jump to the left – part i

Some time in February my friend Phil asked if I’d like to take part in a blog hop about practice and process. As you know I’m happy to talk about my work I just didn’t have anyone to hop onto – kinda shy like that. Here are Phil’s answers. Looking at them I see that the questions are actually quite difficult, but over the next few weeks I’ll take a stab at them.

This time I thought I run through some work that I’ve taken though to completion and what I remember of the process at the time. Next week I want to try to put my work into some kind of wider context. Then finally I might be able to take about why I do the stuff I do and not something else.

A desiccated corpse

There actually is a picture of said corpse below the fold. You have been warned.

This post should probably have been called ‘uses for that engineering degree part ii’, but a bit of mummification is better click bait.

So in real life we are getting a new shed type object for the garden. Which will involve a lots of doing now the talking part has taken place.

Orange

Last week I talked about beach and river stones. In south east England there are probably more stones underground than on the surface. Woolwich and Reading Beds are found through out the london area and when you dig them up they’re orange.

mostly when you study rock types or semiprecious stones you get every other colour than orange. Orange is a boring colour for rocks. Or maybe I should saying ochre rather, than lets say tangerine. The ochres are a group of iron oxides which are widely used as pigments. So pebbles can be orange because the ground water is full of iron or because they are full of iron themselves.

Last summer i started this pebble making journey by buying lots of orange paper. (They were on sale.) Orange isn’t anyway near my favourite colour so I felt free to do all sorts of experiments.

Now I want to do something with these coloured papers.

The immediately available selection of orange pebbles. Some of these are just wrong (why did I use blue ink?) some have potential

now the weather is warmer I can get back into the studio. here i’m adding some golden ochre or sepia to various pebbles to improve their appearance

And here is a draft of another large canvas (100 x 30). There will probably be lots of movement in the little pebbles before the thing is finally settled.

Not sure of the name yet… procession / company??

As well as bleaching some more (new) coloured papers I’ve also finished (re-done) the little pebble arrangements from December. I’ve replace the background with something simpler and adjusted some of the compositions. Now all I have to do is frame them

Well anyway that’s all for now

MER

Some thoughts on stones

The last couple of weeks between loom band necklaces and (scheduled) head colds I’ve been thinking about rocks.

Most of what happens to rocks occurs in the dark, underground. When I look at them on the surface, either as outcrops or as little stones that have broken off and rolled around, I try to imagine what happened to give them their appearance.

It’s not easy.