We Saw Them Fly
1999
Woodcut
183x60cm
ENQUIRE
The large woodcut print ‘We Saw Them Fly ‘was inspired by a trip out walking into the area around Vermentry with newborn daughter on my back. We were standing on the hill in this beautiful landscape and suddenly a huge flock of curlews lifted high above us and circling and calling. I imagined Hannah seeing these beautiful, majestic curlews for the first ever time with all the innocence of the eyes of a child and I drew the spiralling curlews on an upward trajectory in a celebration of life.
The spiralling flight of the Lapwings and curlews are symbolic expressions of the shift in my soul that has been freed from urban constraints and is instead moving with the timeless rhythms of nature. The birds in many of my works became ever more symbolic in terms of using metaphor, to explore of larger themes such as freedom growth and rebirth.
The more I immersed myself into nature the more the space in my own paintings started to open up and especially into a language of rhythmical patterning , where birds are repeated like motifs to create ever more dynamic and fluid compositions that celebrate the sense of joy and freedom in life that I found in Shetland.
The spiralling flight of the Lapwings and curlews are symbolic expressions of the shift in my soul that has been freed from urban constraints and is instead moving with the timeless rhythms of nature. The birds in many of my works became ever more symbolic in terms of using metaphor, to explore of larger themes such as freedom growth and rebirth.
The more I immersed myself into nature the more the space in my own paintings started to open up and especially into a language of rhythmical patterning , where birds are repeated like motifs to create ever more dynamic and fluid compositions that celebrate the sense of joy and freedom in life that I found in Shetland.