The crow trap.

Ink and charcoal on paper – 33 x 25 cm.

The farm is a complicated place of movement between birth, growth, death and decay. All of these states exist side by side, regularities of a year bring lambing, sowing, selling, harvesting and ploughing, yet these very constants are neither fixed nor certain. These rhythms are forever altered, sometimes thwarted by outside influences – weather, prices, illness, yield, mechanical failure and the general maintenance of the farm itself. This life is known and bounded by age old parameters but subject to the volatility of markets and of nature itself. The only constant is the land itself upon which all these movements happen. In some ways the land is the manuscript, where the songs are composed and notated, each year a similar tune in a different key with new sections added or redacted. Until now I was only hearing the melody, yet there are other parts integral to the existence of the farm, and they too belong in this composition.