I cherish the chance to be immersed, enclosed, enfolded in the familiar landscape of home, more so now than in my youth when it furnished my daily horizon. Despite my love of walking I have no sense of direction: I can become utterly lost in town centres and deliberately seek out familiar landmarks to plot my way along the simplest route. Since childhood I have enjoyed long walks with my dad whose mysterious ability to navigate and bone-deep understanding of the hills leaves me to soak up the heaving green landscape, lose myself in tiny patterns of lichen, moss and bud and wonder at the lives of the men whose hands and hearts built the impossibly distant dry stone walls.
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| The Purple Path acrylic on canvas 100cm x 50cm |
A painting as a gift for a new home: what better subject than that of a place which conveys the sense of belonging, the feeling of being with someone who understands and the belief that it will always be there. Sheep-strewn grass and steep, rough heather; ancient dark hedgerows tangled within, clipped flat on top; unyielding stoney islands in green seas of planted beet; long winter bleached grass; flags of stolen fleece flying on rusted barbs; grey stones hewn and laid into strong long walls, skill and experience the only mortar; vast pure skies: these elements combined bring me home. The Purple Path expresses this feeling.
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| ribbons of green
As in Stripes (See I love colour...blog 31.01.12) and The Stream (See a life together blog 20.02.12) I used bands of colour, not parallel this time but wavering like ribbons to represent the undulating landscape. The dark edges of these bands depict the trees and hedges, often gnarled and windblown, that frame the land as they are rooted in it.
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grasses
The foreground of the painting is filled with spring green grasses, bright petals, drying seed-heads and faded winter stems: the year round. The purple path takes you through time to a place that feel likes home.
