‘Brud i Gennem’ (badly translated as ‘Breaking Through’) is the name of an anamorphic installation I did at Galleri Rasch in Rønne, Bornholm in the end of September 2016.

Nothing to do with birds (though I did actually hide a peregrine in one of the paintings) the exhibition is concerned with the way in which we (=I) struggle to deal with the ‘viral’ images of dead and injured children that are pumped out of Syria into the wider media on a regular basis. In a broader sense, the exhibition addresses the issues surrounding the Syrian Humanitarian Crisis and the influx of refugees into Europe (and even little Bornholm).

The main premise is this: I live in an incredibly safe war-free zone, surrounded by wonderful nature far from the dangers of bombardment and starvation , or the need to flee for my life. I take a walk  in the daytime, maybe sketch some birds. In the evening on one or other screen (or , more probably, several) I am served images of dead or dying children – ‘viral’ images that awaken the conscience, tug on the heart-strings and cause pangs of guilt – until they are swiftly forgotten and life moves on…  Until that is, the next time I sit in a bus with some confused Syrian refugees, or my child talks about the new kid in their class ‘Mohamed’. My seaweed drawing on the beach, see here, was part of my response to this situation.

‘Brud i Gennem’ came about when I was invited to have an exhibition during Bornholms Kulturuge (‘Culture Week’) in September 2016, by Galleri Rasch in Rønne Bornholm. The theme for 2016 was ‘Brud’, an interesting word in Danish that has multiple meanings and idiomatic uses. In Spring of this year I did an art week with some students from a school in Nexø that explored some of these themes, and some ideas relating to the refugee crisis and the use of the anamorphic technique began to fly around in my mind.

Being very busy this summer, I didn’t really have time to move things on much. When the images and films of Omran Daqneesh ‘the boy in the ambulance’ surfaced on the News and online, I was shocked and appalled. The helplessness and shock on his face reflected the whole situation in Syria, and I couldn’t get the image off my mind. It is precisely the of the image that makes it so powerful. Omran looks lost, helpless – both young and vulnerable, but somehow ossified and ancient at the same time. War photographers from Syria see worse – children with their limbs and heads blown off – but the image of Omran was somehow shocking enough – without crossing the line into gore. He could have been anyone’s kid. Could have been my kid.

Going for a walk in Vang stenbrud (an old granite quarry here on Bornholm) looking for some recently fledged peregrine falcons a few days later, I was still thinking of the image, or rather, it was still preying on my mind. The deep shadows in the rocks hid a multitude of faces and figures and seemed to echo the statue like-figure of Omran, covered in grey dust, shocked into catanonia. It was then I realised how the anamorphic technique (where an image is seen as three-dimensional from a point in space, rather than a flat plane) would be the perfect vehicle to reflect the way in which the image drifted in and out of my mind.

I started the installation on the monday, and opened on the saturday – all in the incredible heat of an indian summer (the gallery is like a greenhouse). As the week went on, the exhibition began to change into something – what it is now. ‘Break Through’ works as a ‘normal’ exhibition, with pictures hanging on walls. Then there is the anamorphic composite image of Omran seen from a specific point in the gallery. Nearly hidden on the pictures themselves are also quotes taken from news report from the time relating to Omran in particular, and viral images of war in general. Lastly there is a painting where visitors to the gallery are encouraged to write their feelings and thoughts directly, like graffiti on the rocks.

I tried to change our relationship to these images – to reinvigorate them and make our relationship to them active rather than passive. To re-infect the virus.

I was helped by my family (Alma painted the amazingly small quotes with a brush), by the Gallery, and by some students from Bornholm Billedskole. The film I made with the help of Verner Kjærsgaard – a local photographer who dropped everything to lend his expertise and equipment free of charge.

A local radio station P4 Bornholm made a film of the installation which can be seen here (scroll down to 17th Sept)…

TV2 Bornholm, a local TV station made a short piece about the installation here (20.09.16).

My film of the exhibition is above.

 

Straight after my trip to Turkey, it was off to Scotland for the Seabird Drawing course. Formerly led by the late John Busby, the Seabird Course is now headed by Darren Woodhead, along with Greg Poole, John Threfall and Kitty Jones. This year Bruce Pearson was the invited guest tutor. Bloomin’ brilliant.

