Poet Katrina Naomi and I spent a week in Warleggan on Fowey Moor (The Cornish name for Bodmin Moor) with no WiFi and with our phones off we just made work, walked, ate and slept. I took the opportunity to draw. I have just started to follow a mindful process of drawing, combining meditation and using the old tricks of ‘not looking at the page’ and ‘eyes closed’ to start an exploration of new ways to hold the pencil and move my arm from the shoulder and to breathe, yes breathe. All these things added up to a new vocabulary of marks, which have been feeding back into my everyday use of drawing since I got back. The wind, one night threatened to blow down the house and we had hail and snow, being from West Penwith we don’t see a lot of snow. The longhorn cattle withstood all that January could throw at them. For two hours I was able to sit with them and draw their shapes, heads down munching away, only occasionally using their horns to scratch themselves.
Farnworth residency
A week spent on Fowey moor, drawing.
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