oil on canvas 60 x 60 cm 'low cloud' Isle of Skye.
This painting sat for a long time in the studio since I started it late last year. I had had another idea for how it would turn out, but like everything that is happening these days 'it' had a mind of it's own. I wanted a gentle mist but most of all I wanted to feel within the landscape instead of floating almost above it and having mostly sky. Interesting that it came to depict heavy low cloud over the land. I have seen this kind of thing a lot while living in Scotland and often thought if I was to paint that no one would believe it was real!
I do have other ideas about a high land level on a large canvas. However I find myself working mostly on very small canvas boards since the new year, just exploring and seeing where it will take me. I feel at peace, I don't feel fragmented anymore I am aware now that painting mists are what I do and that is OK. I don't have to paint something else, I don't have to worry that my work is too dark or too much the same. After all I don't have to exhibit them all! It is simply a process, one to work through.
Since Rabbit the Bruce left this world for the big sleep in the sky a few things have happened. The big forest at the back of my house is almost all chopped down. I always loved walking there, looking at the squirrels, deer and birds. The forest had been planted in the late 1970's for harvest, it is just that I always felt it was important for everyone who lived here to have a forest close by. There are a few of the pines along the edges so I can for now at least see the trees and the changing skies behind. Then other trees in other areas either close to where I live or further afield also got cut down. If only they would plant more trees in the place of the ones taken down! why do folk live in the countryside and want to take all the trees down in their gardens! It is a mystery.Why don't they move to the coast or a town! Yet in Devon and in Surrey where I grew up in England trees were always standing tall and there were many of them. My favourite memories were of coming home from school kicking all the leaves high in the air as I seem to almost wade through the deep leaves that fell during the autumn. Richard my husband has taken to camping and walking over the hills, something he hasn't done in years! I find myself on my own more and being reflective. I still think about Rabbit the Bruce and how he sat each day so peacefully and how he made me feel peaceful too. I guess I think about all the things we often think about during the long winter while we wait patiently for the Spring to arrive.
Sometimes the silence is like a sound.....
