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A long overdue update!

It’s almost 3 weeks since my last blog so I thought I’d better get down to it and write some kind of piece updating everyone with what I’ve been doing during this time.  Unfortunately there aren’t vast amounts to write about as in short, all I’ve been doing is working!  In all honesty though, I did have one day off a little over a week ago and spent it pottering around the garden at home.

We’ve done no walking of any note sadly and I just know that when we do eventually get time to head out into the hills again, my legs will be COMPLAINING!

climbing a mountain

Mountain Climbing

The reason for this lull in blogs and walking is simply because I am completely tied up with working on this big drawing / audio project.  There is so much to do in what is a relatively short space of time.  I have to complete the three big Oregon drawings, (each almost 8’ x 4’) and we have to sort out all the recordings we made, make new recordings and then mix 54 individual one minute long sound tracks, (18 for each drawing)……. all by the end of September so that we have time to ship everything over to Seattle ready for the team over there to install it in the exhibition space.

Now that the 3 drawings are well underway, sound engineer Graham Byron, has been working alongside me to help create and mix the kind of audio tracks I want.  I have to say that this side of things has been a bit of a worry for me as I couldn’t really see how we could manipulate and use the recordings we’d made.  When we finally came to starting to mix the sounds however, suddenly I started to see the light!  It was amazing; it was like drawing with sound….. really exciting.  I’m suddenly now a lot more confident about the outcome of this project and what is even more important; I am a lot more confident about my future as a professional artist.  The whole reason for my starting to explore the use of sound with my work, is that I am concerned about the gradual deterioration of the little bit of sight I have.

Abstract Landscape Art

Abstract Landscape

On top of all this work I have also been preparing for my talk, ‘Recording the landscape’, at the Harbour Arts Centre theatre.  This took place yesterday evening and was a 2 hour event.  I’m glad to say that it went off really well and that we had a good turn out.  It took a lot of work preparing for it as I have to get everything I’m going to say, into my head…. I can’t see a script or anything written. ….. I just have to talk.  I divided the evening into two halves, the first being mainly about my early career and how I came to join my art with the hill walking I do.  I used photographs to illustrate this.  After the break however, I just had a selection of paintings and drawings on stage and spent the second half of the evening talking about and explaining how the work is created.  I finished off by speaking briefly about this new use of sound and where I hoped this project would lead in the future.

I’m glad to say it seemed to go down extremely well and it was certainly very enjoyable.  Another important reason however for organizing this event was so that I could record the talk in order to promote myself as a guest speaker.  I see this as a very good way to promote my work as an artist and after doing a number of talks for various organisations over the past few years, it seems like this could be a good addition to my art practice.  As such, the whole talk was filmed last night and once we get it edited, we’ll have something to show folk what they will get if they book me as guest speaker

Right then, there are no obvious photos to include with this blog so I think I’ll just pluck a couple of nice hill snaps from the album and put them up so there is something interesting to look at!

Learning to climb

Learning to climb in snow

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Impression of Irvine Church

Irvine Church

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