River.

Oil on wood – 25 x 20 cm.

An ebb tide channels the water, pulling itself to a sea it knows only in its deepest briny dreams. Small burns trickle from the fields, draining hither and thither, eel curved gullies through the slick, shiny banks of mud. Reed beds like whale baleen sift the flotsam, railway sleepers and trees remain trapped in their bone yards from a hundred years of winters. We meet Daniel on the hunt for rare bricks. He tells us about the old swing bridge, munition stores from two world wars and the old blue crane on the jetty, long ago abandoned on the far side of the river. His enthusiasm for this landscape is vital and engaging. A hare sprints across an open field. Stirling rises in the distance, guarding the entrance to the mountains of the west. At the river’s edge reeds crackle in the brittle winter sun, a shiver of a rising tide returns.