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They've arrived with chainsaws at the meadow we've fought for 15 years
to save. We're sure they're acting wrongly - it's all so much more destructive
than what was promised at the public enquiry. We do what we can and I
leave my neighbours alerting the Planning Inspectorate and local councillors.
Me, I need to get away.
I want to draw at the canal basin for my Four Corners of Horbury
sketchbook so why not do it this morning. I couldn't have chosen a better
place to draw. It's such a peaceful scene, a few of the narrowboat people
are about. A man does a bit of gardening on the dockside, a woman takes
her black poodle for a walk, taking her cup of coffee with her.
Two dog walkers arrive.
'Did you see that?!' I say to them, 'A kingfisher flew across and landed
on one of those plant tubs over there.'
 I'm
trying to point it out to them when it flits across in front of Nellie
(the barge-style narrowboat), plops into the water opposite then flies
back to the canal carrying a tiddler and settles on a hawthorn branch
overhanging the water to eat it. I haven't had such a good view of a kingfisher
for years.
Maybe the world isn't all bad.
 Arch
Coxley Beck flows under the canal by the traffic lights at Horbury Bridge,
beneath the Bingley Arms car park and comes out via this arch. My Four
Corners of Horbury seems to be reflecting my interest in undercurrents
and hidden secrets in, what to me is, an everyday landscape.
Why do I go for such gloomy subjects? I think I see some kind of meaning
- something 'beyond' or perhaps 'within' reality - but when I draw them
I try to be as accurate as I'd be if this was an illustration for a book
on architecture or history.
 My
Own Private Inferno
 I
can't draw this arch without thinking of the entrance to Dante's
Inferno, the one that had 'All hope abandon ye who enter
here' carved over the door.
When I was 16 and I'd finished my 'O' level exams I decided that, prior
to starting at art college in September, my real education should begin.
I set myself a programme of reading all the 'great books' I could get
my hands on, from Greek and Polynesian mythology to Plato's Republic
and The Bible (once you've read Deuteronomy, Leviticus
gets a tad repetitive).
 I
borrowed the Carey translation of Dante from Horbury Library. It had probably
been on the shelves there for 50 years. In today's public library, if
a book has been on the shelf for two years old it's likely to be weeded
out as too old, especially if, as I suspect was the case with The
Divine Comedy, it hasn't been borrowed regularly.
I equipped myself with the finest dip pen nib I could find. I looked
at Botticelli's drawings, Flaxman's designs for bas-relief sculptures
and even caught up with some of William Blake's pen and watercolour drawings
in the Tate Gallery. I remembered seeing a clip from the black and white
Spencer Tracy film.
I think you can see my interest in theatre design and geology
in this drawing. I haven't looked at the excercise book I drew this in
for years as it was hidden away in a box in the attic until a few months
ago. I'm amused but moved by the combination of naivity and intensity
in my work from those days.
There are several short comic strip versions of books, a storyboard for
a short student film, a very short student film, which I made, badly,
and some ideas for a production of three of Wakefield's cycle of medieval
mystery plays which I produced at the local church, again very badly.
 Dream
Diary
I'd love to show you some of the pages but I'd be embarassed
if you saw others. To give you a flavour, here's one of my favourite drawings
from the book. It's evidently a dream I had (you can tell that's me by
the anorak). The dream took place in a rambling, disorientating rabbit
warren of a building. It's somewhat Dickensian also like the old run down
parts of Batley (where I attended art school) of that time. These kind
of places still figure in my dreams and you can see that I seek out places
with that quality in some of my drawings.
I feel this drawing from 1967 shows the way that I look at the world
even today: I still see layers of hidden meaning and memory.
But it's a shabby, obsessive and slightly disturbing world.
And who is the figure leading me on? I bet I didn't really know, even
at the time. 
Richard Bell, richard@willowisland.co.uk
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