A stand of hillside beech trees glowed in low evening sunlight, a precious fleeting moment on the first day of January. I took a photograph and today I drew from it, with sorrow and love; for some of those trees are now fallen and the hillside is changed. I am trying to remember to breathe into the beauty, the loss, and my trust.

Drawing in the dark by the light of the moon .. giving myself permission to play ..

.. of this new year was cool with moments of sunlight almost as warm as someone’s breath. I took my sketchbook for a walk and enjoyed this lovely old cottage by Polgoon Vineyard all stomped about in the foreground grass by the cattle whom Farmer Adèle had released on to the unseasonably generous grass.

It’s happening, last day today and I’m full of smiles from yesterday’s and this morning’s visitors. Can’t believe how many robin cards have flown out of here already! We’re open until 5pm today. Follow the signs up from A30 YHA/Polgoon lay-by and we’ll put a cup of warm spiced elderflower in your hand!

Come to the River Song Art House!

You are warmly invited to visit me, my husband George and our two friendly dogs, at our riverside home and my studio in the lovely Polgoon Valley just north of Penzance, on Saturday 29th and Sunday 30th November between the hours of 11 am and 5pm. You can expect to see recent artwork by me along with older artwork which I am now dramatically reducing in price in order to make it more affordable and to make space for the new. There will also be inexpensive drawings, prints and greetings cards – and spiced wine too! Please contact me directly via my website melaniepeer.com or Facebook Messenger for location details. Cheers!

The purity of our young has been captured by tech. Surely it is time to wake up from our collective trance and become present to the wondrous gift of life. (Watercolours on paper in a box frame.)

I’m excited to see what happens..

Three weeks after Solstice and a little further downstream I find this handsome river pool with a strong sense of the wild sea beyond and Cape Cornwall presiding over Porthledden Bay. I will take my drawings back to the studio and put brushes to canvas ..

I sat with you, wild singing river of the valley, and felt the deep wonder of your presence and mine in this flowing place. I made watercolour drawings and took photos, then created this piece in my studio, as a song of love and gratitude for such an encounter in Kenidjack Valley, St Just, Cornwall.

My first oil painting of the year. To flow with the purity of Nature is what I wish for all.

Summer kisses us with warmth and shows us the fertile future Nature prepares for us over and over. I love the translucent touch of watercolour to convey life’s fine veils of self-renewal everywhere around us.

Inspired by my recent week on St Mary’s in the Isles of Scilly comes this glorious thrust, drip and tumble of oils on canvas! Zoom in close and you’ll find more surprises than I could have imagined. When paint and painter dance the dance of art and heart anything can happen…

These are one of the biggest surprises to me here on St Mary’s on the Isles of Scilly. Elegant giants watching over small rectangular flower fields and crowning coastal headlands..

This little painting, 60 x 60 cm, is taking shape from drawings I made in a hidden grove near Zennor, Cornwall, tucked away from almost everything yet connected by the elements to all that is ..

I was led by a restless longing for remoteness and a return to nature with my art materials.. Here in a hidden valley behind Zennor on the wild North Cornish Coast, I find a cottage hunkered down among last year’s broken bracken stalks where honeysuckle tendrils can let their tiny new leaves lick the tender air.. I am so happy to be drawing in nature again.

My beloved studio – fit for action after a New Year cleanse! It can get quite built up and chaotic when I am working on a large painting or making studies of plant forms as I was during the Autumn and Winter .. This Spring I shall be teaching here again as well as making my own work and so it was time for a tidy up. I love my studio.

Cool, fresh, clean and flowing – the air, the stream, the trees and my hand – this first January day, in Nature, among the woodland dwellings of New Mill, Cornwall.

These senile sweeties have two upright, one intermittent and one missing ear between them and Heidi has rubbed the hair off her nose by sticking it through the railings too often! I fell in love with them as I brought them to life with charcoal on paper and had a strong sense of how very loved and loving they are. This was a thoughtful birthday present commission for their doting and delighted owner.

We are delighted to announce that our Christmas Art Market will run for a second weekend, over the 3rd and 4th of December at PZ Gallery, Penzance. Come and enjoy art from the heart, books and gifts .. mulled fruit juice and wine .. Saturday and Sunday 10-5

I’m excited. I can see weeks of work coming together in what will be a beautiful exhibition, Loving Nature’ .. two days to go until opening on Friday 18th November. Our creative quartet comprises myself, Angela Annesley, Ian Barnfield and George Clement Peer. Our show not only incorporates paintings, woodcut prints, poetry and a gorgeous film of a heron, we are also sharing a live event of improvisational music and dance, spoken poetry and a song of art on 23 November at 19:00. It all takes place in Penzance’s spacious and elegant PZ Gallery, near the Lido, and will be open daily 10-4 until 2 December.