Aughertree Fell and pencils, Cumbria,

Zena Kamash kindly sent me directions to a site at Aughertree , near Ireby in Cumbria, where there are Bronze age and  Roman settlements at the centre of an extensive field system. I was staying near by ,with some old friends and thought I could try and draw these , if the weather was kind..

When looking at the map , it was not clear to me which was the best way to approach the site. I found out later that the settlements were on uncultivated common lands , but not realising this at the time , I found myself walking up a long drive towards a farmhouse surrounded by trees that seemed to be the closest approach. As I got close, a little nervous, feeling that I had better introduce myself, in case the settlements where on farm owned land ,I noted that the farm house looked a bit dark with drawn curtains. The bungalow next door had , however , a car parked outside it . After a knock at the door , I waited, heard a low rumble , then the door opened , I felt  a blast of central heating and a dark haired man , with a pale face looked at me. Explaining that I wanted to draw the settlements, he said , a little startled , that he didnt see it would do any harm, to just climb over the gate, but he had never been there himself.

Slightly puzzled by this , as I walked up the hill behind the bungalow, I was thinking how similar to a human cry sheep sound like at times, when I realised that what I was hearing was a human voice , shouting urgently.  A female figure was waving at me, down below by the gate. It turned out to be a very friendly farmer , who was worried I was going in the wrong direction, and redirected me. She said that very occasionally , an archaeologist comes by , but no one much else, then she added slowly, that she sometimes sits on her hill and looks down, thinking how strange it is, that people have always worked the land , like her. The man in the bungalow was a tenant, who had rung her immediately ,evidently.

I drew on two separate days, with a view of the farm in the background, the threat of the rain making me work as hard as my hands would allow, it seems impossible to wear gloves and draw. An extraordinary landscape, shapes , patterns emerging as the light changed. Never enough time.

On our way down south, we stopped in Keswick and visited the Derwent pencil Museum, I was intrigued that, according to the museum : the first ever graphite was discovered in the Seathwaite Valley, Borrowdale near Keswick , around 1500 AD. The story goes ,that after a violent storm, shepherds went out to see their sheep in the morning and found a number of trees blown down, revealing dark material in the subsoil. At first, they thought it was coal, but it would not burn, but they then found it to be excellent material for marking sheep.

The simple pencil ( and paper ) that I have chosen to be the way to ‘record England’ , as part of the EnglaID landscape project actually seems to have originated in the land itself, and conveniently in Zena Kamash’s case study area.

Graphite , again as described in the museum’s literature , was first wrapped in sheepskin, it was then the Italian’s who developed a wooden holder. I was reminded how sheep have played another part in writing and drawing when I thought of a trip to the Bodleian library with Lesley Smith , a senior tutor in Politics at Harris Manchester College at Oxford University . She kindly showed me exquisite ,early hand written and drawn vellum bibles, pointing out small holes , neatly sewn by monks, which had been made by summer ticks eating their way through the sheep hide , on an otherwise perfect smooth surface. I was amused to think that a flock of sheep had turned into a bible, which in turn described sheep and shepherds . Maybe there are similarities with the graphite , that makes the pencil , that in turn describes the land from which the dark rock came .

One more fact learnt from the museum, the HB degrees on a pencil stand for H : hard and B : black , ( why not soft ?but it does sound better) ,H has more clay mixed into the graphite, HB is not a standardized degree, so different pencils will mark in their own way.

 

Peripheral vision, a smile and some football

An Italian Landscape, Joseph Mallard William Turner, Tate Gallery c 1820/ 30

When observing landscape or indeed a large map, it feels impossible to focus on the whole at once. In order to get a sense of the whole landscape or map, it is the combined approach of small, separate observations, made with the flick of an eye , at speed , together with peripheral vision, that seems to achieve this.

Looking at a photograph , one tends to believe that the photograph represents an accurate recording of a particular place in a particular moment, but as Martin Kemp in his book:  Seen / Unseen , describes :

‘ the more that sober techniques of apparently objective representations are involved, the sharper the double edged sword becomes. This is encapsulated in the often repeated phrase ‘the camera does not lie’. Even in the age of digital manipulation, this popular reaction to photographically generated images die hard .’ 

