Week Sixteen
“A walk marks time with an accumulation of footsteps. It defines the form of the land. Walking the roads and paths is to trace a portrait of the country” Richard Long 
As the melting continues the fells are exchanging their heavy white blankets for a light dusting of icing sugar. Long hidden tracks and familiar markings are beginning to reappear. New tracks only visible by the light snow seem like mysterious passageways that are only revealed under certain climatic conditions. Ancient track ways known by few and only visible to the ‘newcomer at certain times; it seems that a true ‘portrait’ of landscape can only be known if it is seen through all seasons. 
As I meander through the landscape feeding off its beauty, I see drawings and artworks everywhere. Black lines traverse the hills in patterns, dark lines of the walls cut across vast hillsides dramatically. Grasses are slowly beginning to rise after the weight of the snow, some look like twisted bunches made by an artist that has caringly tied them and then walked away. 
Some grasses are still ridiculously bumpy, almost comical at times. I am intrigued how much the bumps will change throughout the seasons, I’m sure they were not this bumpy before the snow. Is there a terminology for humpy bumpy grass?
It does seem bitterly cold without the snow, but that does mean the delicious frozen puddles are back! 
I discovered ‘moss world’ the other day. There were bright orange and bright green mosses together, and then, I came across the most luxurious moss I’d ever seen. It was so thick, so soft, and so green, that if it hadn’t been so cold, I would have laid down for a snooze in its comfort.
It is said, to truly know a landscape, one should experience sleeping outside in it, and I must admit, I am getting tempted to try. Reading such people as Richard Long or Robert Macfarlane, I am envious of their past experiences of such things. It is a complete unknown for me, and I know it would take a lot of courage for me to try; it would also have to be a full moon and not January. Maybe I should find out exactly what a ‘bivouac’ bag is first before I embark on such adventure! 
Spent an inordinate amount of time staring closely at squashed bracken, I’ve never been that partial to bracken before, but as the song goes “times are a changing” and its colour and edging were fascinating against the moss. Also any plant life that has fossils 55 million years old, should be worth noting. 
Whilst absorbed in my microscopic world in the nook of a river, I could hear the sounds of large incendiary devices. I mean really loud, so loud you’re almost impelled to throw yourself on the ground for safety reasons. I still find it faintly disturbing, no actually, very disturbing to hear the army training camps in the distance. The blanket of snow seems to have muffled their activities over the last few weeks, but now it all seems trebly loud and extremely close. I was rather amused that all bombing and machine gunning ceased precisely at midday…”spot of lunch ol chap”. 
“Find Beauty; be still” W.H. Murray I have run a series of enamel workshops this week for the local community that have all been very successful, however, for my own studio work things were a little different. There seems to be a time when your head can spin so much with creative ‘confusions’ that it feels dangerously close to exploding. Well, that’s what it can feel like to me. Therefore for the sake of ones mental health or the high cleaning bill for exploding heads, it seemed advisable to take a step back, take a deep breath, let go and surrender. 
I think for the last couple of weeks I have been caught in a loop, a somewhat repetitive loop of ‘art angst’. You know that kind of confusion, confusions of directions, which projects to concentrate on and which to perhaps abandon. I had reached a point where the artwork needed to move forward. Something had to change, and that something was me. 
Therefore I have been rather still this week, well lets rephrase that….I have tried to be still this week, still in the ‘cognitive’ and not the physical sense that is. I needed to shift my focus, less panic and more trust in creativity. Music and nature have been my angel wings, not simultaneously you’ll understand, but they have held me, they have softened my release so I can surrender…surrender into faith…faith of the creative process and into its experience. I wanted to do an artist residency to explore and push the boundaries of my creative practice further; therefore I must accept that ‘space’ for it to happen. 
After three months of adapting to my new surroundings, in month four I have stumbled upon the big phase ‘two’ of my residency. Time to push it all a step further, and time to ‘up the anti’, I am teetering on that edge of change. That edge is exciting and also daunting. This is possibly the hardest thing I have experienced in all of my art endeavours so far, and difficulty is not a bad thing, I knew when I embarked on this year long residency that it would of course be challenging, and I accept and embrace that challenge fully. I have to thank nature, walking, bracken, moss, DJ Sprinkles and the rather new sublime album by Four Tet for saving my head this week. Week Sixteen Done……with a few words from Nelson Mandela to finish with…. “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”