My landscapes are :
‘ a lament and a sanctuary, spaces with history that look both backwards and forwards between mankind and nature which are evermore encroaching on each other’
The most recent work uses birdsong that is recorded on my phone creating a Topography of a heard landscape. Replacing the normal response of a looking to listening . I capture the moment of sound at certain points, along a route or place. These then become the score by which I create my drawings and prints.
These sounds are then put through a sonogram program used by ornithologists. As birds sing at a speed in which we can not hear all of the songs complexity these sonograms help to identify the birds within a recording for example of a forest where there will be lots of different calls and songs. Whether a note is ascending or descending its often hard to hear instantly. Birds can vocalise the arpeggios simultaneously… that means not only can they make more than 1 note or sound at the same time but also there is often an echo or resonation above the strongest pitch note.
Once you begin to look at birdsong through sonograms you start to understand how the sound is made up – but also your hearing of the birdsong becomes better – you actually hear the song differently. You become aware.
The hesitant blurred shapes are the subject of departure for the work. Through woodcuts/ etchings/ solar plates and drawings i use these repeated song forms to make work and installations. Overlaying time and again certain passages of song to build up a kind of landscape of that place and moment in time. Almost all the work I make is on paper and although I use print to create a repeatable template the prints are usually not in editions in the traditional sense.
They are one off prints. I find paper to be my preferred medium through its fragility ,it surface, translucency and the sense of touch. Through collecting, arranging and grouping these bird song works I hope to use the gallery space as a part of the piece composing on the complete wall /room space both high and low – so that the viewer passes through the drawings and returns each time to find and re look again. All the prints will be unframed as I want them to float off the edges and connect to each other.