This may be  partly because what you see in a photograph where everything is in focus , the eye does not see.

According to contemporary photographer Rory Carnegie , a photograph made with a 40/50 mm lens , on a 35mm camera is the closest approximation to what the eye sees.

Human vision, as we know,  is not always uniform, peripheral vision can be ‘ stretched ‘ with practice , and is indeed an element in playing some sports , for instance  football, where it is important to have great focus in passing the ball and shooting a goal , but also to understand the wider ‘field’..

An interesting example of the importance of peripheral vision in football is shown  in the past research of Gail Stephenson , head of the University of Liverpool’s Orthoptics Department . As a Manchester United fan , in 1996, she worked on extending the players peripheral vision by changing the colour of their kit, which  provided more contrast with the background they were playing in, with the full backing of the team’s manager:

Alex Ferguson : ‘ Peripheral vision is very important to the game , so Gail’s work is very important. It has been very beneficial to Manchester United’. www.live.ac.uk/.webloc

When drawing recently in a landscape near Salisbury (a wide view ) and in a more constrained view in Taplow , I reflected that although drawing from one particular spot , I had to reconcile that my eyes and to a certain degree , my head was moving , horizontally , vertically , across , in fact in many directions; therefore my drawing on paper was not in the strictest sense accurate or representational of one moment, from one view point.

There seemed an added element : in that when looking at a landscape with intense scrutiny , as I was doing , peripheral vision could no longer be described as being on the edge of ones field of vision, but came closer into the picture plane, in other words : the more intensely one observes , the narrower the field of vision ( or width of vision) , so how is this reconciled with producing an image that shows more than just a small section of the landscape?

Cezanne manages to somehow achieve this , in his paintings of landscape, ( many of which , as above, are in front of Mont Saint Victoire in Provence ), by producing small painted chunks covering the surface of the canvas,  these are in essence, small observations , that almost float in a 3 dimensional way , yet, in an extraordinary sense  , are unified with the rest of the painting , (early pixelation ?).Peripheral vision together with small observations  could be said to throw up a way of looking/ thinking that is two pronged but in unison , however this unison can be in opposition , as is shown by a famous puzzle , the Mona Lisa’s smile :

Margaret S. Livingstone , Professor of Neurology at Harvard University writes how : ’ A side interest in the lab is to use what we know about vision to understand some of the discoveries artists have made about what we see. .. The elusive quality of the Mona Lisa’s smile can be explained by the fact that her smile is almost entirely in low spatial frequencies, so is seen best by your peripheral vision. These three images show her face filtered to show selectively lowest ( left ) low ( middle ) and high ( right ) spatial frequencies.

So when you look at her eyes or the background , you see a smile like the one on the left , or in the middle, and you think she is smiling. But when you look directly at her mouth, it looks more like the panel on the right, and her smile seems to vanish. The fact that the degree of her smile varies so much with gaze angle makes her expression dynamic, and the fact that her smile vanishes when you look at it , makes it seem elusive .”

Coming back to peripheral vision and maps, and data , are there links here with the method of work adopted by researchers at EnglaID? : small sections of data are observed and slotted into a  large mass of data , to form a cohesive whole and new trends ? early days .. but maybe  this  analogy of using a a broad brush( peripheral )/ small brush ( small observations )  at the same time , is a means of getting a new and interesting sense out of the data?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Didcot Dog Mile

The Didcot Dog Mile

In May 2012 , as part of the ongoing EnglaID project, I came to set up an easel by the side of a popular footpath in Didcot and began to draw a working excavation, with the permission of Oxford Archaeology .The footpath is known locally as : the Didcot Dog Mile, now part of the Great Western Park development .

During the three months that followed ,working on the same drawing ,  conversations began to flow with people who walked past daily and spent time on this land: dog walkers, nature enthusiasts , school children, archaeologists. Gradually people brought their own work to show me and discuss on the footpath: sketches, historical photographs, artworks, poems , archaeological drawings, all of which somehow celebrated this beautiful place in a different way.

