Tag Archives: art collaboration

Hebrides day 5

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p1110653Back home in Edinburgh after an incredible week in the West Highlands and Hebrides – a journey which took us through Achiltibuie then the isles of Lewis, Harris and Skye.

I’ll continue this series of blog posts under the general title of ‘Hebrides – day 6’ etc, until we decide on a title for our project (a collaboration between myself, poet Louise Palfreyman and cellist/compser Atzi Muramatsu).

It’s in early stages at the moment, but we hope to raise funds for a longer stay in the Hebrides, on Lewis and Harris particularly.

Louise and I p1110350will continue to work closely, sharinguntitled ideas as we develop paintings and poems began on our journey, which we’ll blog and share every week or so with a round up of the work produced as we go.

Today I’ve been sifting through the hundreds of photos, sketches and videos from our journey. Looking through photos of Harris confirms what we felt while staying there – it’s a magical place (which I managed to blog about despite the frustrating on/off internet connection! Link to post Here)

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I described it as ‘Marshwiggle territory’ which may have flummoxed those unfamiliar with the Narnia Chronicles, for whom I include this excellent illustration on the right, by Pauline Baynes.

 

More photos of Harris..

 

I’ll also be editing a video this week which will hopefully capture the magic and inspiration of our trip, also our paintings, poems and music.

As mentioned in my blog post about Lewis and Harris, we met with poet Ian Stephen in Stornaway last week. One of the poems he recited for us came to mind today while I thought of the silvery moonscape vistas of Harris, with red berries of rowan trees growing alongside its sea lochs.

Ian’s poem echoes the gentleness we felt there, the sense that you can open heart and imagination to the atmosphere…

Should we plant a rowan here

at the sea-loch side?

The seed of red berriesfor-all-of-us

for imagination,

to germinate

in this day

when leaves mould

and stars die

 

A hawthorn for healing,

spur and leaf balm.

Rooting for

the pair of us

and for us all.

 

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Nocturn – cello and paintings

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The video below is the beginning of this year’s collaboration between myself and Atzi Muramatsu (composer and cellist).

We recently talked about the themes of the latest series of paintings (Nocturnes) and Atzi produced a series of works on cello. The mysterious and minimal intro music is a perfect introduction, but I’m particularly moved by the piece that accompanies Nocturn 4, it’s suitably dark in mood, yet there’s an airborn feeling to it, with a sense of searching, or being compelled to explore what we’re not familiar with.

'Nocturn 4'. Mixed media on 20x16" canvas

‘Nocturn 4’. Mixed media on 20×16″ canvas

The tense piece towards the end, and strange primal, dramatic sounds at the end are in contrast to the more lyrical piece that accompanies Nocturn 4, and I felt this was perfect sound accompaniment to Nocturns 3 and 5 which have a sense of more movement, tension and drama.

 

 

 

'Blue 3'. Mixed media on 20x16" canvas

‘Blue 3’. Mixed media on 20×16″ canvas

Nocturn 3 features the suggestion of a ship, or ship’s ferry lights, so I’ve played around with slightly distorted and unsettling effects in the video, which are echoed nicely with the atmospheric creaking sounds Atzi makes with the cello (I think of them as creaky anyway, it might just be me associating with images of boats in trouble at sea!).

 

Inspiring stuff from Atzi as always. We’re working on a new project to accompany the exhibition in July and I’ll update on that soon.