Well of all the drawings that have been framed for this have got some spirit about them in my eyes. The smaller, more detailed ones probably are my favourites. There is a blue-red laced Wyandotte bantam hen who’s very sweet and composed. And a barbu d’uccle millefleur cock who’s really got a great sturt and energy with little beady eye looking at you. Some of the white, creamy hens where they depend on their outline only I like, the white silkie hens and the Light Sussex. They look wonderful all together I hope people enjoy viewing them and seeing all the different breeds as if it is a framed poultry show to find their favourite breeds.
