dominique cameron RSW

 

 

Work in progress – oil on panel – 100 x 80 cm. Day one.

Detail from painting.

 

It is  lockdown day…….? I can’t remember. I am dreaming of peatbogs, sinking in to the black butter. I decided this morning this would be the day when I would start my big bog painting. It has taken a while to summon the courage to start. Apart for the cost of paint, I have been waiting for the right day, which might sound odd, but painting days , such as these, starting days, are strangely particular, and I know on waking if it is going to be such a day. Today it was/is. Where this painting goes, I do not know, when it will be finished, I don’t know, much like everything else at the moment, so perhaps it is apposite, my bog, this day.

Mid way through this morning I walked on the painting, I wanted my feet to feel the paint- the moss, the sedge, the peat. They are now stained green, black.

Tomorrow I will continue. More drawing, walking, in paint. I’ll let you know from time to time how it is going. This is my voyage from the house, my bringing forth the nature of the moor. It is my way of being there, when I cannot.

 

Charcoal and watercolour on paper – 38 x 28 cm

 

 

Oil on wood – 12 x 11 cm.

 

 

Oil on panel – 25 x 20 cm

 

 

Oil on wood –  20 x 15 cm.

 

 

 

Oil on panel – 200 x 84 cm..

‘We have no prairies/ to slice a big sun at evening’ – Seamus Heaney ‘Bogland’.

This is my final large work of Rannoch Moor. In the next few weeks I will start on next year’s project – Glencoe. Just down the road from Rannoch the landscape changes from one of endless expanse to an ever narrowing pass, where the mountains squeeze and hold you in their grasp before realeasing you into the valley below. It is an intense experience, in ways so very different to Rannoch and a challenge I want to try and meet.

I have another trip up to Rannoch shortly to make one final work. As with all my projects it feels sad to be leaving. My connections to these places become very close and as I may have said before, the resulting work I make feel as much portrait as landscape. I hope I have done justice in some way to the vast, wild beauty that is Rannoch Moor. Traversing the Moor, one is walking on time, beneath, our history is bottomless.

 

 

(Details from painting.)

 

Charcoal and watercolour on paper – 150 x 50 cm.

 

Charcoal and watercolour on paper – 151 x 51 cm.

 

watercolour crayon on paper.

Wind roars in the tall beech trees, where willows creak and scratch. Snowdrops scatter, speckle the earth as snow showers blast through the blackened trunks of alder.