In parallel to this , conversations on the Didcot landscape also flowed at the Department of Archaeology at Oxford University , with the team of researchers from EnglaID. Their interest was such , that they began to compile special works based on Didcot and its extensive history.

An idea for an exhibition materialised , born out of these conversations. The Arts Centre at Didcot is called Cornerstone , who accepted the proposal for this idea, the aim being to reveal the immense depths of knowledge held by archaeologists, dog walkers, people of Didcot , and artists.

The exhibition has produced a remarkable amount of interest :

-from the Minister of Culture, Ed Vaisez, seen here talking to Professor Chris Gosden in front of the archaeology wall of the exhibition.

- from 12 people and their helpers from Age UK, an exhibition visit and a workshop on landscape.

- from Gemma,( amongst many other children ) aged 6 , from Dorset , here seen looking at one of the three films made for the exhibition:

Discussions are ongoing and numerous, including an explanation, in front of an image in the exhibition , of how the Didcot hoard was found by the son ( Wayne Darley ) of the man who found it , on the Didcot Dog Mile ,( a few years ago )Bill Darley. It is now owned by the British Museum, and is on show at the Ashmolean Museum.

Last Thursday, on Valentines day , there was a talk from Wendy Botto , a dog walker and artist( whose sensitive and emotional film was greatly received) , from Kate Woodley , Oxford Archaeology, whose indepth talk on the finds provided great interest,  Dr Anwen Cooper who provided an insight into the work of EnglaID and how she saw Didcot in this work , alongside the excavations of Dorchester on Thames, other speakers were Professor Chris Gosden ( head of Archaeology at Oxford University ), Karen Leahy , a dog walker, graphic artist , who spoke on behalf of the Didcot people , and myself , who explained the way the drawing emerged on the footpath. There were 70+ people attending the talk and the launch of the exhibition, an extraordinary turn out .

On the last count , there are 122 contributors, this vibrant  exhibition is at Cornerstone Art Centre until March 3rd.

Emerging Landscapes

After a conversation with an artist friend ,Tamarin Norwood , who has kept up a daily writing routine since an early age , I felt inspired to try the same for only ! a year , with drawing.

So since May 2012 , I have made a drawing of a landscape a day , partly in order to keep focused on landscape and all that it brings, amidst the chaos of daily life.

 

Looking through these books of drawings , unexpected themes seem to emerge , which may not have been noticed ,without the evidence of the daily sketch.

The weather , this winter, has brought about a way of almost cancelling the landscape , in the form of floods and snow : suddenly a line of a river is gone and the small undulations of the ground ,become difficult to read in the snow. In the quick drawing above , drawn in low light , in thick snow, in an allotment, your eye seems aware of enclosure, dark posts and trees , and overall : pattern, but less of gradual terrain.

However, in the snow, tracks appear which help giving a feeling of distance, my notes next to this drawing read : ‘ snow storm, lines, people delighted with no school , 2.30pm ‘

When there is flooding , there is almost the same distortion of the land , in this drawing  the land appears in strips amongst lines of water ( there is also a  horse , and reflection)

What is all the more interesting is the transitional period , emerging land , mid flood and mid snow, here small dark patches of vegetation become the first material to be seen ( like some strange morse code ).

It is this phase that the viewer starts to second guess the lie of the land as it gradually comes back to normality . ( the drawing below shows a semi flooded landscape)

Do we have a heightened sense of landscape that we know well, seeing it come back ,having missed it , all these months ?

