Atomic Doric, Year of Scotland in Nature at Woodend Barn, Banchory

Recently I had a beautiful opportunity in Glen Tanar, Royal Deeside. (www.glentanar.co.uk)
I was invited to do a short residency by Woodend Barn Banchory, as part of their Year of Natural Scotland project, Atomic Doric. A project which takes a look at the people and natural spaces that make Aberdeenshire so special. (www.woodendbarn.com)
The location was stunning, we forget just how amazing our small country looks, the varied landscapes, tones and textures of our natural world. I gave an out of doors workshop on making natural paintbrushes from found materials and will be creating a piece of work in response to my stay, which will be exhibited at Woodend Barn and Glen Tanar Visitors Centre later this year.

What struck me more than anything else, was................tree bark. Obvious, maybe, but until you get up close to these wonderful surfaces, their real beauty is seen en masse rather than as potential homes for tiny creatures, offering protection from predators and the weather. The work I create will hopefully reflect this sense subtle containment.

Meanwhile, here are some images from my stay there and thanks to all who made this possible, I really appreciated the space away to just breathe, look and imagine.

An excellent few days! I must go back up there sometime, so much to see, so well cared for, the locals are lucky to have such a wonderful place right on their doorstep. I met some lovely folk up there, out walking, enhancing their sense of wellbeing in Nature. The Rangers were great; helpful, enthusiastic and very knowledgable about the area and its history. They made some good natural paintbrushes too!

time passing

I haven't felt like writing in the blog; too much internalising going on I expect, but I have been busy in the studio. Teaching fills head space so working when energy allows and ideas flow, seems to work best for me.

These two were done in March, when I sensed that I wanted to use a familiar image to visualise my thinking on the research. The doll's head has significance for me in that it embodies a great deal of how I see my life evolving. 

More work followed shortly afterwards, again, using the doll's head. What I find interesting about working this way; intuitively, is the element of surprise I feel when standing back and just looking at what emerges.

More work followed, again, emergent identities stare back at me from the page. In June I created this collage, it developed from this image but maybe this works best as it's clear-cut, at least for me. Using the doll's body was important, without the head to distract me.

In July, life took on another sense of direction, one where deeply held convictions surfaced in the work I created, none of it comfortable. I decided to actually make some heads, have them standing in a group, inter-connecting, like voices.

 And finally to now, with this work, in paper and old lace, maybe still in the making, I'm not sure yet.

I don't know where this is going, but the 'head' is now an entity in its own right, outwith my direction. This is new for me, not just working figuratively but watching from outside myself, of myself.

Flip sides

I like using my Flip, the resolution is not so good but sometimes the stills reveal a great deal unseen by the 'talking eye'. (I tend to ramble into my Flip as I make short videos)
This week, I felt very unsettled, restless, nervy and over anxious, so I did what I usually do; went for a long beach walk. Freezing day, too cold to stand and make steady video images, so instead, I talked to myself as I walked and videod the beach; deserted thankfully.

I've been wanting to create something which I felt represented the changes I sense I'm undergoing just now and have been since Shetland. Impossible to put into words but maybe possible with images. So I tried, with varying degrees of success. I've spent 3 days on these images; stills from the video itself and it's not quite there yet. I'll persevere. They make sense to me at any rate.

 They embody the layers of self(ves), caught within a formal structure, some are disintegrating while others are reforming. Lines always play a part in my work, as connectors. They're here again.

Caol

Caol     cold     clear

I spent the day up here on a visit to Room 13, ( http://room13international.org/) to tap into their philosophy and feel energised. This is pretty much what I wrote as I went a walk along the beach.

Familiar wanderings, asking that same question, ‘could I live here?’

Sad council houses smelling of coal. Ask a runner beside his spotless, sleek, black BMW, of his life here; an out of work gamekeeper who likes the life. I never realised gamekeepers could be out of work surrounded by mountains and lochs.

Small, untidy shops with locals rushing in; there’s a hairdresser’s almost empty, I almost go in for a shampoo and chat, but don’t in the end. Too artificial?

Old man passes me on the shoreline, ‘nice and chilly…………it’s good right enough’.

My glasses are steaming up it’s so cold. I can hear the rushing hum of traffic over the water at Fort William; clunking of old wine bottles being binned, laughter, curlews. It’s remote yet connected to that mainland ‘pulse’.

Sand/mudflats, tide far out, like my memory of Lochgilphead, but not quite. The drifting scent of seaweed, traffic noises………..I try to re-connect with home. Nostalgia, another word creeping into my vocabulary of place, I’ve begun to use it more and wish I didn’t, it’s disloyal somehow.

Walking towards Ben Nevis now, no camera, interesting that I forgot to bring it…………but remembered my little black notebook? I’ve changed.

I’m trying to re-connect with a ‘past place’, find that feeling again, the one I can’t define but know.

Beached boats rotting.

