A sense of place – Rannoch moor.

I step onto the moor, into that other world where one me stops and another I begins. I greet the lone rowan, press my cheek to its bark. First feet then face, now hand as I get out my concertina drawing book. I quickly touch the outline of hills, trees, loch, mark making this place, speaking it is this and this, and yet this and this, varying the length, weight of line and smudge, fingers pushing the dissolving crayon, moulding a sky. A language of marks emerge, sitting here, eating the sweet bilberries, smelling the eons of peat beneath, looking at the violet of the mountains, the quivering harebells against the mustards, olives, rusts and dun coloured moor. All this is noted, archived, to be later retrieved for a painting of colour, light, form and purpose. But not yet, not now. Here, now, is enough. It always is.