Category: Journal

 

 

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.

 

 

Charcoal and ink on paper -34 x 29 cm.

 

 

 

 

 

Mixed media on paper – 28 x 19cm.

 

 

Mixed media on paper 103 x 70 cm.

 

 

 

 

Rain, wind in the north. Looking out to the garden. Ink and pastel on paper.

 

 

Charcoal on paper .

Swathes of wild garlic have turned the woodland floor emerald. A red squirrel bounces from tree to tree. The water is high in the burn, the current pushing against my legs as I wade across. For a few moments the sun comes out turning fallen beech leaves golden. A dead crow, its wings outstretched. A small creeping plant has leaves the colour of newborn mice, the sort of pink that is vulnerable, pulsing. I paint but my heart is failing. The wind picks up the paper and it hits me in the face. Maybe its time to call it a day. Washing my brushes in the burn I drop one and watch it float downstream. I pack up and walk back along the track, pausing to draw my way home.

 

 

Ink and acrylic on paper – 35 x 42 cm

 

Ink on paper  – 60 x 20 cm.

My time spent drawing this wood is starting to come to an end. Once I get back from Italy I only have a couple of weeks to get all the images and text ready for the catalogue which I am making with Iain Sargeant and Alan from Fidra . So I am feeling a little reluctant to let go of this space, which of course I will visit again but not in the same way. It is difficult to say how exactly a landscape changes with the intensity of a gaze required to try and articulate what this space is, what it means and how it feels. Over the months this place has become another of my homes, somewhere I have made my own. I have shown some family and friends where I work, but mostly, I have been here alone. I have a slim understanding of how this place works and like a person I understand its moods brought by the seasons and changing weather. This wood has been a friend and I shall miss it .