I’m back in my studio. All the works completed during the residency are arranged on my wall. Time to evaluate and reflect on the 3 weeks spent at Kings Cottage as part of the Launceston City Council artist in residence programme.
Time well spent as I have an enormous amount of reference material for a body of work.
Most of these materials are drawings in ink, pastel, pencil and are studies of the forms of the dolerite cliffs and linear studies of water flows.
I spent a great deal of time just watching the water movements around the boulders as well as the tidal flows observed from the cottage. The way the tide changed the forms and surface colours was interesting and resulted in a number of direct colour experiments in acrylics on paper.
The surface colours and textures of the boulders were the first qualities to attracted my attention but the more I looked the more fascinated I became with the actual structure of the cliffs and boulders in the gorge, the cracks and fissures were an opportunity to explore linear qualities with a range of tools and materials. Sometimes I would pick up a stick, twig piece of grass, feather and dip it into ink or thin paint and use that to capture the forms and structure of the gorge.