Having arrived pretty much straight from Turkey with Greg, we were both ‘battle hardened’ and eager to get out in the field again. The drawing conditions in Turkey had been very pleasant, but the wildlife and birds were sporadic at best and we spent most of our time drawing in quite a ‘static’ environment. The seabird course could not have been more different. The weather was cold, windy, changeable, windy, showery and downright challenging and the seabirds were anything but static.

St Abbs proved to be the most popular venue and there is really no place like it. The constant din of seabirds, vertiginous cliff and rocks, crashing waves – a kaleidoscope of colour and form. You can sit anywhere in St Abbs and find amazing stuff to look at. There is simply no end of things to see and draw, and I could gladly spend the rest of my life just walking up and down the paths over the cliffs, drawing and painting. And through time, of course, everything changes. Each weather front brings its own colours and shades, and the tides and the movement of the sun create a dynamic backdrop to the even more dynamic movements of the birds.

I spent most of my time working on ‘time-based’ work – following the flights of the seabirds with brush strokes and creating a long exposure of their flight lines. Landscapes split into different sections throughout the day, some under the sun, others rained upon. Row upon row of 10 second, 20 second sketches of the same bird. I really feel as though I am going somewhere with this sort of stuff, and I look forward to mining this more and more – I think it is a rich seam.

A boat trip to the Bass was another highlight of the trip – unfortunately I was not able to get on the rock this time. In the lee of the wind, we made countless small circles in the shadow of the gigantic cliff, drawing and painting a moving – but returning – target. An incredible and moving (ahem) moment, as tutors and students alike scribbled away in total concentration, wordlessly, under the din of the squabbling gannets. Unforgettable.

As this was my second trip I felt I was able to hit the ground running. I knew what to expect and what I wanted to do.  This year, the tutors had a more ‘hands on’ approach, in that the day started with warm up drawing exercises and finished with evening talks from the tutors. This was a really positive development that opened a whole new element to the course, without detracting from the democratic and non-prescriptive atmosphere that made the seabird course so iconic in the first place. The dynamic of a residential course, where everyone is in the same boat, is a wonderful thing to behold and experience, and I look forward to the next time I can come. The SWLA has a bursary – see here….Go if you can!

Earlier in June I was lucky enough to be one of four SWLA (Society of Wildlife Artists) artists invited to take part in an EU funded partnership with Doğa Koruma Merkezi (DKM), a Turkish environmental NGO. Working under the expert stewardship of an administrative team, the four tutors (myself, Nik Pollard, Greg Poole and Esther Tyson) spent five days mentoring and tutoring a group of approximately 20 art school students, artists and scientists from all over Turkey, and five days by ourselves, out in the field, painting and drawing.

The project aimed to establish a cultural bridge through art and nature – to promote observation and field-based wildlife art as a tool for raising awareness of the Turkish Sweet Gum Forests. The tangible project outcomes, aside from the mountain of artwork produced by tutors and students alike, are a project book and an exhibition, both of which are at the time of writing, being developed. The exhibition will travel to three different sites in Turkey as well as the ‘Natural Eye’ exhibition at the Mall Galleries in London.

So, that is the blurb. On my way over, truth be told, I had little idea what to expect and was pleasantly surprised when we rolled up at the Flora Hotel – a fantastic home away from home on the shores of Lake Köyceğiz in South Western Turkey. DKM had booked the entire hotel for the project team, and the following day the students and invited Turkish artists started to arrive. After an informal ‘ice breaking’ session I had a much better idea about the professionalism of the project, the passion of the SWLA artists and the enthusiasm of the Turkish students.

The participants themselves were from all over Turkey – a really diverse mix of BA, MA and Phd art college students, professional artists and one or two with a more scientific or birdy background. There were illustrators, land artists, animators, fashion students – a really heady mix. Despite this, and the fact that they didn’t know each other, the group was really coherent and harmonious and all of the students were eager to get out in the field and paint.

