Rim

Today, I looked out over the valley and saw a rim of light lining the hilltops.  I reached for my camera and it was gone.  But it had been there.  That line of light had started this whole journey.  The metaphor of line as journey, started through seeing that rim of light on a Welsh hill a few years earlier.  It slowly seeped into my being and has formed my journey here. I had started to believe I had imagined it, fancied the idea out of somewhere but today it was there in front of me in my valley. 

Official end

Today is the official end of this project.  Since 1st May until today 31st August, I have been charting my view from a Welsh hill.   

I look back over the blog and realise how the focus of my work changed.  Also how little I showed of my work in progress. This is mainly because most of the work I was/am trying to do is to organise a large scale installation on the quarry site on the Welsh hill.  This is an ongoing process which means I will carry on this project long after it's official end.  I still hope to have at least a date when I can install this work by the open day on 15th September.  

I have realised also that the nature of what I thought using film could bring to my work has shifted.  I am interested in showing movement not narrative.  And to use this as part of my installation  rather than recording something around me.  It is not documentary I'm after.  It's a way of re-focusing on the obvious - obviously!!  It's more about overlaying images projecting one on top of the other.  Recording shadow on created objects in order to emphasise 'something'... Creating alienation by revealing something in a new light making the viewer look again.  This is to do with scale and detail I think.  I don't feel I have achieved this in any of the films I've made so far.  That is also one of the reasons that this project will go on after it's official ending.

I have realised also that my approach to a landscape as a woman is fundamental to my work.  It means a gentle, quiet, poetic approach regardless of scale. 

Lakeland blue

Nearing the end

Now less than a week away from the end of this project and I am looking already at what has worked and not worked.  It has been a great opportunity to focus on my work.  Having a self imposed time limit is important, it's like having a deadline.  The hardest part has been not enough time - sound familiar?  A day a week is unrealistic.  You can't just switch on after six days working on something else.  So I ended up doing blocks of time.  That pottering 'empty' time that is so important. Learning to relax into your work, removing the need to 'produce'.  

Thinking time is so important and part of this project has been the re-education that to indulge yourself in dreamtime is the only way work can happen.  To just believe.

To take that leap of faith has been wonderful.

Thorns from there, slate from here

Thorn Line

Fault Line

Site as self

My work is site specific but it is also personal.  I am finding that I am increasingly drawing on other landscapes to inform my work for many reasons - such as emotional or historical resonance.  I am building on past experience and where I find myself in this new landscape.  It is my journey.  It is how I am affected.

Quarry

On the hill is a quarry which is slowly blasting the rock away.  Hill is becoming basin.  The 'historical fabric' of the landscape is being changed.  We are experiencing a physical transformation of the countryside.  

Positive space is becoming negative space.

Convex to concave.

Emptiness where once solid.

Earth becomes air - birds will fly where slow worms once slithered.

The poetry of emptiness.

View from a French Hill

I've just spent time in France, getting to grips with a new landscape and my reaction to it.  The quality of the light was very different as was the warmth.

I managed to create some small works, which I may show on the open day; as a way of recording the summer and my reaction to landscape in general.