A Right Dyke

Dry stane dykes are a prominent feature of the Scottish landscape.  This one was at the edge of a farm shop car park.

Have a closer look

Lichen is a measure of the purity of the air; clearly, here, the air is clear and good, despite being relatvely close to Edinburgh.  I love the textures of a dry stane dyke, and would have loved to have learned how to do it.  That's not likely to happen now, of course.   

I've had a thing about walls, and stone in general, for many years.  I find them fascinating.  The softness of these Scottish dykes contrast beautifully with the flint walls of Norfolk, which I find, have a much harder texture, and are more angular        .

To me, though, they share more than they contrast.  There are miniature stories in each wall; the marks on each individual stone, and the way they interact together.  Gorgeous.

The Poppy Photo

For once, the image I'm talking about today wasn't taken by me.  I very rarely use other peoples' photographs, but this one is a definite exception to the rule, .  It was taken by my friend Margaret McLaren, and I'm sure you'll agree, it's very beautiful.  Margaret has kindly given her permission to share the image with you.

Margaret has caught the moment perfectly.  I saw this image first thing this morning on my FB feed, and felt the need to respond to it, other than just raving about it.  So I wrote this haiku :

Poppyland at rest

           bathed by the setting sun

crimson to fuchsia

I don't think the poem is anything like the beauty of the image, but that's okay.  What it does, though, is to remind me of the beauty of the image, and that's enough.  When I look at the image, I'm reminded of pictures of poppies that I have taken over the years, like this one, places where I have seen poppies, walks in the country, all sorts of memories triggered by this one image.

This isn't the first time I've written about poppies, either; there's a post here, and another haiku.

The haiku I wrote for the photograph, though, has its own allusions, for me, at least.  Mostly, it reflects Margaret's image...but the word Poppylands comes from my childhood.  I was in a choir, as a child, and we put on a show every year....and one year, I was the Princess of Poppyland.  It's an odd reference, really, doesn't sit with the image itself, but it is hugely personal, and has meaning for me, and nobody else.  And that's the thing about images; if we allow them to, we can find all sorts of allusions to all sorts of things, memories, ideas, dreams.  

I'm a visual artist, but I find that poetry and writing in general help me to access my visually creative side.  Writing is very direct; I'll often write about something I'm contemplating making work about, to explore it.  Mostly I'll write in haiku, short and disciplined; sometimes, though, I'll write text.  I tend not to tell stories, but rather to write descriptively, write down what I see and what it makes me think of.  That process usually produces several ideas.  Were I writing about Margaret's image, I'd be writing about a wide range of things.  The first thing that draws me in is the colours and the light; working in those colours would be an interesting thing to do...particularly in abstract.  There's the structure and balance of the image, which is remarkable in itself.  It could be used directly to produce a representational textile image, or printed off as is, and stitched into.  The shape of the tree, and the way it sits slightly off centre, the relationship it has with the position of the setting sun...all of these things could be explored.  And then there are the poppies themselves, so many of them, so beautiful, so fragile.  They memorialise the war dead of so many nations, and yet are full of life for their incredibly short existences.  

All of that, and far more, from one beautiful image.  People talk about creative blocks, but I have never been a great believer in them.  'Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working', Picasso said, and he was right.  One way of making sure you have more ideas than you can comfortably deal with, is to stop worrying about creative blocks, or the muse (who doesn't really exist, trust me), and to sit down with a photograph or other image, and really look at it.  Let it tell you stories, and write those stories down.  Those stories are really ideas: let them come, and allow yourself to explore them however you wish.  Better still, take your phone or camera out with you into the natural world, go for a walk and see what you can find...and then use the photographs you take as the basis for new work.  Or go to a public gallery, sit in front of a painting and really look at it.  Take notes.  You know you want to...have fun!

So Many Ideas...

so little energy... so how to choose?  Good question.  There isn't a right way to do this...I tend to go with a combination of what my gut tells me is important, and what kind of technique I feel like using at the time, and which fits with the theme.  So, for me, I suppose, work roughly divides into two categories;  experimental and expressive.  Experimental is all about the technique, really; the theme comes second.  Expressive is about having something to say, and finding a way to say it; the theme dominates, and the technique is subservient.  The latter, for me, is the real work; the former, though, can inform and feed that real work, encourage it to develop. 

This, the first of the ME pieces, is a classic example of expressive.  I have a theme, the way ME affects my life, and I'm making work that explores that, through metaphor and hidden meanings.  I already know what the second piece in this series will look like, have bought the base fabric, a deep grey, and now need to do some experimental work with the cloth, to see if my original thoughts on what to do and how to do it, are actually possible.  So, as you can see, the two categories are very loose; they interact.  I usually don't know if a piece is expressive or experimental until I'm half way through it.   What do I mean by that?  Well... lots of artists make sketches and trial pieces; not me.  Everything I make is intended as a finished piece, not as a sketch, although I do finish things, sometimes, and think, ok, that's a sketch.  That's about process, more than anything.  It's why, although I have a sketchbook, I don't create fully fledged artist's sketchbooks as, for example, for City and Guilds.  I work things out on the piece, not in the sketchbook.  I might take notes, to remind myself of what I did, but I don't work out what I'm going to do in the book, first.  I feel that stifles spontaneity, and spontaneity to me is an essential part of my process.  

