The Parsnip was a superb specimen as thick as my arm grown at Five Acre Community Farm nearby. The detail in its flesh and its magnificent beauty made me want to photograph it and then print it as a photogravure. This medium preserves some of the physicality of the vegetable. I chose to light it and pose it as if it were a film star or a delicate jewel. This is perhaps my favourite of my Derby Print Open entries this year.
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I have three works in this year’s Derby Print Open. Having missed out over the lockdown (and since) it is really good to be exhibiting again.
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In the last year or so I have spent several weeks camping, contemplating and sinking deep into the timelessness of the mid-Wales countryside. I have also been gathering material for a new project. Gorfanc is set deep in a small valley in Mid-Wales below high moorland. When clear weather permits, the night skies are full of the stars, planets and constellations our ancestors used to navigate, calendarise the year and give meaning to their lives.
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In such traumatic times here in the UK, it really seems that much of what we have taken for granted over the last years is gradually draining away. Such things as rationality, decency, respect, imagination, the quest for truth, idealism and tolerance have been thrown onto a political bonfire of vanities. And who knows what lies on the far side of all this upheaval.
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This head amongst the grass is full of seed
pulsating with rich life when ending’s fear
blurs hopes and tries to lie when I still need
to see with open eyes. Now leaving here
I tread a path which winds between the trees,
not straight nor worn but forked and born
of chance encounters where others do not flee
but talk and lead me on, feeling less torn.
I took a walk a couple of weeks ago along the undulating cliffs of Dorset. Not having walked further than the local shop for many months, I was uncertain how far I could go before my legs seized and I was morbidly curious to know when and how obviously the crash might happen. The sun beating down on the pastures, woods and pathways of the chalky terrain pushed the world into a drowsy, contented dimension, a cider-with-rosie dream of past and present fused by the buzz of insects and the unifying swish of the breeze in the twigs and grasses. I felt as if I were dissolving into the warmth and thrilled to the regular feel of step after after step through the chalk and turf of the undercliff.
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A good day’s walk makes you feel like your heart has overflowed, that it cannot be contained by the physical confines of the body. It spills out into the trees and hills, it is carried in the wind, winds its way through the air-blown grass like a serpent, runs at your heels like a happy dog. Joy is impossible to describe, for what lifts me may not have any kind of effect on you. But when I walk I feel a part of the world and not apart from it. This sense mixes with everything, I mix with it and, quite literally, en-joy.
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