Tintern Abbey is currently encased in scaffolding and this transforms the ruin into a bewildering profusion of uprights, horizontals and diagonal metallic poles. I tried to draw the scaffolding from the hillside opposite but I’m not naturally an outdoor artist and found its rigid, uncompromising logic impossible to fathom out. It seemed to me that a surveyor’s skills or perhaps an accountant’s would be called for. So, I moved my work to the studio – to learn how to account for its features of support.
A builder now owns Abbey Farm, the property next to the abbey. He parks his heavy machinery there. He is renovating along the boundary line, which involves a good deal of strenuous digging, lifting and levelling with these machines. Beyond him stands the scaffolding.
