Flight
1999
Woodcut
92x122cm
ENQUIRE
Here lapwings spiral as if in celebration of life itself in an energetic axis that continues skyward. This print expresses the exaltation in my heart of the newfound freedom I had found in Shetland. Loosely based around the village of Aith as seen from the window of my house the birds fly around the new life of my baby daughter who is being pushed in her pram towards the church that is one of the few straight lines in the picture apart from the pier.
A key shift that occurred in my art almost as soon as I arrived in Shetland was the appearance of the circle in my art in terms of shapes and compositional arrangements that embraced the curve and the free-flowing form. If the birds taught me the power of organic compositions , It was the birds who provided the answer to the lack of verticals in the Shetland landscape and soon they became the rhythmical dancers of my art that I could build complex compositions around. I drew the birds less from an ornithological perspective that is obsessed with detail and accuracy but rather from an expansive symbolic viewpoint that explored the growing sense of freedom and celebration of life that I had discovered in Shetland. A peaceful harmony entered into my work where the birds became the singers of the song of Shetland that I was trying to carve into blocks of wood that echoed of the peace that had entered my own soul. The birds taught me to follow my own path, to trust in instinct and to allow nature to be my teacher.
My urban inspired Black Country work was dominated and controlled by a stark linearity contained within geometric frame works that holds everything in check as the angular edges of the buildings and streets punctuated by people and vertical up rights dominated my compositions. In Shetland I was forced me to search for dynamic shapes to build compositions it was flying birds, that naturally fly in organic ways that started to preoccupy me . Many of these works symbolise and express the newfound freedom I discovered in Shetland and are a diametric opposite to the harsh linearity of the urban works that are about oppression and captivity.
A key shift that occurred in my art almost as soon as I arrived in Shetland was the appearance of the circle in my art in terms of shapes and compositional arrangements that embraced the curve and the free-flowing form. If the birds taught me the power of organic compositions , It was the birds who provided the answer to the lack of verticals in the Shetland landscape and soon they became the rhythmical dancers of my art that I could build complex compositions around. I drew the birds less from an ornithological perspective that is obsessed with detail and accuracy but rather from an expansive symbolic viewpoint that explored the growing sense of freedom and celebration of life that I had discovered in Shetland. A peaceful harmony entered into my work where the birds became the singers of the song of Shetland that I was trying to carve into blocks of wood that echoed of the peace that had entered my own soul. The birds taught me to follow my own path, to trust in instinct and to allow nature to be my teacher.
My urban inspired Black Country work was dominated and controlled by a stark linearity contained within geometric frame works that holds everything in check as the angular edges of the buildings and streets punctuated by people and vertical up rights dominated my compositions. In Shetland I was forced me to search for dynamic shapes to build compositions it was flying birds, that naturally fly in organic ways that started to preoccupy me . Many of these works symbolise and express the newfound freedom I discovered in Shetland and are a diametric opposite to the harsh linearity of the urban works that are about oppression and captivity.