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

Making sense of place

Take paper pastels chalk and pencils favourite fine point brushes jar of water and some watercolour paint.

Perhaps choose music (Maxwell Davies’ ‘Runes’:  jagged spiky spacious, mystery and awe) or recording of Orcadian voices (fishermen or poets:  rhythms rising falling flowing lilting laughing interwoven soft and story spinning)


Empty mind think only of the place.


Mentally assemble such essentials as stark clarity of edges, flat solidity of bedrock, horizontals and the history of bones, consider stone-told evidence of man’s long ago existence piled and dug and scratched and shadows cast from slabs now stood.


Begin with what already learnt what quality of line how tremulous how strong the shapes what subtlety what strength the colours.


Begin.


Pressure thinness side or point wide sweep or narrow delineation pause tentative too tentative feel add another colour solid shape again transparent over wash highlight with pencil by now not thinking feeling coming automatic instinct taking over fingers dancing lightly applying playing blending risking hesitating scribbling blurring stand back exaggerate a little here and there some whiteness, lightness, tiny brush just dipped and dabbed in shallow water allowed to puddle slightly left to rest.


And look again and think    and pause    go slowly now      some parts seen as too precious to disturb to risk but risk so often makes the difference between what is  fine and what makes it more than exactly and surprisingly just right.


Slow again    stand back    look more    wait for a claim for more   when all is silent then can call it done.


Done.





‘Essence 1’ (mixed media on paper, 11½ x 8") depicts a sense, a distillation of a particular place, a place of importance to me.   Not to tell me what it looks like so much as describe how being there makes me feel.   In making this there is the hope that it will speak to others, that they might recognise the essence of their own place of importance.   Seamus Heaney explained it better in describing Felim Egan’s work as ‘manifesting the exquisite ache which the physical world induces’