Inspiration

For me, in a word, Orkney.

Initially, and ever after always, for its horizons - a sufficiency of which are sea edged - and for the ever-varying sky above the smooth-edged hills

History too, stone and hoarded, driftwood wood, mysterious and eminently practical - and totally unignorable.

These abandoned creel stones gave rise to three years' work, as did the standing stones at Brodgar, allied to the poetry of George Mackay Brown.

John W. Hedges wrote about the ancient family folk who'd once inhabited Isbister.

He, and the place itself, inspired me to write 'Edge' and illustrate it with work sprung from other Orcadian sources.

This image combines plate and print and photograph, to suggest standing stones and sea and unfathomable horizon.







And this print, one of a series exploring inner stone age cells of Skara Brae, Gurness and Rendall, references the inner chambers of Maeshowe, one of Orkney's many Neolithic tombs.

Maeshowe's walls are overlaid with Viking graffiti, here I've used dying sea-pinks from the windowsill of a Stromness cottage, where we'll be again come September.

This has been accepted for Language>Place Blog Carnival #17 whose topic is Inspiration.  Other posts can be read via this link