Winter Light

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I’m sitting on the beach just before Christmas looking out to sea. From a slightly raised position on the top of a sand dune, and nursing a cup of coffee in cold fingers, I look at the ebbing tide and the way the sky is reflected in the watery channels and wet sand. Chatting to my husband, I’m noticing, but not paying especial attention, but when I get home the picture of the beach and that particular light stays with me. What was really a passing glimpse has lodged itself into my mind.

I write some words down in my notebook to remind myself of the experience. ‘Wells Beach. Winter. Disappearing horizon as pearl grey sky merges into pearl grey sea.. Ochre/grey sand is broken by many small rivulets that flow into the main channel.’

The image stays with me. And over a few days I refine my words.

Cold.

Still.

Pewter sky and pearl grey sea merge in a bleached hazy mist.

Water reflects the sky and turns silver.

Ochre/grey sand is broken by many small, shining rivulets that flow into a larger channel and are drawn out towards the sea.

Etched lines on land, sea and sky blend into delicate, shadowy forms.

Before Christmas I made a small, waxed sample. Some light linen, a painted patch appliquéd to the back, some eyelets along the patch, the whole waxed with paraffin wax, and then some stitching. As I stitched, I scrumpled the waxed cloth and the consequent marks left a trace of my hands. I especially liked the way the white creases were exaggerated in front of the darker patch. Something about that sample made a connection with the pale, slightly misty, winter light of that morning on the beach.

After an incredibly busy time last year I have set 2026 aside to make new work. I haven’t loaded myself up with exhibitions or teaching so that I have the time to make. Last year I had seven exhibitions, and I had to make new work for six of them. That gives little time to come up with something new, and recently I have found myself falling back on tried and tested ideas and techniques. So, this year I am giving myself time to play and to try out new things. To read and to learn. To apply new knowledge to my work.

This is a step-by-step process. I’m not starting too far away from where I am now – familiar materials, familiar landscape, familiar ideas. The words I wrote before Christmas give me a starting point. Winter light. Small rivulets. Movement. The changes the water effects on the land. The mirroring of land, sea and sky. Etched lines on land sea and sky. And then thinking further afield, issues surrounding rising sea levels.

The artist Terry Frost said that the thinking happened before and after a painting, but whilst painting, it was just all about putting paint on canvas. I have thought (I’ve been thinking for the last goodness how many years really) and now, with those thoughts lodged at the back of my mind, I am going to make. I’m not trying to produce anything in particular. It’s about material, mark and form. It’s about seeing what works and what doesn’t work. I hope to move on ……. I wonder how far, and where to?!

Findings (out)

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This week the exhibition still making, still learning opens at Huddersfield University. still making, still learning is an installation showcasing the outcomes of a collaboration between musician Gavin Osborn and seven textile artists from the 62 Group developed during their exhibition Making as Learning.

Findings (out), Making as Learning, Salts Mill, 2024

Each textile piece is paired with a corresponding sound work, composed by Osborn in close dialogue with the artist and designed to be heard alongside the artwork itself.

My work Findings (out) uses found and collected objects that have been touched, treated, manipulated, and re-worked. The work started during lockdown when I would go down to the studio each day, and, with time on my hands, began to play around with, and then hang up, the found objects lying around the studio. This work has been a permanent fixture in the studio ever since and hangs right across one of the beams. I have to mind my head as it hangs quite low! It is a continuously changing display, and I regularly change it, taking things down and putting new things up as ideas come to me.

Some of the objects and the processes I have used are:

Rubber fishing floats – enclosed, loosely wrapped

Spoon bowl – contained

Keel bone of a bird

Driftwood – various shapes and sizes – wrapped, bound, pierced, stitched, knotted

Rusty nails – soaked in salt water and pushed through cloth

Pine needles – bound

Rubber strip – folded and bound

Sandpaper strip – coiled and bound

Painted wood – wrapped

Part of a leather shoe sole – contained

Various bits of rusty, worn metal

Various bits of rope, twine, wire

Cloth – waxed, stitched

Thread

Wire – twisted

Handmade book with graphic scores

The idea of making as a way of learning is an approach I have always taken – I can’t think my way into a piece, but instead find I need to sample, experiment, try things out and generally fiddle around in order to come up with something new.

