Last week I visited Weston super Mare with a rucksack full of various equipment and materials including two pieces of raw canvas, some charcoal, brushes and other things. I had in mind that I would do some writing on the beach and some painting with some mud collected from the beach. The following two videos show me using charcoal to take a kind of rubbing from the rock surface I used to scramble over as a child, then me collecting mud and using it to paint directly onto canvas on top of the pebbly surface of the cove. The view I chose to paint is out towards the horizon and includes Steepholm and Brean Down.
As I reflect upon that day and the actions I took, I am reminded of many things. The collection of the mud is significant because of the association I have with growing up in a place renowned for its treacherous mud and tidal range. It is also familiar to me as a material used by indigenous people such as Aboriginals, who’s work and lives are inseparable from the land they live in. I like the connection to the landscape and to my memories this activity brought me and also to Aboriginal and Maori people who’s knowledge of their environment inspires me.
Using the charcoal to make a rubbing from the rock surface enabled me to bring the memory of those rocks back to my current home in Oxfordshire. It’s an interesting thing to move a piece of landscape from one place to another, though of course it is not actually the landscape. I had not intended to make a rubbing like this but when I laid the canvas down it seemed the most natural thing to do. I became more involved in the idea as I went along, using my fingers to press the canvas down into the fissures of the rocks in order to make darker charcoal impressions. I knew those rocks so well as a child and making the canvas rubbing has made me wonder whether you could get a whole crowd of people to make rubbings of the whole cove and surrounding rocks! It could then be installed into a room as a memory drawing of the place, or hung temporarily on the rocks themselves.
Painting with the mud was difficult at first. I couldn’t get the mud to stick on to the canvas and had to work quite hard to rub it in. I had taken stiff brushes having anticipated this issue. The surface of the pebbles I had the canvas resting on, helped to create the textured impression of the rocks I was looking at along the shoreline. It was important to me to put Steepholm into the painting and to connect it to the land by painting the lines of the waves I could see in the distance as they journeyed towards the shore.
I have kept both pieces for continued reflection and ideas.