Table Tops

Henri Burkhard

Like so many American artists at the turn of the century, Henri Burkhrad had to leave his native land for Paris in order to find his painterly voice. Paris was the centre of the avant-garde, a melting pot of radical ideas, experimentation, and wild characters who encouraged each other to push the envelope further in a single minded journey towards subjective truth. Burkhard had a by-the-numbers artistic education, attending three of the great Académies in the city and honing the traditional skills he had learnt as a young man in New York to novel effect. He returned home shortly before this work was painted, bringing with him the new way of thinking he had learnt overseas, and was quickly celebrated as a leading figure in the American modernist movement, exhibiting extensively at major galleries and museums across the country. Burkhard fell into relative obscurity later in life, and his contribution to a uniquely American painterly style is rarely discussed, but his cubist inspired still lives still retain a sense of potency today.

Friday 5th June

Today, the Moon rises in Capricorn, bringing earthly forces down into the garden, where they can be harnessed through our work with root vegetables and the soil. In biodynamics, we are not only growing food, but also growing the soil itself. When the soil is healthy on a biodynamic farm, the plants are better able to grow in health, which in turn supports the animals to develop properly. There is no shortcut to this in biodynamics. We avoid relying on fertilisers that simply mask poor soil conditions. Instead, we must truly work with the soil through cover crops, biodynamic preparations, roaming animals, and the care and attention of the farmer or gardener.