William Packer

Tessa Newcomb

On New Year's Day 1986, encouraged by her dealer Andras Kalman, artist Mary Newcomb, then aged 64, began to keep a diary. She wrote in its opening pages: "I wanted [...] to remind ourselves that--in our haste--in this century--we may not give time to pause and look--and may pass on our way unheeding." This beautiful new book, compiled by the artist's daughter and grandson, reveals Mary Newcomb as an acute observer of her surroundings, reproducing her copious sketches alongside more finished paintings and short diary extracts to draw out the many themes which preoccupied her throughout her career as an artist. Mary Newcomb's world was rural East Anglia, where she managed a small mixed farm with her husband Godfrey Newcomb. The working life of the countryside engrossed her quite as much as the cycle of nature: she noticed and relished everything, with as keen an eye for the color of the bridesmaids' dresses at a wedding as for the yellow and brown of a dragonfly's body. Mary's daughter Tessa Newcomb, also an artist, introduces the key themes of the book with short texts which provide fascinating insight into her mother's world. A reflective introductory essay by art critic William Packer considers Mary Newcomb's written diary observations alongside the poetic language of her art.

Drawing from Observation

Mary Newcomb

Jason Gathorne-Hardy

'An Artist in the Garden' is the month-by-month story of a year in a magical, 200-year-old walled kitchen garden, told by the author who grew up there and depicted by an artist who spent three years painting it.

A Year in the Walled Garden at Great Glemham House

An Artist in the Garden

We all have places we are attached to. Some of us can?t get to theirs. When I have been away, or something has happened, or every day, I go for my usual walk. I see what changes have taken place. I want to feel safe; I want to belong. I call it ?the beating of the bounds?." (Tessa Newcomb)00In her latest book, 'Tessa Newcomb', Tessa has collated observations of ten places of particular importance to her. From the Waveney Valley and the East Anglian Fens, through to her personal homelife, allotment and local farmer?s markets, her works are accompanied by a lively and personal narrative, in which Tessa considers what each place means to her.00"As I look at the roadside verges I can feel as my mother [Mary Newcomb] felt when she walked similar roads ? visiting the brave yellow horned poppies which quiver on our bleak beaches which to me are places that offer themselves without expecting anything back ? All happen to be in East Anglia which is where I belong."

Tessa Newcomb

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