I was delighted to be part of a creative retreat in July at Jupiter Artland as part of Landscapes of the Mind, one of the projects of the broader Landscape Decisions Programme. The aim was to explore how we can bridge creative and evidence-based decision-making about landscape. I focussed on the symbiotic relationship between humans and trees in this video piece.
Siskin
Beautiful citrus bird with rasping wheeze - so delicate and weightless. I held one and thought it was made of faery stuff
Lost Dreams
The sound of lawn mowers droning and watching weeping willows trailing fingers in sunshine is evocative of long childhood summers. Looking at the watercolours of Sarah Knox, particularly her work of Lost Worlds, Dawyck Botanic Gardens 2021 (https://www.sarahknoxgallery.co.uk/#/lost-worlds/ ) bought back this memory of one of my mothers dreams for our family garden.
Coruisk
Loch Coruisk lies beneath the fortress of the Black Cuillin of Skye - an unnerving and overpowering presence. A shattered, ancient landscape overlain with myths and much weather in which a human is an intruder.
Cyclical
Still on a water theme and the hypnotic effect of the repetitive roll of waves overlaid with a spring cuckoo repeating its refrain reinforcing the endless of cycles of nature.
Taynish Ripples
Mesmerised by the ripples on a pond with spring birdsong - its one of those in the now new fangled mindlefulness moment
New Year Dinner
I am delighted that Poetry Scotland 103 has accepted my poem for publication and in celebration I created video to accompany the poem about a brazen Pine Marten at New Year. The soundtrack is a night flying Little Grebe with a few Tawny Owls for company.
The Rhinns Complex
Everything on Islay seems flighty - from nervous sheep, scattering brown hares, endlessly lifting geese and a very anxious wind blowing from all directions - as if everything has a need for counselling. The only things that seem stable are the rocks where they connect with the earths crust. This geographical area hosts a geological phenomena known as the Rhinns Complex. The only part of Islay that doesn't seem to have a complex.
Frenchman's Creek
Inspired by the violent coastline of Cornwall combined with its beautiful and mysterious inland creeks. A video poem exploring how a sense of time and place can be can shift our perceptions between centuries. The past always has echoes in the present. A touch of the Daphne du Maurier.
Hunkered Down
In Taynish Woods of Argyll - the winter seems to batter relentlessly in endless waves of wind and rain. Despite this there is incredible beauty in the colours of this season with the rust of bracken, emerald of moss, sage green of lichen carpeting the trees with an alternative foliage and the deep plum of old leaf litter. Even the wind is a source of enjoyment watching and listening to Ravens do their amazing tricks surfing the breeze and flying flipside over.
I am Humpback
Inspired by Simon Armitage's 'The Christening' about a Sperm Whale. The glacial striated rocks leading into Linne Mhuirich at the tip of Taynish National Nature Reserve have always reminded me of a knobbly Humpback. I chose to throw in a few Scots and Glaswegianisms as I think this Humpback would talk that way.
Just a bit of fun
Seasonal surf
Watching weather moods and changing musicality of the seasons of Scotland's coastline throughout the seasons.
A lockdown of mist
Mid December, west coast Scotland enters in own version of lockdown. Everything is a hazy shadow of its real self - half in this world and half in the next. A rare moment of brightness to realise its an inversion with the sun pressing down on the heavy blanket of mist. The gone.
Storm Barra
Storm Barra picking up its wrath at Kirkinner, Dumfriesshire in the Forest. The trees are about 70 years old and whippy enough to be able to dance to the tune of the wind. It’s a beautiful spectacle looking at this avenue, with a spilt gold path of beech leaves below. Its howling with alarming sounds of tree knuckles crashing and splintering all around. Nearby crazy nodding synchronised reeds as the storm water slaps the shore angrily.
Big Skies Islay
Recently returned from a winter trip to Islay. Saligo Bay –horses on the dunes, sheep in the turnips, beautiful waves lined up regimentally and driving onto the shore over rocky finger fragments pointing to sea. Machir Bay – light shafts from dark boiling clouds signalling a change in the weather. The slack water creating dazzling reflections of bubbling clouds and remnant blue skies , wide beach with delicate sinuous patterns from the wave reach.
The late afternoon sun is revealed through purple clouds in great shafts of light across the estuary. On the way back the big skies of Islay are opened to us across the low lands around Loch Gorm.
The measure of it
The autumn version of 'Awakening' my Beech woodland spring video. This is a homage to the other season of transition which is equally spectacular in its colour and impact on our own psyche - a preparation for winter and hunkering down until light returns next spring.
Hebridean
A recent visit to Harris in the Outer Hebrides had me considering the age of the Lewisian Gneiss rocks that dominate this landscape. There is a palpable sense of time and a real feeling that sounds from past lives are trapped within the rock that slowly releases as it erodes back to its constituent components only to be released into the ocean and return again in an unrelenting cycling of change. There is a deep musicality to this cycle of time.
Childhood Summers
My childhood memories of the great migration north each summer to visit my mothers family. To me it was an epic journey without much joy except the final escape to the North York Moors
Another Life
Inspired by open water swimmers who seem to be able to plunge themselves into below body temperatures. I have tried twice to swim at the height of summer in Scotnish, Argyll encased in protective wetsuit with snorkel and goggles and lasted about 1 minute both times.
An Sgùrr, Eigg
Inspired by the geology of the Small Isles of Scotland and the rocky volcanic glass fin on the Isle of Eigg. Here the geologist Hugh Miller discovered ancient fossils of Plesiosaur also known as sea dragons. The North of the island is famous for its singing sands of round eroded quartz grains.