 

 

Dragons and good cheer

Anwen Cooper and I have been to Chelmsford County Hall  in Essex. We had a very interesting meeting with Nigel Brown , Maria Medlycott and  Adrian Gascoyne from the Shaping Places and Making Places Team for Essex County Council, discussing their current projects and EnglaID projects and  ideas on public engagement .During the meeting , I reflected on how interesting it is that people write notes, how they arrange these thoughts on a identical ( usually) white A4 pieces of paper, but how these arrangements vary considerably. I have seen arrows, circles, underlinings in different colours, stars , squares etc.., and at  the end of this two hour long , productive meeting,  on a piece of paper by  Maria’s side : a beautiful dragon had been drawn:

This , strangely , does not seem to be entirely unusual in the world of archaeology , Letty Ten Harkel , from the EnglaID team in Oxford has been known to draw dragons amongst her notes:

and Chris Green ( also from EnglaID) carries a dragon around with him, fiercely  guarding his thoughts on the the cover of his note book:

Maria Medlycott has even got a map, which may be very helpful if you are going Dragon spotting in Essex:

Why is it that Dragon images persist ? if you happen to goggle ‘Dragon’ and ‘National Gallery’ , there are 46 entries. By far the most chilling and brilliant, to my mind , is the painting of St Michael by Piero Della Francesca ( the artist and mathematical theorist ) painted on wood in 1469 as part of an altarpiece for  S. Agostiono in Sansepolcro.

Almost like a mathematical  equation, the top half of the picture is painted in calm , heavenly blue, which seems frighteningly unrelated to the bottom half of the picture. Here, St Michael is wearing blood red shoes holding the Dragon , ‘Worm’ , or serpent down in its headless state, ( like an eel?), the snake like head is held in the left hand , the red mouth and red shoes linking the bloodiness of the gaping mouth to  the power of the posture below. This calm and yet violent image differs from Ucello’s St George and the Dragon painted only a year later , set in a strange landscape with a princess leading the dragon on a leash :

But coming back to Chelmsford, Thank you for a very positive meeting touching on such varied subjects as Landscape Characterisation , the major project in the Stour Valley ‘Managing a Masterpiece ‘ , EnglaID public engagement ideas, and Dragons ..Happy Xmas !!

Bamburgh and Yeavering

I have just been to Northumberland for 5 days , and , thanks to Letty Ten Harkell’s advice and help, I went to draw at Bamburgh and at Yeavering .

As Graeme Young , from the Bamburgh Research Project  commented in one of his very welcoming emails , these are ‘ two very different landscapes’. The BRP is an independent , non profit , archaeological project investigating Bamburgh Castle  , since 1996 ,they have been working to uncover the castle and its surrounding from prehistory to the present day.

It must be  a very exciting archaeological landscape within which to work.

I choose to draw the village and landscape around Bamburgh, rather than view the castle in isolation, the village lies in the lee of the castle. As I drew, however , It came to me that the village not only supports the castle visually, but maybe has always supported the castle as it does now in 2012 , in an important way.

At Bamburgh the landscape rolls into the sea , into the sky and twists around the buildings. During four days , I thought of the consistency of the changing sky and weather patterns ( if that makes sense! am I right in thinking this ?) since early human habitation , and the possible other consistencies, of small details ,like the grass and migrating birds, which help to make this special place ,feel  historical ,in an extraordinary way .

At Yeavering , the consistency of the weather and grass in the landscape, is all that seems left , in an obvious way ,to describe ‘ what by any standards has to be one of the most impressive archaeological landscapes in England’ Paul Frodsham ( Forgetting Gefrin: Elements of the Past in the Past at Yeavering) , the site had already been occupied for thousands of years before it became an Anglo Saxon palace ( known as Ad Gefrin ) , sited in the Past Perfect web site, as having attracted cremation burials, ritual pits, burial mounds and a stone circle, with Paulinus baptising converts for 36 days in the river Glen.
 How to understand this very different land ?in the end I sat and drew  in the middle of the large field , formerly Ad Gefrin, letting the wind do the drawing for me, hands blown back by the force .
 The small butts of feathery grass constantly moving, in one determined direction, made me reflect of the amount of collective human endeavor, that had taken place in this large and beautiful field.

Ad Gefrin is overlooked and at first glance protected by Yeavering Bell but maybe  in parallel with Bamburgh Castle and its village lying next to it , it also supports it and draws from it , in equal measures.

The Entire City , Max Ernst 1934