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| An early encounter with Little Beach Field, Penryn, 2010 |
Over Three years have passed since I last stepped foot there and a lot of life has happened ( I moved back up north and became a father). Through the confusion-haze of post MA spirals and baby induced sleep deprivation I have explored new (or rather older) ways of working. This work has up until now sat outside the 'walls' of 'Of Time in a Field', but I now see the link.
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| Shape of Little Beach Field, Soil from field on Tracing Paper, 2010 |
In the most recent work I have found myself back in close connection with stone. I found the stones that populated the soil of Little Beach to be one of the most interesting aspects of its identity. The land had been cleared, tilled and seeded, for most probably centuries, but the stones have kept coming, asserting themselves. I explored this relationship to stone in a film - Contemplating the Birth of a Field (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC7dnQE6cSA) - in which I mused over the moving of stones from the land to create the boundary that defined it as a field. It all seemed to me to start with stone - If we want the soil we have to move the stone.
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| Monolith of the Field, Little Beach, Penryn, 2011 |
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| Gathering stones, clearing the land |
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| Screen shot from Contemplating the Birth of a Field |
In this new work I am labouring over stone with paper and graphite. I am attempting to capture its physicality in the limited malleability of paper and the glistening softness of graphite. The result is of a silver, metallic, relief embossed into the paper; a homage to the subject through close attention and repetition - perhaps not too dissimilar to the waller? It is not just stone, but wood also; taking rubbings from blocks of ash from a now three year felled garden tree.
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| Tracing Time, Slate, Graphite and Bideford Black on paper |
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| Tracing Time, Ash, Graphite and Bideford Black on paper |
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| Tracing Time, Ash, Graphite and Bideford Black on paper |
They have much in common these drawings, not just with eathother, but also with the land. In the use of materials, the paper, graphite and black earth pigment (Bideford Black) they are of the earth. They are stone on wood - they are wood on wood. These drawings represent wood and stone in a way that one could not have known without the quarryman or forester / wood splitter / fire builder - they show the inside of the earth, structures locked away for millenia or the inner workings of a life reminiscent of ourselves. We also see time as it is embedded in the strata and rings of life. For now I speak of these works as Tracing Time or Touching Time. They sit within the broader project idea: Gathering.
