Good things come to those who wait….

It has been slow, but finally this relatively small painting is finished. Started earlier in the summer with a month-long trip that involved considerable staring out to the horizon on the north Atlantic seas around Orkney, and finished on our return.

Although the idea for the work was essentially in place before the journey north a number of combinations of ideas and occurrences are playing their part in this painting and the steps on to the subsequent pieces now being developed. The countless watercolours made of the Orcadian landscape and coast, the ever-present geometry of the horizon so present around the sea and a treeless landscape. Then there was the visit to an exhibition of Laura Drever’s work at the Pier Arts Centre in Stromness. Whilst her work is considerably less geometric than mine, we share landscape interests and a surprisingly similar way of layering imagery up.

For me the work hints and opens the door further on the series of pieces I’ve been developing since the start of the year. More subtle and sensitive that the brasher and brighter paintings from the spring. More to follow……

Drawing on/for memories

I ended the last school year making a series of drawings of the school building where I work.  The idea was to make a series of images that may turn out to be useful for the forthcoming year, a vague plan I have for a series of lessons.  As it turned out the series of three drawings became combined to make a card I gave to a few departing colleagues as a memory of what they are leaving behind as they move on to other things……(any colleagues who have moved on to other things, and I didn’t get as far as dropping a card in your pigeon hole, if you’d like one let me know, I’d be more than happy to send one through….pure disorganisation at the end of the year!)  The fact that our school will be celebrating its 75th anniversary gives the ink and wash drawings an extra meaning perhaps.

I’ve subsequently spent the summer holidays travelling around Orkney, the island group between the Scottish mainland and Shetland.  Here too I have spent my time recording, documenting, and committing to memory the world around me in an extensive series of watercolours and drawings.  The activity makes me look hard, experiment a bit with what I can achieve on a small page of my notebook with a very limited set of artistic tools.  It is a good exercise, but above all, it is a fantastic way to record the experience of travel and to be able to return to it in the future.