Sometimes, the big is just too big and the
small necessarily becomes a more focused line of enquiry. The landscape of the west highlands seems too
beautiful to directly provide material
for my work. It is akin to
visiting an exhibition of ones favourite painter and having to cover your face
with your hands and look through gaps in your fingers to narrow the gaze to bearable
proportions. This was going through my
mind when I returned to Iona where with some relief discovered a rubbish dump
on the south cost and I had a good rummage around for rusty steel fragments. A sense of the intrinsically messiness of
life makes me feel more part of the human race.
I have been sifting through the
metal back in my studio and wondering why on earth I lugged them back...I think
it is the act of collecting rather than the objects themselves that is the more
absorbing.
This sense of looking through cracks is a
tool for understanding. A view described
by boundaries or a passing view occluded by foreground features. This continues to inform my current work
together with the idea of linking together collections of thoughts, ideas and
objects. Here is a little collection of tenuous
smudgy rubbings from the quarry rocks.
