Category: Journal

 

Charcoal and acrylic on paper.

 

 

Sketch from this mornings walk in the woods.

 

 

(detail)

 

150 x 60 cm – charcoal, acrylic and earth on paper.

The first leaves start to fall as I am drawing.

 

‘It doesn’t look too promising’, says a woman on the bus. I think she means the day not her life. A woman shouts, ‘ ….tell Jim the weddin’s aff….’ and roars with laughter. Flocks of yellow cranes at the dockside in Methil. Paintwork bodyshops and hair salons. A girl on her phone says she’ll be late for her interview. She rolls another cigarette. A man in his allotment sits smoking a pipe. I think of my dad and the rolling of tobacco in the palms of his hands, the woody dark sweet smell of it. A husband patiently explains the rules of sudoku to the woman who thought the day none too bright. She asks ‘…..so why can’t I put a four there ?’ He explains again. ….’But why…..?’. She stops mid-sentence, loses interest and turns to look out of the window. She’s thinking she should have brought an umbrella.

 

 

110 x 69cm – charcoal, acrylic and earth on paper.

According to Lindsay Baker in an article for the BBC ‘Shinrin- yoku’ is the Japanese term for ‘taking in the forest’ or ‘forest bathing’. It is currently back in fashion as a popular type of preventative health care and healing in Japanese medicine.

 

The smell hits you and the sight and sound of thousands of birds. Blue eyed gannets, diving, gliding, circling, coming into land. Mud, shit, rock. That is all. The birds bring seaweed for their nests , housekeeping, tidying. Black tipped winged white ghosts shrieking, cackling. Derelict buildings, once a prison, hell on earth. An extraordinary place. Volcanic columns of rock rising vertically from the seabed –  a density of darkest matter, its counterpoint the fragility of flighted snow white birds clouding this place with light and life. A wonder. I wash my brushes in the sea and get a soaking.

 

Walking along the busy road the whoosh of passing cars stirs the air and diesel fumes catch in the back of my throat. I turn hurriedly off into the woods. Everything falls – the light, the temperature, my heart rate. It is hard to write about this place, this space that is chaotic, dense, awkward. A little like the inside of my own head. Perhaps that is why. In the city the movement, conversation and striking juxtapositions of buildings and people allow for a deflection of the self. Here it is me and the trees and the undergrowth and the burn. Here is a language I have not yet grasped save the odd tourist phrase – ‘It is very green’, or ‘Where is my car ?’ So I fear it might take some time of coming back, of not just seeing, but being, here in this difficult space and, in the meantime my paintings and drawings will tell their own side of the story.

 

Mixed media on paper – 150cm x 65cm

 

 

150cm x 60 cm – mixed media on paper. A painting executed in the pouring rain under the canopy of an old oak tree. I did not want to return having made no drawing so set to and in the very wet conditions produced a piece that certainly reflected the weather this morning. With no hope of it drying I carefully rolled up the paper and hoped for the best. The painting survived remarkably well, less so my sodden trainers….

 

 (detail)