Nik (SWLA) and Aydan (DKM) had produced a very detailed itinerary, that mostly revolved around visiting the Sweetgum forests – with our ‘base camp’ in the Kavakarasi forest. So, off we would trot in the mornings, into the forest to draw and paint. At first I was a little disappointed with the lack of bird and animal life, but with repeated visits the forest grew on me, and the human stories (foraging and ‘gum’ collection) were really interesting. Later in the evening, we would have ‘share and tell’ sessions in the hotel, where we all got our day’s work out and tried to make constructive comments. The students were amazingly receptive and their work improved no end during the week. What a joy. Aside from ‘working’ in the forests, we made a short trip to a nearby waterfall and an unforgetable boar trip through the delta to Daylan and the mediterranean, and onward to the Iztuzu turtle rehabilitation centre.

One of the key project aims was ‘cultural cross communication’, and it was a privilege to spend so much time with the students and project teams, and hear about the reality of living in such a huge and complex country. For most (western) Europeans, Turkey means little more than a hot sandy beach, so it was fascinating and a little shocking to hear about life in Ankara and other cities. One of my favourite memories was staying up late (very late) one night with a bunch of students and listening to them singing together. Or another time in the Sweetgum forest, when two old ladies, foraging for leaves and bark, literally ‘stepped into’ one of my paintings. An incredible and awe-inspiring experience.

The whole trip was unforgettable in so many ways. Once the students left, we remained and carried on drawing and painting. One site (Kersele?) was literally full of snakes and scorpions,  another (Toparlar) humming with insects and butterflies. Everywhere frogs. I learned so much from my fellow tutors, the students and the forest, and look forward to seeing the publication and the exhibition in London. Hi-res paintings and drawings will be uploaded soon!

 

Finally opened the exhibition ‘Earthbound’ last week, together with my fellow artists. We are all very happy with the result, and look forward to working together in the future. Here are some photos of the installation, the gallery and the works… What a fantastic place!

I recently worked on an illustration commission for NaturBornholm, one of Bornholm’s premier visitor attractions. Geologically speaking, Bornholm is the only place in Denmark where traces of dinosaurs can and have been discovered, and NaturBornholm have put together an exhibition based on the (quite limited) footprints, teeth and other bone fragments that have been found in the last century or so on Bornholm.

Without the ‘wow factor’ of huge skeletons, NaturBornholm decided to commission some really quite incredible dinosaur models from a Copenhagen based company called 10tons and create a family friendly but informative exhibition. The models are life-size, feel incredibly real, and are about as close as you can get to standing beside a living dinosaur. I was commissioned to create a series of illustrations to support NaturBornholm’s exhibition narrative.

A bit of a dream commission really… but pretty much everything I do is rooted in ‘live’ observation in some way or other, so I was a little out of my comfort zone. But, as everyone knows now, birds are dinosaurs, and this fact – together with a childhood spent perched on the kitchen table drawing innumerable prehistoric creatures – meant that I felt confident enough to take on and complete what turned out to be quite a large commission. My watercolours and drawings were blown up and printed on 2m high partition walls, together with the text and some of the objects.

NaturBornholm has just taken delivery of some new dinosaur models, which will be placed out in the open, outside the visitor centre, and the next part of the commission is to create some illustrations supporting these models, with activities for families and so on. Updates will be coming…

‘Earthbound’ the exhibition is opening in about four weeks (Thursday the 5th of May, Gudhjem Museum, Bornholm) and I am busy working on the paintings I will be exhibiting. I will be showing ‘time-based’ work, where I am looking at changes (in light, colour, form, vegetation, etc) at specific locations on Bornholm through time (minutes, hours, weeks, months, the year).

All my work for this exhibition is either painted out ‘in the field’ or based on sketches I have done in the field. A side ‘theme’ to my work in ‘Earthbound’ is looking into the process of creating ‘finished works’ from sketches – so some of the finished pictures I will be showing are paintings of paintings of paintings, a sort of ‘chinese whispers’ that means that more personal subjectivity is added with each ‘layer’. So while some of my paintings will be immediate (for instance sketches of a preening gull done every five minutes for half an hour) others will be more ‘processed’. This whole area really fascinates me and underpins everything I do… observation, interpretation…

My main source of inspiration has been the view from my studio – a field, some trees and a band of trees a little further away. For once, there will be very few birds in this exhibition – at least from me… Lone Schiøtz will be exhibiting some of her wonderful birds. Barbara Sørensen, Eva Brandt and Hans Henning Pedersen make up the rest of the ‘Earthbound’ artists, all of whom take their inspiration from Bornholm’s natural environment in one way or another.

