• She stored her jam-jars on the open shelf beside an old school jotter; handwritten recipes laid down line by line in deliberate pencil like a child’s tidy homework; the well thumbed cover bruised in blackberry. Jam-jars on a window-sill preserved in watercolour, no more than berry-stains on paper, a still life ripening on his autumn easel.

In the Pause of Passing

Paintings of the North Pennines by Paul Stangroom
with poems by Noel Connor
(Whin Sill Press, Northumberland 2013)

In recent years, the artist, Paul Stangroom has dedicated himself to capturing the poignant beauty of the remote and abandoned farmsteads of County Durham and Northumberland. In this unique collaboration, Noel Connor has produced poems which populate his friend’s exquisite paintings, finding a living pulse in these abandoned and derelict buildings. His poetry pays homage to the lives, loves and hardships of these departed communities and to one artist’s determination to preserve the surviving evidence of their existence.

“We have shared some remarkable days exploring the fells and moors of the North Pennines, and I know our conversations and discoveries have given us both new insights into our own work”
Paul Stangroom