dominique cameron RSW

 

 

Montrose football ground . I meet Fred filling in potholes in the carpark. He tells me about the club and the celebrations last season when they won the play off which meant they avoided relegation. I suggest Montrose might be in the first division. He laughs. No, apparently not. Still their ticket prices are very good and I say I will come, having enjoyed my visit to Tannadice. He screws up his face and I realise I get that wrong too – mentioning Dundee Utd. So much to learn about football.

Walking down a vennel I had overlooked I come across a woman sitting in her garden with a large reptile lying on her chest. I say hello and ask her what it is. A dragon she replies. She is called Puff. (  brilliant,of course ) I ask if I can stroke her and surprisingly its belly is soft and warm to touch. Apparently the suns UV rays are better than a lamp. I guess so. Her owner is Nancy a photographer of 41 years – portraits and weddings. She is on her lunch break so I leave her and Puff to sunbathe on a Scottish Thursday in February.

 

The Haven, seafarers centre, Meridian Street, Montrose.

 

My painting ‘Summer, garden’, has been selected for the Royal Institute of painters in water colour exhibition at the Mall Galleries, London. The exhibition opens on Wednesday 6th April  – Saturday 16th April.

Very exciting !

 

‘The Hoosie’ cafe at the end of my line. Mixed media on paper.

 

Mixed media on paper – Montrose Review February 4th 2016.

 

Sitting in the car working out my route on the map. The sky is a damp sheet of grey, darker toward the west. Walk.

I chat to Flo in the public loos about her work. She plays country and western music, the speakers piping it into the ladies and gents. The flower arrangements are beautiful, and she tells me I should see the place at Christmas. Flo has just been awarded toilet attendent of the year 2016. We smile.

Finding my way down Orange Lane I come across an Oxfam shop and spy some Midwinter 1960’s crockery in the window in a very lovely blue. I go in and ask Doris what is the best thing about Montrose and a customer yells ‘ The road oot a’ here’. Everyone laughs. I buy my found treasure, promising to come back and buy the sauce boat . Hmm….

Walk, rain, library. I watch a man on the microfiche machine scrolling through the pages of the Montrose Review. He has done this before. He looks efficient and seems to know what he is looking for. Unlike me. But then, what I find, is it. Walking a line means I have to face everything with the same curiosity. This is the interest, and the challenge of the imposed parameter.

 

 

 

 

 

From a series of photographs for Dighty poetry group taken yesterday. A big thankyou for everyone’s patience. An anthology of the poets work will be published shortly. Here is my contribution which came about from a particular walk a winter morning last year, when I came across an airman’s type jacket frozen to a wire fence, and a torn up Christmas card which read ‘To Lisa and the wee man’. I had been reading about a German airman who had been captured and paraded through the town. He was apparently exceedingly tall. A friends Aunty told me that during the war her Dad had buried an old bread van in the garden as an air raid shelter for the family complete with bunkbeds. I was also investigating the circuses and travelling shows that would come to Dundee. This piece came from those beginnings.

 

Caravans.

 

On the edge of town

a bone black fineness of winter air

licks the salty rime at the lip of last tide.

Bridge pilings punctuate the slaked slip clay

sooking the river toward the sea.

The small terrace of brick houses,

backing up the hill,

tell stories to

soft morning rolls of babies, tucked up in the grocers van.

Wash day legs give up to floral loose covers,

peonies and roses.

 

Still.

 

Beyond stiffened boiler suits forgotten on the line,

the tackety boot lane opens out onto waste ground,

common grounds for

stories and secrets, promises and plans.

Ragwort,

bindweed,

nettles.

 

Waiting.

 

With quickening pinched toes, blue knees,

rattly grin,

that two day old bruise, deepening, darkening, at once,

now,

bring him,

laughing,

 

magicking,

birling, swirling, starry lights,

diesel, fried onions, burnt sugar.

 

All seven feet tall in his showmans breeks,

yelling scream if you wanna go

somewhere,

anywhere,

from here.

Head thrown back, blinking the colours away.

 

All seven feet tall with his brylcreemed hair.

Lamp black,

lunar black,

crow black.

The token he gave only good for a ride,

sorry ma wee lass.

 

Rest.

 

The gennies tut as they quietly cool,

bulbs dim.

The uncoupling of parts.

 

Early morning sees a nippit wind,

funnels the soor smell of your breath.

A whale back sky brings word from the north,

whips the clay slaked water as it heaves upstream,

on its way,

 

passing through.

 

 

 

First drawing for Wall projects exhibition in Montrose. Text from last weeks Montrose Review, January 28th, acrylic, gesso, charcoal and conte on paper.

 

I spent my first day in Montrose, wandering and sleuthing my way around. I surprised a sleeping shag on the beach, and asked the toilet attendant what is the best thing about Montrose ? It felt as if I had asked her a very personal question. The steeple she answered nervously.  I left thinking there must be more, and I walked and found interesting street names, dark, narrow closes off the High Street, the abandoned warehouses of a global trading port and a wonderful Victorian museum. These are some of their finds –

An ear bone of a Greenland whale, and Russian birch bark shoes. A man o’war ship made of bone, from French prisoners of war. A message in a bottle -‘We ate the dog, three men left alive, have mercy on our souls, Amen’.

Treasures.  I shall return, to draw .