Experimental, though, is slightly different.  Experimental is usually answering a particular question, such as 'what will happen if I just...'.  Lots of my work evolves from questions like those.  Often they arise when making an expressive piece, and lead to a series within that expressive theme.  If not, then that question may lead to a different series of expressive work, with a different theme.  I'm not doing much in the way of experimental at present; rather, I'm finishing off bits and pieces that I started in the rental, utilitarian pieces, like a cushion for Cara and a small quilt for my sister's dog.    Though 'Flow' was an experimental piece,  

an experiment with constructed cloth, something that has been on my mind for a number of years.  This one had been put together differently to the other constructed cloth I'd made, and the stitch was also different.  So, as well as the reasons I had for making the piece, which I described here, there was a whole raft of experimental thinking going on, testing of hypotheses.  Worked fairly well.

I try to stick with themes.  The ME pieces need to be made, because the ideas are there, but also because I need to work through my feelings about the illness, and come to some sort of conclusion.  I don't perceive it as therapy, and I hope above hope that they are not seen as pieces only made to make me feel better, because I think that attitude diminishes them, and me, somehow.  I feel the same about ME as I did about depression, still do, come to think of it....that something positive has to come out of all this darkness.  I have a real interest in trees and flowers.  I can't really see myself making representational floral or tree pieces; however, I am developing something based on another piece I made recently, an example of an experimental piece being a catalyst for an expressive piece (I'll talk about that tomorrow).  And then there's the fun stuff, the stuff like Cara's cushion, that will give someone else pleasure, and I'll enjoy making them.

I'm not sure if I'm making a lot of sense at a thought level, but I've just read this over, and it feels at an emotional level to be a reasonable explanation of what's important for me to make just now... basically, meaning comes first, then theme. then everything else fits in behind.  

Developing Ideas.

I said yesterday I'd talk about how I might use some of the images I took at Callender Park, so I'm going to talk about two of them, specifically.  The first is a rhododendron; there were a lot of rhododendron bushes, and a happy family clustered in front of them, so I couldn't take a range of photographs as  I would otherwise have done.  I did, however, get up close and personal with this one, at the end of the group.

This is the photograph I took, uncropped, au naturel, as it were.  I like the colours, the variation, the texture implied in those petals.  I thought it might be fun to tweak the image a bit...so...

Loud, man, loud!  I wanted to take a look at the way the colour is grouped, so fiddled a bit with the settings, to produce this... I rather like it, though I could live without the white, and could have done something about it, I suppose, but given this is a reference photograph, I let it be.  Besides, I love the semi abstract shapes that are suggested around those white patches.  It would be interesting to do a monoprint based on these shapes, or possibly an applique.  Finally,

Looks very similar to the first one, except... I've fiddled around with the colour intensity and the amount of contrast, to show up the texture a bit more.  Again, the shapes of the flowers are shown quite clearly in this image, good for applique reference, or painting, for that matter.  Flowers change almost moment to moment, so drawing from reference photographs seems a reasonable thing to do.

My eye was caught by lots of things in the park; the second one I'll discuss here, is a section of the wall of the main house.

This was cropped from one of the images I took yesterday.  I didn't particularly want to get up close and personal, so it was taken from a distance; often I'll photograph individual stones, or groups of stones, if I find them interesting.  I've always been interested in stone walls; that interest grew in Norfolk, with the incredible flint buildings there (I've talked about them on this blog before).  I like the variation in colour, texture and shape in this.  I photographed it because it struck me that it would make an interesting basis for a quilt.

So, once more, I played around with this image, cropping it again and playing with the intensity of the colour.  

Not a lot to choose between the two images, but when you look at this third one...

There's a distinct difference; much stronger colours, more contrast.  What this exercise has done for me, is to suggest how a series of quilts might develop 'about' walls.  I've never been interested in brick walls, because of their regular nature (the reason I don't make patchwork quilts is my dislike of regular pattern).  Taking a wall like this one as a template of sorts for a series of pieces, but varying types of fabric and gradually turning up the visual volume, as I've done in these photographs, would be an interesting way of exploring this form, as well as providing a challenge.  A bit like a crazy quilt, but in a far more regular form.

Will I ever get round to either of these possibilities, or any of the others I found at Callendar Park?  I don't know, to be honest.  My energy is limited, and there are plenty more ideas where they came from... I'll talk about choosing an idea to work with, tomorrow.

Embrace The Unexpected.

On Friday, I got a call from my son, inviting me out to lunch with him and his daughter, Cara.  Never one to say no to a meal, and in such good company, off I went.  I came back with a couple of unexpected treasures.  They probably wouldn't qualify as treasures for anyone else, admittedly...but...
Here's the first :

Cara had a drink in a bottle; this is the lid.  It's textured; the ribs stick out.  I think it might well make a dinky little stamp.  Actually, scaled up and perhaps tinkered with a little, it would make an interesting lino cut.  A flower, maybe, or a sunburst.  Something to contemplate.

After the meal, we sat outside so that Cara could play on the equipment in the garden.  There was another family there, and a little girl gave Andrew and I each a pine cone.  Andrew was a bit bemused, I think, but I was pleased...

Not a great photograph, I'm afraid, but you get the drift... I love the way it resembles a rose.  The texture is amazing, partly its own, partly due to lichen growth.  It's one of these things that is perfect both of itself and in what it suggests. 

Where do I get my ideas from?  Absolutely everywhere.  All that is really necessary is to recognise things both for what they are, and for what they might become.