Whiteness

I love having clean walls in my studio again. Makes it feel light and liberating and spacious. Much more spacious.

But a lot of coats needed to really cover the paint marks on the wall, and I made some more immediately.

Some work done on two of the new canvases I started, on the river mouth theme.

The brush I had used for the walls being at hand and still wet, made the next move a bit different from usual.

But entirely appropriate for my watery subject –

I get a new shot in the arm of this place weekly; it’s always different – the currents, the weather, the tides change it on a twice daily basis.

one week it’s all bright and shiny and dazzling

next time you can’t see across to St Andrews and the misty drizzle (haar) makes me take off my specs because I can’t see through them.

So these few paintings almost stopped me in my tracks because a lot of things about them worked immediately, and that is always very dangerous.

and it was the white of the studio itself, and that emulsion brush that was invading them.

I took the big one (100 x 100 cm) outside with the gold spray can, which is partially blocked and mostly splattered a great freckle over it. The text here is “everything snapping with water”, from a poem. this one has a lot of words going on.

a friend commented that there is something brightly talkative about the work on Instagram. I really like that idea!

the loose and scribbly brush marks made with my small brush on a stick are almost like asemic poetry, mysteriously wanting to communicate but unreadable. Definitely some Cy Twombly influence. After that I had to disrupt all this blue, and went back to the orange and metallic copper that is in the collaged pieces.

this smaller one (50 x 70 cm) has less chat but is from the same cradle, made at the same time. The dark green was the next thing to use up on my stay wet palette, put on very quickly with the same big brush.

Later I would swing round between the two with the same brush on a stick …. and the collage pieces are torn from the same painting.

it’s interesting having several on the go at the same time. This is from another, much smaller painting. You get a similarity between them that allows a kind of lateral thinking rather than a progression.

Back out of the studio and on my feet. Summer is definitely over here in Fife.

though the harvest not quite done.

we’ve had a bit of rain, but after a dry winter, spring and summer, the water table is low and the grass still parched.

Fingask shorthorns turned onto the stubble to eat the scraps and edges are mostly sitting on the softer grassy headlands.

at Tentsmuir the grass of Parnassus is flowering next to the remaining pool of water

before it rained there were only a couple out. Although we had about three and a half centimetres in one night the outflow onto the beach is still shrinking back.

At Loch Leven on Sunday the water was full of this pea soup, cyanobacteria, which is extremely poisonous. I was slightly horrified to see a man with two toddlers on the beach there. No notices, nothing to stop people swimming or letting their dogs go in it.

Last week daughter and I did our August away day, we took my Zoe to KirkMichael which is near Blair Gowrie and within easy reach for the electric car.

First to Dunkeld for coffee and baked goods. There is a great arboretum there, next to the cathedral, so I and Bims could do some tree worship while Lucy went to the bakery. This monkey puzzle has such a graceful shape.

And the trunk! I hadn’t realised they have this crinkled pattern which seems to echo how the leaves grow.

At KirkMichael the walk starts in open woodland, pretty much the Old Caledonian Forest type, with Scots pine

but it is full of grass-roofed hobbit houses, holiday homes one presumes. Some are very discreet.

Moss looking a bit dry after the  summer.

Plenty of mature “granny” pines.

heather in bloom

Long views of heather clad slopes, and conifer plantations.

and out into wilder parts

an overgrown dry stone wall

a well-lichened tree

we are in Kindrogan Forest – and all these creatures continue to hide from us.

probably this heather will be a brighter purple in a couple of weeks

we walk through mature sitka plantation, and then alongside these larches.

uphill on partially paved tracks

to eat our picnic lunch while gazing at Loch Curran. There are handily placed logs to sit on. B has a tick, prompting some examination of bare legs ….. but mostly it is the flies that are annoying, in the slight drizzle, we are nice warm things to crawl over.

after the diversion to the loch the walk gets a bit more exciting. Trees down mean some interesting diversions.

The path is less defined. Lucy has downloaded a route recorded by someone on the OS website.

There are a few examples of this pretty stone –

cow berries and blaeberries –

and small clumps of Scots pine. But we hit a problem with the deer fence. On the way in there were tall skinny gates, but this route only has a padlocked seven foot high and wide gate, and a tall ladder type stile, not suitable for dogs. And we are not even a mile from the car by this time. We manage to manoeuvre poor Bims up to the top of the stile, and she takes a flying leap down, landing on her side, but on a soft patch of rush, quite unhurt. A heavier dog would be impossible.

After some boggy pasture and wet rushy plunging about, getting around more fallen trees, there is this lovely meadow full of harebells.

More gates which thankfully are not locked –

and this enigmatic structure on the edge of the village.

Sweet steers.

Cakes and tea from our flask in the car park, next to this signboard. Eight miles walked so we feel we earned them.

Maybe a hint towards the next batch of paintings?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4 Comments

  1. Love seeing your paintings develop, and drip, and arise quite different from how they began. And love following your walks and being with you in that countryside. 🙂

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