Gavin Osborn has taken my use of materials and objects and the way I manipulate and handle them as a starting point for the sound piece. He wrote,

‘The basic approach has been to use found objects & found environmental recordings; the objects have been handled & treated in various ways analogue & digital, leaning towards analogies with your processes. Some material has memory connections, & sometimes material returns in different ways to highlight this; some of the object sounds are leaning towards the environmental sounds. Materials include: car spring, piano wire, bamboo skewers, bits of rusty metal, a scaffolding pipe, twine, wire, driftwood, rock, slate, tissue paper, plastic bag.

I wanted to put a nod to the flute in, & your comment about finding/making blown/blowable objects; the sound is me blowing a piece of light scaffolding from my found objects stash – it just happened to have holes spaced usefully enough to get fingers to & change pitches; it’s very lightly filtered to remove some hiss, but otherwise quite faithful.’

There is a live performance by Gavin Osborn at 3.30pm on Wednesday 26 November as part of Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Richard Steinitz Building, Huddersfield University, HD1 3DH

Sample 2

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Here is another Sample.

With this piece I was experimenting with that gradual change from dark to light that often occurs at the sea/sky across the horizon. I love to see the occasional juxtaposition of light between the sea and sky – light sky and dark sea to dark sky and light sea , with a patch in-between where the sea and sky are the same colour. Here the painting of the cloth worked well but the gradient of the stitching is not so good. It got better as I went on and mingled the colours more, but it is something to work on.

I like the painted white stripe – again something to mull over and think how it could be used.

The left half of the sample was soaked in a tannin (oak gall) bath overnight that knocked back the colour slightly and I like the shadow it produced. I have another, slightly bigger, sample on the way to see how things shift again. This one has a sky and a sea. Onwards!

Blue

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Two of the works showing at the Common Threads exhibition at Wells Maltings at the moment are titled Blue Study 1 and 2. These are inspired by an observation and consequential word sketch that I wrote sometime ago. I included the words and a related drawing in my Fragments book (out of print), but hadn’t, until now, made a piece of work.

These two pieces, Blue Study 1 and 2, are my first thoughts. Small pieces to feel my way in to the subject. They use familiar colours and techniques. I’m sampling at the moment to find a different pathway – to move the techniques and processes along. I don’t want to move too far from this original pair, but neither do I want to get stuck in a rut.

Blue

Warm

A south westerly breeze brings a slight chill to the air.

Sunny

Blue sky

Blue sea

Thin wispy clouds

cirrus

blow in fragile strands diagonally across the sky.

Fall streaks that foretell a change in the weather.

Far away towards the horizon the blue sky lightens.

Below

deep water

deep blue.

Blue is

scattered light.

Short waves

at the end of the rainbow

that disperse

into the air

and into the water.

You can’t touch this blue because it isn’t really there.

Exhibition update

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In the last post I promised to give you an idea of the whole Stains & Traces exhibition which is showing at the Hastings Arts Forum until 9 November ….. so here we are!

Leavings Series: Wind Whistle – Green, Linen, wire, driftwood, wax

Taking part are four other artists including me. Annabel Faraday, a ceramicist, Denise Jones, a textile artist and Mary Morris and Carly Ralph who work with mixed media.

Mary Morris

Annabel Faraday writes about her work:

Collages of clay and flotsam.

Bricolage of transformed objects.

Segments, scraps of unknown sources.

Traces of prior shaping.

Homage to the salty sprites that lap the shores of Sussex seas.

Annabel Faraday

Denise Jones works in the liminal space between text and textile, history and memory and digs beneath the readily accessible discursive readings of textile to draw attention to their quiet materiality and explore what this may convey.

For the series Family Histories she considered what we all have in common: family stories of war loss emigration gratin love and friendship.

Denise Jones, Family Histories

Mary Morris’s work is grounded in landscape and the marks and traces of past events, signs of occupation and evidence of lives lived. Of particular interest are the man-made indicators of previous industrial activity.

Mary Morris, Rondino

Carly Ralph’s work reflects a curiosity about the geography of her urban environment and its social history. It includes research into her St Leonards studio and its former occupants spanning centuries.

