Arriving…at this residency on September 1 for 1 month.
Now It is the last week.
Much of what happens at a residency for me, becomes information gathering about the local I find myself in.
Seeking clarity about my own process and practice, experimentation with materials is a priority.
Development from the residency experience unfolds over time.
I’m gathering info and detritus, photos, weather patterns, native wild flowers and berries; feeling the space, sensing place.
I make ink using local source material, here it is wild blueberries. They produce a rich purple-red unlike commercial blueberries.
Particularly geological history is the underbelly of navigating and being navigated around the land structure by way of roads and trails.
The walks and senses become a translation of drawings, watery concoctions and mark making. Patterns and gestures emerge on paper that reflect the geology and illuminate the sense of this environment.
I recognise that the Romantic appropriation of landscape as an instrument for solitary pleasure is inadequate. In our era (Anthropocene or …..?) What we see in a landscape is a complex
compound of changing geology orchestrated by a variety of human uses which have modified the 'natural' environment.
“What am I looking at?” What is under…neath?
That led to an interest in Geomorphology, which I know little about but now I intend to research more.