count down

The countdown continues with just a week to go now before the residency exhibition.  I've spent most of this week quietly stitching away on Spurn Cloth #1 in my studio at home.  This 4.7 metre long piece is a patchwork of rust-dyed silk and I've used stitch to add further texture to the marks already there.  Some parts I've left without stitches: this space is important.  The stitches confirm the creases in the cloth giving movement, like ripples on the ever-moving water out there, or the ripples set in the sand each time the tide comes in and then out again. 

In the lamp room this will be hung in a curved form so you can't ever see all of the piece at once.  The visitor will walk round it on their way to the platform to look at the view.  This piece quietly reflects that view, with a horizon of sorts along the whole length of it.  Soon it will be time to roll it up in my studio ready to go back to the lighthouse.

residency number two

I'm spending this week at Farfield Mill in Cumbria.  I am artist in residence here during that time.  Yes I know, surely I can't be 'in residence' in two places at once... But I've brought a bit of Spurn here with me (images, sketches, notes, memories) and I am very much there in spirit.  I am using this week to work in a concentrated way on my two big textile pieces, currently called Spurn cloth #1 and Spurn cloth #2... these unromantic titles may change with time but for now they will do.


I have a clean, light space here where I can spread out and work away from the distractions of my home studio.  It would be tricky to do this in the lighthouse and while I work here I have people popping in to see what I'm doing so I can tell a different bunch of people about the project.

My first job yesterday, after unpacking my things, was to lay out the roll of felt In using as the base for cloth #1.  This is industrial wool felt and will give a strong but flexible base to the piece that is beautiful to stitch into.  My roomy studio floor was perfect for laying it out, measuring and cutting it to the size I need.  I could then start to arrange my dyed silk on top of it.  There then followed a great deal of fiddling, moving, rearranging, considering etc. until I was happy with the arrangement.
 

I could then begin to pin the pieces in place.  This cloth is to hang in the lamp room in the lighthouse, where there is good light and visitors will be able to see the detail of the surface very close.  There is a suggestion of a horizon and this work will almost be reflecting back the 360 degree view you get from the top of the lighthouse.  But I'm not trying to represent it directly, rather I aim to capture something of the changing tones and marks in sky, sea and sand.

I will be giving an illustrated talk here at Farfield Mill on Friday at 2pm, all about the project. 

 

painting sea and sky

I was joined in the lighthouse this weekend by Mary, another of Spurn's artists.  It was lovely to finally meet her, having shared the lamp room with a couple of her paintings.  

I took no photos yesterday at all, just painted sketches of the subtle changes in tone on the 360 degree horizon.

 

white horses

The wind is still blowing fiercely from the west but the rain has gone and there is bright blue sky between fast moving clouds (for now...).  The sun reflects off the sea turning it to liquid silver.  The waves on the Humber side (usually the calmer side of the spit) are relentless and the estuary is full of dancing white horses.  There are all sorts of greens mixed in with the browns of the water, all with constantly moving cloud shadows.  

Nothing stays the same here for any length of time.  It is difficult to know which direction to look in, what to focus on: there is so much going on.

The constant change means difficulties for drawing.  How can I capture this movement and change?

multiple horizons

I've been developing some of the experiments I did in a small sketch book when I was last at Spurn.  I'm working on a larger scale and using a variety of different media to explore some of the horizontal views.

 

sorting textures

I've been sorting through some of the textures and ideas I collected at Spurn last weekend.  One of the main things that strikes me about the place are the bands of texture and line: linear arrangements and almost always horizontal. 

As the tide comes up and goes down there is this constant change of the bands: 

patterns in the sand, 

the strips of salt marsh on the estuary side, 

never-ending sequence of waves rolling in on the seaward side, 

lines of groynes.

As a way of focusing myself I sorted the images that I'd had printed into three groups of textures:
ripples and wave patterns in the sand;

the waves themselves and the marks left when the water sorts and drops the material it is moving;

  

bold textures of the rusty, weathered groynes, the saltmarsh and other debris on the beach.