More recently her focus has turned to the well worn pavements in her surrounding streets. Surfaces which bear the stains and traces of lives lived and journeys travelled by generations.

Carly Ralph

Carly Ralph

While we’re on the subject, I have work in another local textile exhibition that opens today. Photos to follow.

Stains & Traces Set-up

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Well it’s been a busy day today here in St Leonards, and the Stains & Traces exhibition is nearly set-up. There is just the labelling and final positioning left to do. The Hastings Arts Forum has a wonderful hanging team who come in and expertly hang everything and all we (the artists) had to do was give a bit of input here and there. Thank you everyone who came in to help hang!

The work in Stains & Traces examines the presence, absence and residues of human existence on our world. Showing work alongside me are Annabel Faraday who works with clay, Denise Jones who works with textile, and Mary Morris and Carly Ralph who use mixed media. Each artist has interpreted the brief in personal and diverse ways to express the effects of change and passing time on the people, objects and materials in the world we live in.

Stains & Traces, Hastings Arts Forum, 20 Marine Court, TN38 0DX, 29 October-9 November. Gallery open 11am-5pm Wednesday-Sunday.

Everything was a bit of a rush today and I didn’t take photos of everyone’s work, but I’ll do so tomorrow so you can get a general idea of the whole exhibition.

Stains & Traces and Sampling

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Is anybody else fed up with Instagram? I never seem to see posts from the people I want to see, and I’m beginning to think no one sees my posts either! So I have decided that every time I post on Instagram I’ll post the same thing here as well, except with a bit more information!

First though, next week I’m going down to St Leonards to take part in Stains & Traces at the Hastings Arts Forum. This is the second leg of the exhibition we showed at St Nicholas’ Church, Salthouse earlier in the year. I’ve made some new work and tweaked other things, but I am still showing pieces from three series of work: Imprint, Leavings and Holding Place. You can read more about these works in this previous post. If you live around St. Leonards, there is an Open Evening on Friday 31 October from 6-8pm. Please drop in and say hello.

Leavings Series: Whelk Coil

Now that the work for Stains & Traces has been finished and is packed up and ready to go, I can turn my mind to something else. I have a project in mind, but it is still only a kernel of an idea.

My preferred way of working is to think a bit, experiment bit and then think again. I have done a bit of thinking and have an idea of where I want to go. I might even have an idea of how I might like to realise the idea, but nothing is set in stone and the next few weeks are going to be dedicated to trying things out. I find that when looking for something new, or trying to push things on, it is best to start somewhere familiar and use techniques, materials and processes that are known.

So this is my first sample. It is an open linen, with an appliquéd patch and some eyelets sewn in. Tanned in an oak gall bath and waxed with paraffin wax. As I was holding the cloth and sewing the black lines, my hands left marks in the waxed cloth. I love the idea that the cloth holds traces of its handling and I particularly like the marks left on the back of the appliquéd patch.

I have another sample on the go – something a bit different. But when that one is done, I’ll be trying out some more appliqué!

Collecting

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I’ve recently been away to Scotland on holiday and one of the things I enjoy the most about going away is being able to experience a different environment and to document and record my findings. I do this both by drawing, which gives me the time to observe my surroundings and to put down what interests me, and by picking up objects.

I find looking for and collecting objects is a great way to understand what I do and don’t know about an environment. There are always things that I recognise, but when I encounter something new, I ask myself basic questions: What is it? Why is it there? Where did it come from? And then, is it part of the natural world or manmade? Is it manufactured and if so, why. Is it old or new? What story can it tell?

Walking along beaches on the Outer Hebrides I expect shells, seaweed and driftwood but I am always on the lookout for something I don’t know.

On one beach I noted in my sketchbook,

‘The rocks look as if they are painted with white/cream emulsion. Is it a very flat type of lichen? It is interspersed by bright orange/yellow lichen. Also, enormous textured splotches all over the black rocks and rounded pebbles on the beach.

The black bladderwrack has red bladderwrack amongst it. Is this a different type or merely old? It ripples slowly and heavily in the lapping water.

