David Starley is a Saltaire artist who works in oils. He creates fabulous, textural paintings of landscapes - great big canvasses with the paint layered on so that the light changes and moves across the scene just as it does in reality.
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| Ribblehead Viaduct by David Starley |
David is working on a series of paintings inspired by A Dales High Way. I’m so excited about this – the walk has already developed a life of its own and now it’s inspiring people to write blogs, take photographs and make art.
The Dales High Way Art exhibition will be at the Anstey Gallery in Ilkley this summer. Dave and I will be there on August 6th so do drop in and say hello.
Dave’s paintings aren’t the only artworks associated with the walk. A few months ago I read a post from a Dales High Way walker on a walking forum saying “Look out for the Hound of Windgate Nick” and we thought we’d better take a look and check it out. We climbed up out of Ilkley, past houses to die for, and soon were high above the Wharfe valley on a clear path across moorland.
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| Cup and ring markings on the Piper's Crag Stone |
This is a really ancient route and it passes the remains of settlements dotted all along the escarpment. Bronze Age travellers passed this way with their flint tools from the Yorkshire Wolds and their stone axe heads from the Lake District, trading their way from east coast to west. Maybe those were the tools that were used to carve the cup and ring markings into the rocks that line the path.
A couple of miles on and we were close to Windgate Nick. Where was this mysterious hound? We crossed a stile and began to climb towards a rocky outcrop and there, perched on the skyline was a sculpture of a wolf baying at the moon.
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| Hound or wolf? |
Guerrilla art – don’t you just love it.
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