Month: July 2015

I was thinking about Orkney this afternoon and the beach where I used to live. This is a memory of rain showers coming in from the west towards the beach.

This morning at Dighty was spent talking about moving house, the perils of bridging loans, giant hogweed, biting the heads off worms, using willow herb stalks as spears and arrows, asking where the police station is in Dundee to be told its next to the courts – the assumption was I would know…. (!), looking for frogs, getting 4 numbers on the lottery, watching funny stuff about repellent paint on youtube, finding 50p, and sitting in a wheel barrow smoking a fag  – not me !

Whitfield flats. Constable clouds and banks of willow herb. Dockweed seeding. Pine trees, tarmac and broken street lighting. A place that is a memory of me as a young child wandering through the estates, away from the new build houses, to the wild edges of home.

Dog shit bin, iron bridge junction. Summer smells of grass and plants I don’t know the name of. My only companions are the odd dog sniffing my paper and cyclists whizzing by,making me jump every time they pass. Another shopping trolley in the burn.

‘Blaw Bye’   mixed media on wood 30x20cm

Wind in the trees. Two boys come and watch me draw. ‘Thats braw. Eh’m doing art at school and I want tae go tae Dundee art school’, said one. The other boy said,  ‘Nah, its footba’ fae me, jist footba’. They grin and run off. I chat to a woman about the place getting cleaned up and a council man walks by picking up the rubbish wondering what there is to draw here. Then a man comes over and tells me of his childhood spent playing at the burn, about his own artwork and hyper dimensional torsion field physics (I had to write that one down ). That was unexpected.

Bus shelter, cool, cloudy Thursday morning. The air is ruffled by passing lorries so I hastily stick down my drawing. Three little girls all dressed in pink. A boy stares at the drawing critically for a long time and walks on. Meet a woman from Edinburgh. She fell in love and had moved to Monifieth. Her son was doing a PhD in Patent Law. Number 15 buses every 10 minutes into the city centre. They stop, thinking I want to get on and I point to the paper stuck on the bus shelter walls. I smile apologetically. Man on a skateboard, dogs and bikes along the burn. Graffiti under the bridge.

Greetie, dreep, a morning smirr. Mixed media on wood. 30x20cm

frogs and swallows and brown butterflies in the afternoon sun.

A cool, sun in and out of the clouds morning. Feeling alone but I forget myself in drawing. Meet a man who showed me pictures of the kingfisher on the burn and told me about the wild mink and Travellers at the back of Sainsburys. Neither appeared welcome. Had some thoughts about an outdoor experimental drawing class – wondering if anyone would be interested….? A quiet, thoughtful morning.

This morning was spent building a nine hole golf course in the woods at the back of Iceland. We had pallets to tee off from and empty paint tins for holes. It sounds rubbish but it is brilliant. We played a few of the holes, Stuart being crowned champion, with myself a close second  – not sure how ! Anyway, its there for anyone to find and see if they can figure it out. Theres talk of an annual Dighty Cup, but then again……

   

Jane, Stuart, Alistair, Catherine, Joe, Ryan and Trev.