Tucked in amongst the rocks are the largest bladderwrack bladders I have seen. I take a couple home with me – they may become whistles.’

I observe, I question, and I think. Already I’m considering what the objects might say or could become. Needless to say, the bladders aren’t whistles yet!

I love the tiny pink cowries that you can find on some beaches, they are about the size and colour of my little fingernail. I have to hunker right down to the ground to be able to see and find them. I visited the cowrie beach a couple of times, the first time I found one shell, but the second time, with an ebbing tide, I hit the jackpot and found a handful. They are Arctic cowries, Trivia Arctic, and the local name for them is Groatie Buckies.

Back at home in the studio I lay everything out and consider. I have some dried bladderwrack, a few handfuls of shells, driftwood and a ring of old fishing floats. What to do with them and how can they tell the story of my time away? The objects themselves speak of the coast without me having to do anything to them at all. They are mostly worn and have suffered from the effects of exposure and weathering – sun, rain, wind – heat, cold, water, desiccation.

On the first page of my sketchbook I wrote (at the end of the holiday) ‘Exposed, Over-exposed’.

I think about exposure. How I am exposed to the weather on this Northern rocky outcrop. There was wind (strong), rain and sun in quick succession most days. I think of the objects in the landscape that are exposed to the weather. I have picked up weathered wood, dried and faded fishing floats, and dried baldderwrack. I think about how the wind blows the sand and exposes objects that have been hidden and buried. I think about the connection to the word exposure and light, especially in photography. Underexposed is where there is too little light and overexposed is when there is too much. My trip was around the time of the summer solstice and there was a lot of light – sunrise 4.30am – sunset 10.30pm. That is 18 hours of light. I was over-exposed!

So ‘exposure’ is the watchword for this collection and the word that connects these objects to this environment and my experience of it. I have to consider how to tell this story.

My first task was to make some ‘Holding Places’ for the loose shells. Containers to hold them and at the same time objects that can hold a sense of place by the composition of their materials.

I start with three little bitumen covered containers – but they are too deep, and I can’t see the shells properly. However, I like the way the bitumen has pooled at the bottom of them, and it gives me an idea to put in some shells and cover them with bitumen. There is only a very faint suggestion of their shape. I think of them as being pre-exposed (is that a word?).

I think again and like the way I have used small, cupped shells as a holding place. I make couple of small black cups out of linen scrim that I mould round a stone – too black! So I make some white ones (not finished yet) …..

And that is where I am at the moment. I’ll let you know how things progress as my thinking moves on.

My Fibre Arts Take Two workshop, Sensing Place – A material response, is launching again at the end of the month if you are interested in learning how you can use your observations and the objects from your environment to inspire your artwork. Click here to find out more or to join the waiting list.

Imprint

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For the past few months, I have been working on a new body of work. It has come about slowly and was started by my thinking about a work I made last year called Marsh Light. This work considered the way the water and wet mud of the creeks reflect the sky so that it appears beneath your feet. I wrote:

The water reflects the sky and the mud banks.

Water and sky are the same colour with an intricate pattern of land in-between.

Water/sky

Land

Sky/ water

I titled the piece Marsh Light but toyed with calling it Imprint because of the way the sky appeared to be impressed or stamped upon the land.

Marsh Light

This got me thinking of other ways marks have been left or imprinted on the landscape by wind, water, tide and light. The way you can tell how big a tide is by the undulations left in the sand or mud; the way the wind blows across the beach and leaves troughs and mounds in the sand; the beach rivers or spring lines that cut into the sand and mud as the ebbing tide recedes.

Imprint series

As well as marks left in the landscape, marks are left on objects within the landscape as wind, rain, saltwater and light affect the materials they are made of. If you have done a workshop with me, you will know that I like words to kickstart an idea. Some of the words that I have selected to inspire this work describe a pattern of change and disintegration – seep, stain, drip, rust, rip, tear, fade and perish.

Imprint series

In order to leave a mark, a contact between surfaces has to happen, and these marks are signs, or echoes of forces and processes that have happened in the past. Marks can also be observed happening in the present, as with Marsh Light that was inspired by the reflections on the land at a particular time. The type of light or atmosphere also leaves its presence, however fleeting.

