The Open Art Studios are a wonderful thing. A focus, a deadline. For the past six months my creativity has revolved around the moon as much as the moon has revolved around us.
Inspired by the NASAs moon photos, I’ve been finding ways to connect images that give me a sense of place and seasonality.
As the winter storms surged through I found myself making MoonStorms, where winter clouds obscure and roll across the sky. My thoughts shifted to deep winter and ice, and how ships winter the icier margins of our planet. I became rabbit-holed by ships beset, where vessels become icebound, moribund, trapped. NASA writes about the sun’s magnetic field lines tangling, crossing and reorganising near sunspots . In turn, these cause energy explosions called solar flares. Solar flares are linked to changing weather patterns, and changing weather patterns influence the ice in the poles.
I imagine those magnetic lines tangling round the hill of the old clipperships, a magnetic kraken holding the ship captive. The tidal tug of the moon helpless. MoonShip imagined.
As the winter rose, I have evening shots of the rising tide in Bosham, dark watery villagescapes that reflect tide and mudflats, tides held captive by lunar events.
Spring. The mood lightens. My attachment to hares manifests strongly in spring, as the seasons shift and my friend the author Charlie Flindt sends me video clips of hares mucking about on his land. Belfry Hare has me in its sights. The sap rises, and by late April I’m looking for the lacework of young cow parsley in the hedges, enjoying the white against the sharp vernal green, silhouetted against the paschal moonscape in Bosham.
Midsummer is a time of slow high tides and south-westerlies that let classic wooden boats drift up the creek. Wine on the deck, the fire pit keeping us warm as giant hawk moths hum across our heads illuminated by a fat rising moon, navigating. The lines blurred by light pollution.
I can barely begin to describe my love for beetles, precipitated by a childhood examining bugs with a hand lens and long trips to the Nairobi Museum bug room with my mother. I worry about the beetles. If my worry beads have names, the impact of light pollution on beetles is one of them. The ancient Egyptians had malas made of stone-carved scarabs, the connection circling itself. MoonBug is probably my favourite. The expression of my heart. Totemic, respecting the insects that pollinate our lives. If I can return the totemic favour by making resonant images that raise the issue, and return the protection, then my work has some meaning. The MoonBug is a thing that finds me and places me in the universe.
I plan to gravure my MoonBug on mulberry Japanese paper.
These are my connections and thoughts, my signposts and navigations of my journey with the images on the walls at the Chichester Open Studio 2023. The making of these is a cross- pollination, as Sanne Bjerknes writes in the Dark Mountain Vol 22: ‘a communion of subjects rather than a collection of objects.’ Denominated by the moon.
I look forward to showing you the final limited editions, printed on Hahnemuhle Hemp paper at A4 and A3, in person. Venue 79 , Mariners Terrace in Bosham.