The dark, winter months have been ideal for spending long days in the studio, working late into the night, making real progress on the series of large drawings of the rock faces of Garbh Eilean.
Update, 8th February:
update 26th February:
from the easel: an update
As a thrilling exercise in getting to know and better understand and sense the extraordinary ‘bones’ of the Shiants, I’ve embarked on a series of detailed graphite and charcoal drawings, based on photographs taken during my brief visit last summer.
In Adam Nicolson’s “Sea Room”, he beautifully describes the geology and the fascinating formation of the extraordinary basalt columns “that curve, twist and bend, are waved like the hair of art-deco statuettes, fixed in the elegance of a geological perm…”
When I first looked up in awe and wonder at the Shiant cliff faces, I sensed something very much alive, a slumbering, primordial beast, or spirit. From a slight distance, the ambiguity of the surface forms barely contain a phenomenal energy which lurks beneath. This is what I am trying to explore in these drawings.
To spend time looking at these rock faces and to really see them is an act of attention and of listening to what they can tell us.
Here is how the work has progressed through its various stages and finally, the finished piece, below:
from the easel:
As a thrilling exercise in getting to know and better understand and sense the extraordinary ‘bones’ of the Shiants, I’ve embarked on a series of detailed graphite and charcoal drawings, based on photographs taken during my brief visit last summer.
In Adam Nicolson’s “Sea Room”, he beautifully describes the geology and the fascinating formation of the extraordinary basalt columns “that curve, twist and bend, are waved like the hair of art-deco statuettes, fixed in the elegance of a geological perm…”
When I first looked up in awe and wonder at the Shiant cliff faces, I sensed something very much alive, a slumbering, primordial beast, or spirit. From a slight distance, the ambiguity of the surface forms barely contain a phenomenal energy which lurks beneath. This is what I am trying to explore in these drawings.
To spend time looking at these rock faces and to really see them is an act of attention and of listening to what they can tell us.
Here is how the work is progressing:
enchanted isles
Another view through cloudbursts of sleet, hail and sea-mists of the extraordinary, magical Shiants from the Isle of Scalpay, Harris, last week. Clocks going back, clocks going forward - a millennia from now, they'll still be there, those fierce, uncompromising rocks, indifferent to the uncertainties of our world. That's a comfort.
and then it cleared…
