Month: June 2018

 

Oil on wood – 8 x 10 inch.

 

Dust rises walking along the track. Ragged robin in the ditches, sparrows jostling, clyping in the hedgerows while a thin old black cat slinks in between the barley. The sun is already hot and the the cumulus clouds bounce their way along pushed by the bright gusty winds from the north. A field further along sways a sea of green gold wheat that  folds and bends, rises and falls . With the leaves in the full sailed trees it sounds of waves ssshhhing their way up a shingle beach.

I make a wee film of the field and something in me thinks I am starting to understand a little of this landscape. It is going to take a long time of repetition, of sitting, looking, drawing, painting, filming and writing before I cam claim to know the farm but it is early days and I am on the road. I am going to attempt to write more too, I feel this place requires an extended process of thought, the ways in which people and nature co-exist with the landscape, and my own reflections on walking, seeing and understanding. I will share some of my memories and thoughts.

This small memory of a field is a good place to start.

 

 

 

 

Sun flitting , wind strengthening from the west. Ian tells me about the fields, how many and whats growing at the moment. I walk up the track beside the sheep and young bullocks, who follow me and watch as I make a pencil sketch of the view to the west. A lamb gets its head stuck in the wire fence. I can’t free it so report back with the news. The turbines on the top of the hill are monsters, their short sharp breaths carving the air into ribbons. Swallows whip past my face causing me to start. I spot a black sheep in the field below the farmhouse, walk on. Sitting in a field of barley I paint a line of trees on the skyline with my fingers – I forgot to bring any brushes…

 

 

 

A silver rain cloaks the coast as it slips into evening. Fishing boats steam from the harbour mouth to grounds where the shoals dart, flash, switch; weaving their own nets,  to catch the last embers of light from days end.

 

 

 

Today’s forecast – windy, very windy. Definitely a painting day so headed out to Fife Ness with big paper to try and record something of the sea. Even weighted down with stones the paper kept flying away either down the beach on in my face. Not laughing three hours later….. However a fabulous afternoon, and the finished painting looks a bit battered around the edges as I did walking back over the golf course not making eye contact with the golfers who probably had their own thoughts on how I looked .

 

Acrylic and charcoal on paper – 140 x 60 cm.

 

 

Bees woozy on the hawthorns mortal scent. Sheeps wool caught on its spiky armour, tokens of devotion for Aphrodite.

 

Ink on paper 76 x 56 cm.

 

Mixed media on paper -114 x 56 cm.

A warm breeze and bright sun this morning looking over the Forth to North Berwick Law. A hare sits on the track, its ears twitching. Swallows swoop low over the water and  hawthorn blossom so full the branches are bent double. Sheep’s wool caught on the bark of  Scots Pines. Fish rise, a dragonfly blue and a redstart sings high in a tree.

 

 

Cool east wind ripples across the water, the grasses quiver in the margins.

Mixed media on paper – 84 x 58 cm.