Blog 27

I am still continuing my debate with the picture frame. Taking simple white A4 sheets of paper, I have been folding them, creating single or double seam lines, in series. Held up vertically, they look like screens. I imagine them door size, even bigger. They look like openings to something behind? I've been piercing the paper with holes at different points, but I'm not sure what the relationship between the holes and the seams are, perhaps none.

I've employed a reading strategy that encompasses my practice and personal interests. It has been such a pleasure picking up books again. I've just read 'From the Mull to the Cape. A gentle bike ride on the edge of wilderness' by Richard Guise, a guy who took a 586 mile bike ride through the Highlands of Scotland.

I'm just finishing 'The Cloudspotter's Guide' by Gavin Pretor-Pinney. Like the wonderment of our sky at night and the stars and moon etc., I'm not interested in being able to name all the different constellations and cloud formations, but more to think about a spatial atmosphere that exists around us.

Clouds are made up of millions of water droplets, at various different sizes. The water droplets within the clouds and air suck up pollutants to 're clean' it, at least try. This activity is going on all around us, but you can't actually see it.

Pretor-Pinney writes about the sensation of thick fog and it reminded me of a walk Shawn and I took up Scarfell Pike in Cumbria, the highest mountain in England, a few years ago. The fog came down and engulfed us. We were soaked with the moisture from the fog and disorientated with the lack of visibility. When we finally came out of the cloud, we found we were right on the edge of a high precipice, in a precarious position and far away from our finishing point. But it was this sense of being soaked and disorientated that I remember the most, and an all encompassing spatial awareness.

When I read I like to sit by a particular window in the bedroom. If you latch the window open you can hear the lapping of the waves and the sound of birds and the view is of the sky only. All very poetic.  I've just cut out a picture of 'The Deer Shelter' by James Turrell at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park where he created a square in a ceiling opening up to the sky. I can see that my personal skylight is a bit like 'The Deer Shelter'.

I've noticed that when it rains and I hear the rain hitting the window-pane, sometimes in quite a fury, I feel myself almost waiting for the rain to hit my face, but it doesn't. There is this pregnant pause and then nothing. It is a weird sensation.

I have been recommended to draw some of my maps from our two year journey in our van, as part of my solo show. There is a lot to do and I've just started the process. It will be interesting how my drawings develop and how I respond to this work. There are lots of dots to plot and think about.

A couple of weeks ago, Shawn and I took a trip to Ardnamurchan, the most westerly point in the UK. We have now reached all four edge points of mainland Britain, North, South, East and West. We could see some of the other Hebridean islands in the distance and it's given me a bigger sense of my positioning where I live and I would love to visit these islands.