I have started making some very small pieces indeed.
I generally have a fondness for working on a large scale. At home in North Wales I usually feel comfortably enclosed within the landscape: high horizons, high hedges and banks, trees, green lanes. A long roll of paper seems an obvious thing to use in order to re-imagine a walk, and the physical activity of painting and drawing at this size is rewarding in itself. Painting on a surface bigger than oneself is also comfortably enclosing; almost immersive.
I definitely do not feel enclosed at Sumburgh Head. The terrain here shows traces of long occupation, from prehistory through World Wars to the present, but it is the sea and the sky which dominate the landscape. The headland is barely 90 metres above sea level – I am three times higher at home, but the horizon here is more than 20 miles away on a good day, compared with less than a mile in Wales. Here are no trees, no hedges on land; just winter-dead grass and dry stane dykes. Above me the sky, below me the sea. The sense of being a tiny scrap of humanity in an enormous landscape is almost overwhelming. It’s a bit like looking up at the clear night sky and seeing the Milky Way above you. So much space, so much time – all out there. Within: a little space, and a fractional amount of time.
So, somehow, it seems right to reflect this by reducing the scale of work rather than increasing it. Odd, really – I imagined doing lots of drawings to take home and use as a basis for my usual large pieces. But “working small” seems more logical. 5cm square in some instances.
Thinking with the camera:
