Coming to terms + Mods.

This blog is no monastic garden, no well pruned compact garden hedge.

It’s reaching, sprawling and full of holes, anxious to justify, just as quick to deny.

It’s not a How to guide, nor a travel book of north Wales, it’s not an and then I, or an thou shalt.  This blog is no punchcard, no sketchbook, no wish you were here, It doesn’t even flippin rhyme.

Ah but wouldn’t it be good If … some open handed account were given of the modifications, the alterations, changes in direction, the things a picture couldn’t hope to say,  a friendly line or two to read between.

Or better yet, if some subtle suggestion were able to creep past the heavy curtains of self censorship; Here is a thing, a thought, a place, a reason, see it stand or bow on terms of it’s own.

With that in mind, observe a few light hearted mods, which, having brought me pleasure in proportion to the difficulty of the problem they purport to solve, and which, being capable of sustaining further inferences, I share here.

What’s that? a dimly lit picture of a filthy carbon fibre brolly, so what.

Yes, but why carbon fibre and why is it white? What’s with the cable tied rubber tubing replacement hinges at the crown, and the resin’d and rolling hitched polyester button thread tension struts? that’s all very well, but I don’t really care enough to devote my valuable time to such trivial questions, why don’t you just tell me? -exasperation-

I hope you didn’t hurt yourself when you took that photo, it looks like you’re falling over. Yes that was intentional, something about disorienting the viewer, or making a composition which is both contrived and capricious. Requiring superhuman stamina and unnatural flexibility to execute the ridiculous pose necessary for such a shot, and hold it until the light was just so.

So what am I looking at, the weed? No not the weed, If that were a drawing or a painting I definitely would have left that out. But that’s the best bit, and the focal point for nearly all those shiny lines. And don’t you find it bumpy with elliptical wheels, and whats that on the front?

Well I’m glad you brought that up, it’s a prototype for a new type of disk breaks, the allly alloy angle bar at the foot of the low rider front rack supports a portfolio which gets caught up in the spokes or threatens to fall off, a highly effective means of slowing you down. So you got tired of wearing it on your head then? Yes, and the aerofoil of such a configuration is only of limited advantage.

Tell us about the tripod and board which fit in the folio, tell us why they are so much smaller than the pictures you’ve been toiling over and haven’t published yet, tell us about the acrimonious dispute over access rights, the vigilantee saboteur, tell us about the Barrow that wasn’t, or the impenetrable army of ewes, or the half term tide of tourists, about pareidolia and the bishop's head, the thousand yard ponies, the austere and the ornamental, the impossible skies, tell us why trig points, what it’s all about, and why you seem to have changed your mind.

All in good time.

At Prenol, your lordship

Not the aromatic hydrocarbon, nor the species of ant, but, you guessed it, a trig point, on yes, a hill, on the bend of the river Cone-egg by Smug-valley, overlooking the Slippery head of the witch, Bare bilberries, Bald scab, Weak wheat hill, and the tall ridge of the lake of the shoals, amongst others. Sadly, Fridd Wanc is not visible from the spot or I’d have told you that it means itchy or lusty pasture.

Closer than these, a riddle of field boundaries leap to and fro, strewn as though an endless ribbon were still attached to the tail of some distant doe.

A warm welcome from the local dairy farmer, Tim, which is welsh for Tim, with tales of fighter planes at fifty foot causing calves to abort, and doubtless, milk to curdle. Tales of rain which falls on only neighboring fields and an old weather saying which stuck with me, that the mountains look closer before the rain.

Out there in all weathers, getting on with the job. The farmers pragmatism doesn’t preclude his appreciation of poetry, but does serve to highlight the distorting lens of romanticism. The notion of landscape as a pretty picture results in an inverted relationship with the land itself. note. this thought is not complete.

Some things I meant to say

On the Great Orme, Y Gogarth, or Cuckoo of the bear, courtesy of translate. An outlying limestone fortress, and island in waiting. Tales of the extensive and ancient copper industry there are well told, the acne of open cast mining in the seventeenth century is still visible from space, as are the well combed medieval ridge and furrow field systems and a number of hut circles, the exposed nature of some of the sites, in contrast to the leeward agricultural activity, does raise questions, why put yourself in that position? why indeed.

The dramatic north east face sees little of the sun in the winter, looking for light, not least to make my life easier, the golden glow of the middle brown limestone in the hour it takes for the sun to rise and set behind the clouds is best viewed from west shore. on the other side, coming round the top corner of marine drive, near the temptingly titled rest and be thankful cafe, to be hit suddenly and simultaneously by the full force of the sun and the wind, demanded careful consideration.

What’s the subject? the thingness, the relatedness, the experience, or it’s ability to arouse and sustain interest in any form.

The post apocalyptic artillery range, still used as such by some, certainly appealed to me. Where islands of gorse and brambles lapped by plush velvet moss drift across a palimpsest of tarmac and foundations. yeah. The equinox of slope and sea. That did it for me.

Post hoc

Back through the door, casting off layers,  the feeling has returned to my fingers, I am greeted with a disarming question. Dad, why don't you just take photos and then do your work at home?

There is a word for thoughts which colour your actions and influence the choices we make without first passing the scrutiny of reason. Prejudice.

The question was sincere, so I answer. I like the way you see things change. The time it gives you to notice, things you might otherwise miss, the challenge and urgency of siezing them before they change again.

I would like to have added; And because the drawing is more than the image, it's the experience, of getting there, being there, feeling, thinking and seeing there. And I like that too.

When I was a child I would talk to the weather. Argue and compete with it. While mostly grown up now, and a little less quarrelsome, an element of this remains.  Ok wind, we'll dispense with the detail.

Perhaps I am prejudiced. Who, after all, can claim to be in full possession of the facts about anything.

For people working towards verisimilitude, cameras are great. Another valuable tool in the painters kit. I suppose I'm just looking for something else.

Mulch

Autumn Leaves got me thinking. As these things tend to do. Current observations are casting new light on old work. Here, some thoughts, on physical archives and tangible interpretations. 

What's the life expectancy of an idea, in an age of ephemeral media, the democratisation of knowledge and it’s proliferation through the internet.

All entities, digital or otherwise, are ultimately dependent on the longevity of their hosting or their capacity to proliferate as a meme.

It may be taken for granted that digital copies backup hard copies, but with digital natives, there is room yet for hard copies to back up the digital originals.

I speculate that we may yet see hard copy websites made available, in some form like the desktop rolodex animated gifs, but a bit more comprehensive. 

When the compulsion to back up is felt perhaps more keenly by us all, and in light of recent fires at the internet archive, I find myself asking: How long do things last? What makes something worth keeping?, Worth sharing? It’s capacity to remain pertinent?, To sustain new interpretations?, How can you measure interpretive potential? Is it like potential energy- like a spring- the more you invest in it the more it will yield?, Is there an SI unit for ambiguity or simplicity?

How pressing is the desire for tangible things in a digital age, the desire to look, to touch, to draw.

Looking recently at leaves lining the forest floor, each fragile coloured curl, stood for me as a web page, in a fleeting technicolor mulch of information, capable, we trust, of sustaining new growth.

a bit of digging

You bear, you rider and ruler of many, and guider of the chariot which is the receptacle of the bear. We are being introduced to Cynlas Goch, 6th Century King of Rhos, who’s dark age fortress, over foundations of an iron age settlement, once crowned this bryn. 

Bryn Euryn commands a strategic position at a pass on what has become the pan-european route E22, overlooking Nant Sempyr, literally, the valley of forever, which takes its name, more prosaically, from the legion of romans slaughtered there under the command of one Semperonius.

While we’re on toponymy, Bryn is the masculine form of the welsh for hill, Rhiw being the curvier, sort. Euryn is probably eponymous, as I am unable to effect a direct translation. possibly relating to Einion Yrth, (Einion the impetuous), King of Gwynedd and grandfather to our Cynlas Goch. (Blue-Hound the bloody). John Northall suggests that Bryn Euryn means Golden Hill. Much is made of the fact that the surrounding area, Dinerth, means fort (den / home / receptacle) of the bear, with reference to the above passage from Gildas’ On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain, in which Cynlas is compared to the rib-toothed second beast of the apocalypse (Dan. 7.5). 

Which is all very well. But no mention is made, anywhere I am able to find, of the spot chosen by me to represent this bryn. Observation, imagination and conjecture have free reign here. 

At the top of this hidden hanging valley, the dense, yearning vegetation opens out at the foot of an overhanging limestone cliff, sheltered from the prevailing wind and rain, a series of scarcely perceptible rectangular enclosures, terraced into the nape of this nant, like the plateau of some derelict, verdant baroque double staircase, peppered with weary moss clad limestone sentinels that might once have crashed through walls or roofs, continue their slow march towards the sea.

Evidence of recent occupation, the remains of a fire, empty deodorant bottles, a vestigial rope swing, and a broken bakelite cigarette case, betray the continued appeal of such places, and indicate that the topography may have been similarly utilised by people in the remote past, differing less than we are apt to imagine, from ourselves.

Pragmatism and preconceptions

Resembling the stubbly rump of some ancient beast having crawled from the sea and into the marshes to die, spared from the swelling suburban tide only by its SSSI status, Bryn Euryn was not always thus. 

The brief was simple enough. Here’s a trig point, go, make work. Negotiating between pragmatism and preconceptions, on site, between the charms of the location and my latent intent for the work, Is proving, here at least, to be quite another matter.

Tempting were the domes, waves and arches of a peculiar valley near the summit, swathed, Dr Seuss-like, in traveller’s joy, storm light and, to my surprise, raspberries. Tempting too, the precipitous battered crags immediately over dark and brisling yews with the A55 snaking through the valley, and on towards the mountains, against the evening sun.

Nope. No footing here, too low there, too distant, too familiar, in the wind, in the way, where’s the sweep? How does it fit? What’s the point? Where’s the spot? 

With soliloquy approaching cacophony I stopped, at a crossroads, in the rain. A curious confluence of five paths intersecting at improbable angles. My interest is piqued. I can’t remember how long I stood there for, turning over compositions, aspects, and approaches to this scene before me. One path in particular appealed to me. The middle path, which, by some trick of the light appeared to be the focus of concentric circles, formed by the tangle of branches criss crossing this forgotten path, this hidden, hanging, valley. How could I resist.