Walking along the tideline now. Every shoreline has a part like a ‘no man’s land’. I’ve crossed this one, onto grassy hummocks, like low living, crawling creatures making their timeless way towards the sea. Slimy, hard, impacted greens underneath. Lots of leaves on the shore in between the seaweed. Train in the distance. A ferry bell? Walking on the soft hummocks, nice underfoot, shades of yellow/green. It’s the textures – intermixed, jaggy, spongy, spirally – beautiful.

It’s good to just look.

Beneath Ben Nevis now; clear and not that high, not like Arran mountains. Knobbly, rounded, dusted in snow. That can’t be a chair lift? It looks all wrong beneath it; dark.

2 black and white dogs bounding up to greet me, territorial, ears flattened but tails wagging. Yells from swings, incessant traffic – surprising and incongruous. Numb fingers now. Bleak mountain, soft hummocks on the shore, leaves in seaweed, beached boats rotting, familiar smells, wrong sounds………….of people.

Reading this again, it strikes me that I keep looking for home.

uneasy hands

I see or rather I felt/sensed/suspected that it had been a while since I last added to my blog. Since coming back south from Shetland, I've been swamped with real life research stuff, things I've had to accomplish in a very short time, or so it's seemed to me now. Going 'round the houses', as a good friend told me, is par for the course, literally. Where have these past 2 years gone, as I disappeared into books and my own head? Am I the same? I doubt that. Does it matter? Probably not any more. Our multiples selves all morph into one, given enough time. Is it the same for men I wonder? being multiple people with lots of performances; probably their wardrobes aren't quite so crucial as ours.
Someone asked me this week if I miss making. It was like a cold blade on my skin. What could I answer without sounding trite. I smiled my reply. If, as I've been telling myself, that I think through making, always have done, then what are these recent thoughts made of? I find words difficult, not to say but to use meaningfully. I have no such issue with images. It's rather like swimming underwater; images flow and seem to belong to one another in a unified way; the continuing threads are easy to spot. Just like the seaweed floating in front of my window at The Booth. I can't feel this with words, they're like a foreign language, or being deafened by ghetto blasters, or blindfolded, my mind closes down that part of me which feels.
Why am I rambling on.......I just wanted to write.......words......here. I've no idea who reads them but am happy to know some read them.
I miss islands in my life and have constructed my own, in a field full of sheep. Tonight I watched them all stand still, heads alert and watching, as the heavens opened and straight down rain fell. To a man, they did this, like an invisible message whispered along the grass, 'watch out'.
Maybe what I really wanted to write tonight is the knowledge that I'm not alone, for all that I feel that I am doing this research. Looking at other women artists who are also older, I see connections; Noggle, Bourgeois, Wilke; and now me. Defiant in decrepitude? no, not quite yet. We touch each other over time.

return of the familiar

This might seem trivial, but my crow is back. I've been feeding him for many months now, enjoying his various calls, bravery and insolence as he insists on food, preferably moist bread. I wonder if he's vegetarian, as I am, for I only feed him peanuts and bread. When I was in Shetland watching the arctic tern swoop down towards the sea, in search of fish, I thought of him and wondered if he missed me as he waited for food. When I came home there was no sign of him for about a week.......then he came back. I knew it was him by the way his feathers seem patchy and white in places when the wind ruffles through them. I'm very glad to see him, it helps me to feel grounded once more.

When I first walked into my kitchen I couldn't remember where I kept the cutlery, or even the plates; I was still in Shetland in the tiny kitchen with difficult to reach shelves. I've no idea what lay at the back of some of them. It was a totally self contained space, both in the Booth and in my head, I was complete, living on the sea. It was simple being me, I was one person, inside and out. But slowly, as the weeks progressed, I began to miss the other me's, the roles I play, the clothes I wear to play these performances.

Does everyone feel this way about their lives, that it's merely a series of performances? Maybe I notice it more now, as I look at myself and wonder who I am. It's only in the last 5 years that I've started being different people, experimenting with 'looks'. A bit dangerous at my age, perhaps, but necessary none the less if I'm to discover what lies beneath. Most of all, I missed my shoes, they embody freedom, confidence and choice. When I was 16, my dad made me wear Tuff shoes for boys with knee length grey woolen socks, sensible way back then, unthinkable now. How sad, who I once was.

Is this who I am now? Quick, before it's too late.
But I still feel slightly disconnected, marginally lost and unsure of my footing. Am I here at all?

visual thinking

Still feeling 'nowhere' but possibly less so as the day goes on. While on Shetland, I did a few collages to see how my head was. Some surprises appear when I do this kind of visual thinking. Aspects of inner selves crawl to the surface saying,  'ok, now what?' Today though, I had a very strong image in my mind and wanted to get it out. Gazing at my multiple selves, welcoming them back into my head as I slowly come back down to another 'reality' of here, rather than there, when I was only one, not many. I missed my 'selves' when I was in Shetland and see that integration is coming, slowly. But will acceptance follow? This is what I did in my little book this afternoon. By tomorrow, I'll be back fully, but the clarity may have gone. Sometimes, it's very difficult to do this, like now.