I’m really looking forward to this one… more pictures and an exhibition report to follow…

Wallasea Island lies in the Thames estuary on the River Crouch in Essex and is the site of one of the most exciting habitat creation projects in western Europe. The RSPB is creating a landmark new reserve here using waste spoil from London’s Crossrail Project which is deposited on the island in order to raise the ground level by several metres across 1,500 acres. Controlled breaches of the existing sea wall will then create new saltmarsh, lagoons and islands. The RSPB has invited the SWLA (Society of Wildlife Artists) to document this massive feat of engineering by creating an artistic record of the change in habitat from sterile agricultural land to a landscaped wildlife haven.

An earlier residency took place in the third week of April, with seven artists recording the machinery and bird life of the region. Between the 21st and the 24th of September, and together with five other artists from the SWLA (Carry Akroyd, Brin Edwards, Dafila Scott, Robert Greenhalf and Johnnie Foker), I was lucky enough to take part in this exciting project.

Meeting up on-site, we were given a tour of the project by one of the wardens. An almost lunar landscape, the vast sky and flat horizons were unlike anything I was used to. The infill with soil from the Crossrail project was complete (although they still hope for more spoils from alternative sources) and some of the sea walls had been breached, meaning parts of the area were flooded with the high tide. Bird life was sparse and the distant, save a few thousand canada geese.

The weather was…English and the first day was spent under an umbrella trying to sketch and not get too wet. The weather improved over the next few days and I managed to fill half a sketchbook. As everything was new, I found myself rushing around trying to record and get to grips with everything (=not getting anything done). I felt like I needed to ‘connect’ more deeply with the landscape, and on the second day I decided to limit myself to recording the rise and fall of the tide on one particular creek.

Wallasea is a really fascinating place and a really exciting project. I had some really interesting chats with walkers and birdwatchers passing by, and I really hope the RSPB manages to fund a return trip (or trips) – an artistic response to the changes through time could really make this project come alive in an exciting and more valuable way. I can’t wait to go back and see how it develops (hint hint)…

DFUNK is the name of a brilliant organisation in Denmark that helps young refugees. They do lots of different activities, with an emphasis on raising awareness of the plight of young refugees, and getting them integrated into Danish society.

One of the things they do is hold a summer camp, where they invite young refugees in Denmark together with young Danish people, to live, work, eat and play together for a whole week. During the week there are lots of different activities and workshops – the whole emphasis is on having fun, making friends and – well that’s it really. The atmosphere is fantastic and very positive. Denmark is bloody good at this sort of thing.

In July, I was invited to teach some workshops over a two-day period at Jyderup Højskole. We started off doing some ‘architectural constructions’ with spaghetti and marshmallows, and moved on to charcoal drawing self-portraits. On the last day we did some ‘land art’ – where we had to go out into the (very picturesque) surroundings with an egg and create some sort of sculpture, using only the materials that we found.

My initial description of what we would be doing was met with rather blank stares, but in no time at all they got the ‘gist’ of what it was all about, and a few hours later, had produced some really cool stuff…

Fugle, Naturligvis (= Birds, Naturally) is the name of my new exhibition opening at midday, Sunday the 28th of June at Galleri Vang, in Vang, Bornholm. 

The Gallery at Vang is an old stonecutters’ workshop, and what it lacks in ammenities (= er, lighting!) it makes up for in location. It sits right on the beach almost, in the shadow of the overgrown walls of the old granite quarry, and I’m really looking forward to putting some of my stuff on the walls. There will be large charcoal drawings of Barnacle Geese, together with watercolour sketches (and sketchbooks) from Bornholm, Estonina and Scotland.

The Gallery is open every day from 12 until 6pm and Saturday the 4th of July (start closing 4pm on the last day). See you there!

See ‘vangflyer’ below for the poster…

vangflyer