Past & Presence

Landscape can be a portal on the sublime, an invitation to see beyond the immediate and to inhabit a space of mystery and amazement. I look beyond familiar horizons and become aware of a deeper reality. Touching rocks, sensing their timelessness and elemental structures, feeling peaty soil with its hidden history, I am confronted by my vulnerable and transient fragility.

I am exploring new territory with a different landscape. It is a place where my previous roles and achievements as artist and teacher no longer have currency, where physical strength and mental capacity are diminishing and death is in prospect. Paradoxically this landscape, although austere, is more expansive, its horizons broader, its prospects both challenging and exciting.

Creative work is prayer - being open to the divine. As I pray out of emptiness so I work out of that same emptiness.

The challenge is to learn to be present to the moment, to learn the language of stillness. It is an austere and rugged landscape which is indifferent to my presence and in which I am a stranger.