Meanderings Issue 5
Quotes of the Week
“It does not always rain on Skye. It would be rather foolish to suggest it does. But it must be admitted that it generally is raining. Or, if it is not actually raining, it is just about to, or has newly stopped . . . The rain, when it falls, is a phenomenon in itself.” (Cameron in Whatley 2019)
“In my account, modern sleep includes the interval before sleep – the lying awake in quasi-darkness, waiting indefinitely for the desired loss of consciousness. During this suspended time, there is a recovery of perceptual capacities that are nullified or disregarded during the day. Involuntarily, one reclaims a sensitivity or responsiveness to both internal and external sensations within a non-metric duration.” (Crary 2013).
People/Books
Why Art Photography? by Lucy Soutter (2013)
Blanco by Awoiska van der Molen (2017)
Viewfindings: Women Photographers ‘Landscape’ and Environment edited by Liz Wells (1994)
Images of the Week
I have been reading Pabay: An Island Odyssey and had planned to return to a couple of images taken of the Island across the Inner Sound from where we live on Skye. I recall them distinctly as having a watercolour aesthetic. In Skye we say that the sun always shines on Pabay, but Christopher Whatley the author of the book describes the journey by hired ferry boat his uncle and aunt made when moving to the Island in 1950. As they arrived the heavens opened and they had no alternative but to offload their furniture and belongings on the jetty and retrace their journey to Kyle to return the ferry.
Concepts and Ideas
Reverie – “When Ideas float in our mind, without any reflection or regard of the understanding.” (Locke). The term used in the nineteenth century to describe a trance-like state. A condition of interiority and introspection. I need to take a look at Rousseau’s Les Reveries du Promeneur Solitaire (1782). Also intense reverie described by Natalie Ford (2010) “as a generative experience of ontological pleasure and visionary inspiration.” However, intense daydreaming or waking dreams were considered by the Victorians as borderline normal. Both seem relevant in terms of my practice!
Jottings
Six months on . . .
I have now completed half of the first year of my PhD. It hardly seems a moment since I started back in October 2020 but I have learnt so much about all sorts of academic things, other contemporary artists, and my practice. I attend events, courses, on-line exhibitions that are only loosely related to my work, just for interest and very often I see a link or follow up a reference that leads to something relevant to my research. For example, yesterday I attended Drawn to Nature: Decorating a Museum. A lecture organised by the Museum of Natural History at the University of Oxford followed by short a number practical drawing opportunities related to the lecture topic. I enjoyed it very much and now plan to attend the whole series and rekindle my interest in drawing!
As my second supervisor says I will need to find the links, pick up the most important storylines for my thesis and my practice and thread them together. Find those ideas, concepts and inspirations that speak to me.
Very exciting times . . .
