I'm right above the sea, how could I not be in heaven here :)  Arctic tern entertain me in the evening light, swooping and diving. The place is never silent, it's a working harbour with boats coming and going all day; constant movement. It reminds me of Lochranza, up to a point.
It's taken me till today, to settle down to work. Agan though, darkness bubbles up from within and overflows onto the page, in word and paint. 
I wonder what will come out from this residency? They usually give me a sense of release and direction, much needed.

 

This is what lies just beneath the water; another place altogether. 

We miss so much when we look.

 Just a slight shift in vision can bring a new world into view.

Scalloway and beyond

If you were a tern and just kept flying, you'd get to Iceland I think. It's far away, here. I like that and needed to feel isolated again; too many people, too much to think about, much of it needing sorting out, put in its rightful place. Shetland feels like home to me, same sense of bleakness in winter, but Arran's winter light will be stronget I suspect. I don't think I could cope well with low light for months on end. Still, it's only August :)

I like the seaweed here too, like long dreadlocks drifting in the water, just below the surface. No tv, no radio, no mobile, just myself echoing in my head. Where have I heard that before?

Wonder what I'll make? I've been digging deep in my writing today, uncomfortable revelations needing airing. That's the thing with a residency, it takes you to silent places which need the light of day to be seen properly.

I'll write more.......maybe tomorrow.....

The deeper I get into my work, the more I neglect other things of equal importance, this blog being one of them. 'Aging' is both enfuriating and compelling, being in it and of it, I'm complicit in ageism's web of seduction as I buy age defying creams. Why do I do this? who cares? who sees? Well..............I care apparently. I've been reading a lot on the subject lately, Margaret Gullette is voluble in her plea for us all to write our narratives of aging, thereby dispelling the myths which abound, the culture which spawns inner voices of inadequacy. So, today, I did a collage to see again, 'how I feel'. This time I did write the words beforehand, in my journal, assuming that they would steer the visuals. They didn't. What came out was like black tar; heavy, depressing, negative preconceptions of times past. I want them gone! Images speak volumes.

I'm about to set off for Shetland for a whole month of quiet reflection, huge seas, wind, rain and gentle light......................much like my own island home but bigger in every sense, I can't wait. My restlessness is annoying even myself today; case laid out, materials sorted, books selected, I hate being organised but need to see myself as such. I might add bits and pieces to the blog while I'm there. My mind is blank in that I have no idea what I'll feel, make, think. I hope that I'm able to leave but sense that it will be difficult to walk away, to come back down. We'll see.

here...now...

It's been a while since I last wrote anything here, but maybe it's time again.
I think I know what I'm doing; it feels right, finally, so far.

Autoethnographic inquiry through creative practice: gender, identity and place.

Sounds familiar? well, I suspect we all do it all the time, one way or another.
What's changed for me is that I'm no longer looking back, quite so much, but looking at my feet and at the horizon; I'm here, not there, this is now, not then. This is more about 'becoming' I think, rather than the one sided act of relinquishing, so something is on the move in my head. I want to make my multiple 'selves'.

How a place informs our sense of self, how an audience views us within that place, how we view the audience, who we 'become' for them and for ourselves, is any of it a tangible reality worth pursuing?

age defines

You know how when you disappear down a rabbit hole you don't see that the lights have just gone out till much later?  Well......it's taken me quite a while to find the light swtich. 50's have been and gone and now it's the 60's; my 60's that is, not yours!

As a way of trying to see inside my head (yes, I want to!) I've chosen collage as a way of visual thinking, of articulating what I can't say out loud........and it works, I think, for me, at any rate.

I spent my dreaded birthday week in the studio 'doing' collage; making, writing, reflecting, more writing, more reflecting....................you get the idea. I created 5 'visual' insights that week and then began to untangle the mesh of what I thought I was seeing. Several weeks down the line, I'm still unravelling. Therapy might be less tortuous but this is what I've chosen to do, I'm not complaining.

 I devised various strategies or 'voices' of interpretation, not all of them worked in that I seemed to be writing the same things but in a slightly different way, over and over. I tried interviewing myself, making videos of myself, I even wrote a 12 ft long scroll as part of my self analysis. This is what happens when you try to be too clever, to outsmart yourself. Your hair curls.

And then I began to make, rather than to write, to think through my fingers, literally:

Much better!

Sometimes we forget who we are are we struggle to look for ourselves.
There's a line by Jane Hirschfield as she watches herself from a distance, wondering what she would say to herself, now, would she be angry, reproachful, compassionate?:

                                       'I whose choices made her what she will be'.

I'm doing that now with these collages, it's driving me nuts but I can't stop.
So what am I saying here, what's the point of this ramble?
Well, maybe nothing more than to remind myself that I'm still here, despite it all. I'll keep going.
            

book making

This weekend I made a little Blurb book from some of the images created during my residency at the Maclaurin Galleries, Ayr, last December. It was a good week, I rediscovered my interest in simple digital photography; it's such a versatile medium, allowing all manner of perspectives to surface just by a click of the mouse. I veered away from it some years ago, finding its seduction irritating. I know that sounds contradictory, but as an artist, I like to touch what I'm creating, I like to encounter serendipity, surprises, mistakes; the human stuff that software can't do. But, during the residency I found the digital tools to be just what I needed to express the my response to the whole place; the silence, the shadows, the light, the dark.........it all slotted into place in my PC. I used 3 different digital cameras, of varying resolutions, from 72 dpi up to 300 dpi; each presented a subtle viewpoint, revealing surprisingly varied results.
Here are a few to give a flavour of what I mean.

I put a link on my Facebook page if anyone would like a preview of the book.

thinking through collage

It was a difficult year; 2011, glad it's over and a new direction is emerging out of the mist. I spent most of the Xmas break doing collage; as a way of thinking through 'making'. It's fascinating what it reveals, relatively painlessly though very thoroughly, once you start to unravel it all.
Usually I work with my own small creations within a collage but this time I decided to go with 'ready made' images from the web, wanting to see the possible differences in what eventually developed on the page. I'm still reflecting on all of this, there's so much to think about. here are some of the visual thoughts which I'm still working on:

The ambiguity of metaphor is comforting, it distances me from an inner truth which is difficult to look at, thus allowing for multiple interpretations over time. I've been avoiding gender in all of this but now see that it's here, now and demanding my attention through its insistent 'voice'.