Charlotte Royle: Lady of the Palms

Charlotte remembers the exact date in July 2010 when she first encountered the haunting landscape of the Palmery - and knew that she could not leave. There was an instant and fierce emotional alchemy with the exotic trees, which could not be more different from those of her homeland. That is not to say that the trees of her childhood are not worth looking at. British super-star artist David Hockney has spent the last few years painting the broad-leaved natives of Woldgate Woods, where she often played as a little girl. However, lovely as they are, Charlotte wanted to experience something different and was attracted to all things Mediterranean from a young age. A trip to Barcelona as a teenager confirmed everything she had ever imagined about living in warmer climes but it was her first encounter with palm trees which made the biggest impression. The sheer exuberance of Phoenixcanariensis, with its fountain of perfectly fringed fronds rising from a scale-covered trunk, excited her interest.

A visit to Florida followed and reinforced her attraction to these trees, as well as introducing her to the extraordinary kinetic verticals of Phoenix dactylifera and the limpid fans of majestic Washingtonia filifera. She noticed how their graphic quality was the perfect complement to the geometric forms of the local modern architecture and endless blue sky. This glamorous association was the inspiration for a textile design which won her much praise from the famous atelier Robert Vernet, in Lyon, making her the youngest of their designers ever to have such a commercial success.

If the palm trees of her youth were synonymous with liberty, adventure and glamorous exoticism, her sentiment today is altogether more profound. Her drawings express all thegraphic quality of these trees from the singularity of their trunks, (which, unlike true trees, do not increase in girth with age), to the spectacular burst of fronds at their growing tip. Many show the trees in movement: the wind catching their fan-shaped tops and reconfiguring them in a dramatic mesh of hatchings and cross-hatchings. Whether depicting single subjects, groups, or the multiplicity of the Palmery landscape, all the drawings are expressed with the same clean pencil strokes and attention to detail. It is a skill which Charlotte has worked hard to develop to the point where the work flows in what Scottish artist, George Donald, describes as a ‘wide range of beautifully expressive marks’.

For Charlotte, however, her relationship with palms is much more than skin deep and she believes that this is what the public responds to in her finished work. Her first encounter with the palms of Marrakech was a revelation with the trees being ‘like an agent of divinity’. Two years on she is still able to say: ‘everytime I see them, they touch my soul and change my mood – they take you to the still point of the turning world - which is quite something in the middle of the medina’. Some individuals have become favourites, like a group of date palms in the desert near Rissani, which, though old and stressed by the tough conditions, still stand proud and dignified - her ‘Wise Old Men’. Others have even been elevated to palm royalty, like a group of tall, handsome specimens in the Agdal, which she refers to as her ‘Princely Palms’. Whoever they are and whatever their story, the artist tries to put all of her better self into the act of drawing each one of them in the hope of doing them justice. It seems to be working as her palm trees are appreciated in this city of connoisseurs who have started to call her - Lady of the Palms.

Charlotte Royle lives in Marrakech with her partner, the Italian interiors and garden photographer, Alessio Mei. Her work can be seen at the Lawrence-Arnott Gallery - 05 24 43 05 00 and at the Villa M of interior designer Jèrôme Vermelin - 05 46 92 06 89.