Imprint series (detail)

I have made several works in the Imprint series – 2-D works, 3-D works and drawings.

The 2-D works look at the marks left on the land by the sea including ‘wave cuts’ that are the marks left by the movement of water imprinted on the sand or mud, and ‘spring lines’ that are the marks imprinted on sand or mud by the downward motion of water down the beach or off the marsh.

In my sketch book I wrote my observations of water movement and the marks left.

Water watch

Flow.

Water covers the sand and mud and reworks the mounds and dips caused by the previous tide.

A fast-flowing spring tide makes big undulating marks.

A slow neap tide makes smaller textured marks.

Ebb.

Water drains down off the marsh and creates meandering spring lines in the sand and mud.

Splitting and dividing the branches become smaller as the water nears the channel.

The indents look like fallen trees.

When the bed of the spring line is textured, it causes the water to ripple as it flows.

In the middle of the lunar cycle when the tides are small, the mud in the space between the tide lines dries out and cracks appear. In summer the cracks widen further in the hot sun.

Imprint sereis (detail)

I have made 6 Imprint works that express these observations. They are about 60×60 cm each and are made of a thin, gauzy linen that I have tanned with oak galls. They produce a soft brown colour – lighter using just a few oak galls, and darker when using more. The cloth is surprisingly water resistant after the tanning process, but I have enhanced the waterproofing by dressing the cloth with a concoction of linseed oil and beeswax.

Leavings Series

The 3 -D works include a collection of curiosities. They are objects that show evidence of the surface contact between objects or things, and they record the marks and residues of an action or process – stain, rust, fade, twist, coil. As well as using cloth and thread I have used found materials and objects – pebbles, rope and string, wire, leaves, and I have incorporated these into collections that I have titled Leavings.

Leavings series

If you are in Norfolk between the 17 May and 1 June I am showing these works alongside other works by Annabel Faraday, Denise Jones, Mary Morris and Carly Ralph in an exhibition called Stains and Traces. It is at St Nicholas’ Church, Salthouse, NR25 7XA and is open everyday from 10am-5pm, except Sunday when it opens at 11am after the morning service.

Leavings series

Walking

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Holkham.

Late Autumn.

The brightness has drawn me outside for the afternoon. Usually at this time of year the sun has disappeared behind gathering clouds but today as I get out of the car at Holkham there are only a few straggling wisps to the north, and facing south towards the low sun the clear sky is that thin, transparent blue that you only seem to get at this time of year.

I set off down the path at the back of the pines. This is the usual route, mainly because with the prevailing south westerly wind I am sheltered walking whilst into it, and then back along beach the coldness behind me. The low sun is golden, and the trees and reeds cast long shadows horizontally across the path. Occasionally the path opens out the reed tops shimmer as pale, transparent silhouettes before the bright light. Out of sight on the scrapes there is a cacophony of bird calls. Geese chatter, wigeon whistle and lapwings call with the upwards swoop of a swanee whistle.

I stop off to look out of the bird hide. Time slips by quickly in this enclosed wooden hut as I look out and see what I can see. The constant motion of the bird calls is echoed by the movement of the birds themselves as they hover, glide and fly in all directions. Two buzzards circle over distant trees. A flock of wigeon slide onto the scrape in front of me and land with a splash, and at the same time a commotion of geese takes off, flapping and squawking, to circle in a confused group before splitting up and landing further along the wetlands.

Looking down from the sky I see a muntjac standing motionless to my right. It appears to be eyeing up a flock of feeding greylag geese. The geese are looking back at it. What are they thinking do you suppose? Over to my left I glimpse a shiny rump, and my binoculars tells me it is another muntjac feeding by a hedge. When you take time to sit and look it is surprising how much you can see.

Leaving the hut, I walk back towards the empty beach. It seems quiet and still there after all the hubbub and life on the southern side of the pines. The light is softer, and the gently lapping waves are calming. Usually, I make for the interest of the beach but today all the interest was on the other side.

If you would like to discover ideas and techniques to help you to express the observations of your surroundings in your creative work, my online workshop Sensing Place is currently available until the 9 December at Fibre Arts Take Two. More information available here.