Whitfield flats. Constable clouds and banks of willow herb. Dockweed seeding. Pine trees, tarmac and broken street lighting. A place that is a memory of me as a young child wandering through the estates, away from the new build houses, to the wild edges of home.
Friday morning at the end of July.
Blaw Bye
Iron bridge junction
Wind in the trees. Two boys come and watch me draw. ‘Thats braw. Eh’m doing art at school and I want tae go tae Dundee art school’, said one. The other boy said, Â ‘Nah, its footba’ fae me, jist footba’. They grin and run off. I chat to a woman about the place getting cleaned up and a council man walks by picking up the rubbish wondering what there is to draw here. Then a man comes over and tells me of his childhood spent playing at the burn, about his own artwork and hyper dimensional torsion field physics (I had to write that one down ). That was unexpected.
pylon
Bus shelter, cool, cloudy Thursday morning. The air is ruffled by passing lorries so I hastily stick down my drawing. Three little girls all dressed in pink. A boy stares at the drawing critically for a long time and walks on. Meet a woman from Edinburgh. She fell in love and had moved to Monifieth. Her son was doing a PhD in Patent Law. Number 15 buses every 10 minutes into the city centre. They stop, thinking I want to get on and I point to the paper stuck on the bus shelter walls. I smile apologetically. Man on a skateboard, dogs and bikes along the burn. Graffiti under the bridge.
Summer
knigfisher blues
A cool, sun in and out of the clouds morning. Feeling alone but I forget myself in drawing. Meet a man who showed me pictures of the kingfisher on the burn and told me about the wild mink and Travellers at the back of Sainsburys. Neither appeared welcome. Had some thoughts about an outdoor experimental drawing class – wondering if anyone would be interested….? A quiet, thoughtful morning.
Guerilla golfing
This morning was spent building a nine hole golf course in the woods at the back of Iceland. We had pallets to tee off from and empty paint tins for holes. It sounds rubbish but it is brilliant. We played a few of the holes, Stuart being crowned champion, with myself a close second  – not sure how ! Anyway, its there for anyone to find and see if they can figure it out. Theres talk of an annual Dighty Cup, but then again……
Jane, Stuart, Alistair, Catherine, Joe, Ryan and Trev.













