Thursday, March 12, 2009

Bracken Stars


Bracken Stars, originally uploaded by escher1.

I hadn't made anything for a while and I needed to get something done. So today I went to Hutton Roof in Cumbria.

I haven't done much land art if any in a limestone environment and I found it very challenging. I like to work intuitively most of the time and I searched and searched for useful material. There is little colour and contrast in limestone country (at least until Spring gets going) and the stone is lacking in symmetry and doesn't suit my style. I tried 4 or 5 other ideas before this one popped into my head.

I am really looking forward to things sprouting very soon and all the new materials Spring will bring. Getting a little bored of stone, bracken and dead wood for now!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love your work and especially this series! Very nice.

EmandaJ said...

Hello Richard,

Very elegant. It may be monochromatic and a bit boring to you, but it has great beauty and simplicity to it.

I can't wait to see what you will do with the bounty of Spring.
Emanda

Richard Shilling said...

Thanks to you both. Emanda. I was quite pleased with this one, but only when I saw the resultant photo on my monitor. Despite the complaint about the lack of colour and contrast, I searched for 2.5 hours for something that would bring a little of those qualities and I think the final image works for those reasons.

It just was quite a search before that. I was carrying a pack full of stuff, two tripods, two cameras, a couple of lenses and other stuff I didn't need. There was lots of clambering through the undergrowth, climbing up bits of rock with all this gear and the whole time I was thinking "what am I doing? I'm never going to find anything to do and here I am scrambling underneath short trees on slippery rock, am I mad?" So in the end to return home with this image I am left rather happy with the day's toil.

ArtPropelled said...

I actually think there's a richness in this image. Simple but very effective. Amazing how many hours go into a piece......which adds another layer of meaning to it.