I’ve been initiating some paintings, making-with the cairn of Harcles Hill on Holcombe Moor. I want to explore painting-with the landscape, and methods that foreground contact over extract.
Walking from the foot of the hill past Harcles Hill Quarry, I picked up a triangular shaped stone and wrapped it in cloth. Along the walk I held the wrapped stone, exploring all the stone’s textures through the cloth with my fingers, contacting each part of it. When I arrived at the summit of Harcles Hill, I unwrapped the stone and submerged it in a bog, then wrapped it back up again. I then carefully placed it inside the cairn, burying it by placing other stones on top.
After leaving it for 7 days, I retrieved the stone this morning, the cloth having been completely frozen around it. I observed that it had been through many changes since I left it last week. It appeared to have been through a process of drying, absorbing, dying, and freezing. This last process of freezing held the cloth more tightly to the stone, further intensifying the sense of contact.
I unwrapped the stone and added it to the cairn in traditional fashion. Observing the cloth on its own, it seemed worn and weathered, yet still maintaining much of the essential characteristics of its raw material before it came to know the stone. My plan now is to take this to the studio and apply a layer of tinted glaze, to seal in the contact and finish the painting.
The painting tells a story of contact with this particular cairn on Holcombe Moor, through the stone, the cloth, the bog, the weather, and me. The painting becomes the story of a more-than-human community, rather than the outcome of individual expression. It is a painting made-with the landscape.
I left a second stone in the cairn before leaving, this time wrapped in canvas, and with the complete wrapped stone submerged within a bog before burying, to hopefully receive more information from the mud and peat. I will share the results upon retrieval.