It only seems like ten minutes since I was painting the 'snug' wall at Southsea Coffee Co. in Osborne Road with Midge. (You'll remember the dangling cats from 'Cats Cradle'), and here I am back again, this time working on the main wall in the café. I'll confess, the very first time I went in and saw this wall I thought to myself "Mmmm, I'd really like to put a big landscape on that...", and I've been covetous of it ever since.
Well, good things come to those that wait and being asked by Martyn and Tara to paint this wall made for a cracking start to the new year. To be honest, it's going to be hard to beat as the highlight of the year for me, and it's barely the end of January. We had a couple of cursory chats to kick around ideas of what they wanted, and I was left to come up with a few sketches.
The composition of the landscape here is based on two actual places; The Ring of Brodgar (or Brogar) is a Neolithic henge and stone circle in Orkney, Scotland, and Long Meg and Her Daughters is a Bronze Age stone circle near Penrith in Cumbria, North West England. The final composition combines elements of these two separate sketches and a few tweaks made 'on the hoof', as I was painting.
For a very long time, I've been itching to do something with ancient archaeology; standing stones, stone circles, Mesolithic and neolithic structures. The period fascinates me. It relates to the idea of where the original impulse comes from to decorate ourselves and our surroundings; to make 'art', to communicate and tell stories, to record events, to remember and respect the past, something deeply, deeply primal. How did this aspect evolve as part of our consciousness?
And this might also mark a watershed in terms of my art. The landscapes that I've painted have always tended to remain unpopulated. Uninhabited wildernesses, pre-human lands shaped only by weathering and geology. These archaeologies mean I can add traces of habitation without obvious direct references to actual people. Stone monuments refer to 'us' rather than 'me'. They are both in and of the landscape - and if you've ever visited any of these sites**, they have a strong sense of 'other-worldliness'. It's a huge psychological leap to understand that these structures were built by the same people as us - our ancestors, and that their culture is as embedded in our DNA as these massive stones are embedded in our landscapes.
It's difficult for me to express just how much it means to me to be able to put this particular subject on this particular wall at this particular time. My deep heartfelt appreciation and respect for Tara and Martyn and the whole Southsea Coffee crew hardly begins to cover it. Thanks guys. XD
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** No! Stonehenge doesn't count! Not in its current state - frankly my dear, it's all just too damned "Hollywood"! They might just as well rename it Disneyhenge...
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ReplyDeleteGood effort done by the author.
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