Sunday 26 July 2015

Small things

Here's one I made simply because I wanted to.  (You have to do things for the sheer joy of it every now and then or else you cut the nose off your practice.  We can talk much more about that later if you want.  Maybe in the pub.) Anyway the plant is a tiny Rhododendron lapponicum from Saana fjell.  A lovely thing, the leaves are aromatic when you stroke them,  I believe the leaves and flowers are sometimes used for tea, read a bit more about it on this nice site if you like.


The plant is protected here so no casual lopping off branches for dinner or specimens.  And as Saana is a sacred mountain you might want to be especially respectful of all its life forms anyway.  A person who wants to interview this plant here might to lie down on the fragrant mountain for an hour or two in the sunshine, patiently listening, making drawings and taking photos, trying not to trample.  You don't feel at all sorry for me for this, do you, and nor should you.

 It's about 3½ cm high as you can see ...



 or, if you like, here's a hare-shit for scale:


(Ok the bunnies are pretty big around here...


I think this is a Lepus timidus the arctic hare, with her big white feet.  I took the photo at midnight from my bedroom window.)

Here's where my rhododendron grows:

Still some snow:



I befriended this very nice mousey-type living nearby who consented to be photographed in exchange for sharing my cheese sandwich (don't worry, good black rye-bread, very healthy.)



Up here the moss grows taller than the trees


the plants huddle close to each other







the rocks appear greenish because they are covered in lichen.





It's a very nice journey to the top:

















Sunday 21 June 2015

an Arctic adventure

I've come to spend the midsummer at Kilpisjärven biologinen asema to do a residency with the wonderful Ars Bioarctica.


The idea is to do some work and see if there is collaborative fun to be had anywhere, at any rate I'll be spending some quality time with these guys:



Kilpisjärvi is in North-western Finland.  We're in Sápmi, where the Sámi people traditionally live, also known as Lapland, or the 'land of the midnight sun', if you wish, a very special part of the world.

My house is right underneath Saana fjell, a sacred mountain, here it is in the actual midnight sun at actual midnight:




It's midsummer today but it's only the beginning of springtime


Still a bit of snow lying about.




It's a bit of alright here.





Sunday 15 March 2015

Painting with eukaryotes

This time I'm making paint for muticellular organisms...


Ha ha, that's right, humans, lovely, fantastic humans.  This is from a wee course in 'Winter flowers in egg tempera' at the Botanics.


 It's a very procedural business, you have to prime and gesso your own boards and then mix your pigments with your egg yolk and then get to grips with how to use the paint, which isn't quite like anything else.
If you want to know how to do it,  Koo Schadler is excessively good at it and generously shares her how-to expertise here.
We were doing this sort of thing:


I'm fond of doing this as it involves plenty of old-fashioned craftsmanship which is great for slowing down the thinking and making you focus on what kind of picture you think you want to make.  There's a lovely textility to the work, the paint is applied in lots of translucent layers of small brushstrokes so you get a very lively surface which is nice, the pictures look still from a distance but close-up are full of the joyful seething animation of everything as it cavorts about its business.
This really isn't for the vegans! There is something both creepy and glorious about the organism-ishness of the thing you make, with its wooden support, and its rabbit-skin glue colloids, and its boney, chalky ground, and its fatty eggy skin.

©Annie Barton

What are we doing here at the Botanics?  These classes are marketed as opportunities to "develop your skills and abilities", the idea being that students used them as a basis for follow-up work later on, if they wished, or simply enjoy them as a sort of hardcore way of having quiet fun.  So they have to function as 'leisure' or 'hobby' activities and be transformative-educational at the same time.  I've been wondering, what is the difference between 'leisure' and 'culture'? *


Why might the world need an enlarged dissection of a cycalmen in egg tempera? Who knows. But there you are, it's got one now, and it'll have to make of it the best it can.

One of the great things about this medium is that because you use food to make your paint, you are viscerally aware of the consuming nature of doing your doing. Especially as you use the yolk for the work, and the white for stiing in the fridge not being made into meringues. But help is at hand with  Marvellous Egg-white Dispenser, in the form of Blue, my wonderful studio neighbour's wonderful pal.





*The answer to that of course is; "If it's done by youngish men, then it's certainly Culture, and if it's done by older women, then it's certainly Leisure."